Advisory for timid fairgoers: this account contains miraculous coiffures, patent-medicine persuasion, bureaucratic delay, rural rumor, speculative electricity, and alarming respect for paperwork. No livestock is seriously inconvenienced, though several reputations suffer county damage.
EAST BELLMONT, Oct., 1863.
I have always supposed that a premium was an acknowledgment made by a fair to the owner of some fact which existed before the judges discovered it. The Malone County Agricultural Society has lately given us reason to inquire whether the matter may work the other way.
This year, among the distinctions for cattle, preserves, needlework, vegetables, horses and flowers, appeared a card for the “Most Remarkable Head of Hair.” Secretary Peabody says it was inserted “in a spirit of innocent levity.” Nobody now remembers inserting it, which is an advantage after levity matures into business.
Bill Miles, a local Bellmont farmer, attended with his wife Liddy and their children, Delia, Martha Philena, Ada, Gretchen, Johnny and little Eugenia. Near the cattle sheds stood a travelling photographer whose wagon name has been read Hall, Hale and Hahl. He told the Miles girls that no ordinary competitor could stand against them if they took two of his Preparation Pills before sitting for a family portrait.
Mrs. Miles objected. Delia and Martha Philena say they felt nothing.
The plate felt more.
When developed, Delia’s hair rose about six feet. Martha Philena’s did likewise, and the two columns joined overhead in one arch, so the family appeared seated beneath an arbor. Ada had rolls extending sidewise. Gretchen’s hair went backward in three shelves. Johnny, whose hair had been cut that morning, showed two parts at once. Mr. Miles possessed a rooster crest. Mrs. Miles had, as Ezra Trombley described it, “a respectable front and a criminal rear.” Eugenia displayed three upright tufts.
There was now a plain question: was the exhibit remarkable hair, or only a remarkable account of hair?
The photograph went before judges Pelatiah Chase, Minerva Kirby and Deacon Silas Shutts. Chase declined jurisdiction because a photograph has no hair. Mrs. Kirby observed that the premium card did not say the hair must be present in person. Deacon Shutts said the Miles entry was plainly the most remarkable thing before them, whether hair, picture, mistake or judgment.
The ribbon was awarded.
A ribbon is not much cloth. Yet an object may be enlarged by persons agreeing to treat it seriously. By nightfall the report had crossed East Bellmont as if every flying squirrel, bluejay and whip-poor-will between Malone and the lake had been employed. Within half an hour the stove-side version had improved the original. The girls had grown sixty feet of hair. Six daughters were tied together. Mr. Miles had taken first premium as a Jersey heifer. The Society had ordered a second story built upon the house.
These reports would have exhausted the subject if the subject had remained a report.
The next morning Delia and Martha Philena found their actual hair standing substantially as it had stood in the photograph. The other heads had changed also, though less greatly.
Mrs. Miles sent for Mrs. Phebe Bellows, a widow of seventy-eight whose judgment is generally requested after others have completed the damage. Mrs. Bellows examined the girls, ribbon and photograph, and said that a premium ought never to be accepted for anything one would not willingly feed through the winter.
Mr. Miles at once tried to return the ribbon.
Secretary Peabody could not receive it without authority. The committee would not reconsider the award until Saturday.
Meanwhile the hair continued.
By Thursday Delia and Martha Philena could not stand more than several yards apart without the arch drawing tight and inclining both heads inward. Whether the joining is actually hair, or only looks and behaves like hair, remains disputed. No disinterested person has been allowed to cut it.
Professor Archibald Whitlock of Albany inspected the condition for ten minutes and pronounced it “sympathetic capillary electricity,” caused by photographic chemicals acting upon “female nervous polarity.” He predicted that dogs would become agitated while birds remained indifferent.
Young Johnny Miles’s two dogs slept under the arch.
Bluejays would not cross above it, though they flew beneath it.
A flying squirrel climbed Martha Philena’s side, reached the central joining, stopped, and backed down.
Professor Whitlock enlarged his explanation to include “avian repulsion.” Mr. Miles asked him to enlarge it once more until it included the professor’s departure.
Two explanations remain. One says that when the judges accepted the photograph, it became the official specimen, and the family has since been obliged to resemble it. The other says the preparation pills caused the alteration, but only after the Society publicly certified the pictured hair as genuine. In one account the ribbon commands. In the other it merely seals.
Neither explains why farmer Bill’s crest alters whenever the photograph is moved.
Yesterday the photographer returned and offered a complete cure. He asked no money. He wanted the ribbon.
Mr. Miles refused.
Before Mrs. Liddy Miles, Ezra Trombley and Secretary Peabody, he said that accepting the premium had legally established the photograph as the winning specimen.
“And specimens,” he said, “must remain as exhibited until the fair closes.”
I do not know whether this is law, trickery, chemistry, superstition, or merely the result of naming something before understanding it. The photograph has been turned face down. The ribbon remains in the Miles house. Delia and Martha Philena were measured yesterday at six feet apart.
A man commonly supposes that he owns what he has won. It may be useful, before competing, to inquire whether the prize has made the same calculation.
BELZIAH
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