CMP Review 2024-08-04

“Then I saw in my dream, that when they were got out of the wilderness, they presently saw a town before them, and the name of that town is Vanity; and at the town there is a fair kept, called Vanity Fair. It is kept all the year long.”

So begins one of my favorite sections of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. The story haunts me.

“And moreover, at this fair there is at all times to be seen jugglings, cheats, games, plays, fools, apes, knaves, and rogues, and that of every kind.”

The pilgrims had to pass through this fair, otherwise they ”must needs go out of the world.” But they were not welcome there. They did not fit in. Their raiment, their speech, their values set them apart.

“One chanced, mockingly, beholding the carriage of the men, to say unto them, ‘What will ye buy?’ But they, looking gravely upon him, said, ‘We buy the truth.’”

Charlotte Mason also passed through this fair. She found what the pilgrims were looking for. This poem will stay with me forever. Read or hear “At the Fair” here.

@artmiddlekauff