THE FAIR AT NEW BOSTON part 2

Sunday Septr. 6th-

mr. Ruley brought breakfast again, God save him! The girls and I were starving and ate in great gulps.

Parson John held Sunday service just outside the wagoneer's camp, attendance was high.

When the service was over, I walked with the girls down to the little portrait studio called "The Paper Paintbrush", where I paid the woman to make sillohettes of the girls. I stood and held the parasol to block the bright morning sun from the girl's faces as they sat. Lucy and Molly sat well, Rose had to be reminded to hold still several times.

It was all, "Close your mouth dear, chin up, be still, almost finished."

Once they were complete, I took Molly and Rose to miss Prunelly's School for Young Ladies near the Coffee House. I had intended to enroll Lucy as well, but she slipped away unnoticed just before we arrived.

Molly and Rose did some sewing on samplers while there and it gave me a chance to go over to Cheapside and catch the last bit of Dr. Bathazar's pitch for his 'Miracle Elixer" just before the play at noon, "She Stoops to Conquer".

From two of the clock onward I worked again with Maria, Jacob and the wagon.

Camps broke down at dusk, there was a great bonfire and many of the exhibitors left. The girls and I went to bed.

At four thirty in the morning, a heavy driving rain began to fall and there was the flash of approaching lightning. It pounded the canvas above our heads and I knew it to be a simple matter of time before it started to seep through the material I sat bolt upright and saw Gerry moving about outside, making arrangements to get everyone in camp under safe cover.

I put the girls in the wagon and turned homeward.

About an hour outside the fairgrounds, I stopped at a little tavern whose proprietor was a fellow by the name of McDonald, for his name was featured prominently upon the sign out front, and purchased coffee to stimulate my exhausted senses.

The girls were a tangle of limbs there in the back of the wagon with the old quilt my mother made me over them. As we travelled toward home, the pouring rains of Ohio finally gave way to the early morning fog that covered the hills and valleys of Kentuckee.