Jumbled together in a great green meadow under a sweet autumnal sun,
these things made a picture of what, I am persuaded, is the ultimate in
extravagant American country life. There was something, too, about this
blending of fashionables and farmers, which made me think of the
theater; for there is, in truth, a distinct note of histrionism about
many of the rich Americans who "go in for" elaborate ruralness, and
there is a touch of it very often, also, about "horsey" people. They
like to "look the part," and they dress it with no less care than they
exercise, at other seasons, in dressing the parts of opera-going
cosmopolites, or wealthy loungers at the beaches. In other words, these
fashionables had the overtrained New York look all over them, and the
local rustics set them off as effectively as the villainous young squire
of the Drury Lane melodrama is set off by contrast with honest old
Jasper, the miller, who wears a smock, and comes to the Great House to
beg the Young Master to "make an honest woman" of poor Rose, the fairest
lass in all Hampshire.
About the races themselves there was something fascinatingly
nonprofessional. They bore the same relation to great races on great
tracks that a very fine performance of a play by amateurs might bear to
a professional performance.
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