He wrought also a vineyard, golden and fair to see, and the vines were loaded with grapes.
The god wrought also a pasture in a fair mountain dell, and a large flock of sheep, with a homestead and huts, and sheltered sheepfolds.
You may travel on it all your lifetime, were you to live thousands of years, and yet never get beyond the limits of Vanity Fair.
If the law stood as it once did in Vanity Fair we should see them grinning through the iron bars of the prison window.
Amid the occupations or amusements of the Fair, nothing was more common than for a person--whether at feast, theatre, or church, or trafficking for wealth and honors, or whatever he might be doing, to vanish like a soap bubble, and be never more seen of his fellows; and so accustomed were the latter to such little accidents that they went on with their business as quietly as if nothing had happened.
Had all regrets been punished as rigorously as this poor dame's were, my yearning for the relinquished delights of Vanity Fair might have produced a similar change in my own corporeal substance, and left me a warning to future pilgrims.
They were the same whom Apollyon and ourselves had persecuted with taunts, and gibes, and scalding steam, at the commencement of our journey--the same whose unworldly aspect and impressive words had stirred my conscience amid the wild revellers of Vanity Fair.
Come and see if you recognize her,
fair Cousin Phoebus.
Now he met a fair buxom lass in a shady lane, and each gave the other a merry word and passed their way; now he saw a fair lady upon an ambling pad, to whom he doffed his cap, and who bowed sedately in return to the fair youth; now he saw a fat monk on a pannier-laden ass; now a gallant knight, with spear and shield and armor that flashed brightly in the sunlight; now a page clad in crimson; and now a stout burgher from good Nottingham Town, pacing along with serious footsteps; all these sights he saw, but adventure found he none.
Good Stutely, cut thou a fair white piece of bark four fingers in breadth, and set it fourscore yards distant on yonder oak.
Give me a good stout bow and a fair broad arrow, and if I hit it not, strip me and beat me blue with bowstrings.
cried he, "mend thou that if thou canst"; while even the yeomen clapped their hands at so fair a shot.
When I was able to look round me, the other traveler--I mean the man with the
fair complexion, who carried the knapsack--was nowhere to be seen.
So were they "espoused
fair and well" by the Archbishop of York, and Havelok took his bride home to Grimsby.
These the landlady presently ushered into that room where Mr Jones had at first deposited his
fair prize, as it was the best apartment in the house.
