But altho the minstrels may have taken over this effective trick from the circus, with which some of the earlier performers had had intimate relations, the trick itself is of remote antiquity. The side-splitting colloquy of the End-man with the Middleman may be exactly like the interchange of merry jests between the clown and the ring-master, yet it is far older than the modern circus. It existed in Paris, for example, in the sixteenth century, when the quack doctor was accompanied by his jack-pudding. Many of the dialogs heard on the Pont-Neuf between Mondor and Tabarin have been preserved, and the method is precisely that of the dialogs between ring-master and clown, Interlocutor and End-man, even to the persistent repetition of the question which contains the catch. "Master," Tabarin would begin, "can you tell me which is the more generous, a man or a woman?" And the quack doctor would solemnly reply: "Ah, Tabarin, that is a question which has been greatly debated by the philosophers of antiquity, and they have been unable to decide which is truly the more generous, a man or a woman." Then Tabarin would briskly retort: "Never mind the old philosophers. I can tell you." And with great contempt the ponderous quack doctor would return: "What, Tabarin, do you mean to say that you can tell us which is the more generous, a man or a woman." Tabarin promptly responded that he could. "Then," asked Mondor, "pray do so. Which is the more generous, a man or a woman?" And thereupon, to the great disgust of Mondor, Tabarin would proffer his ribald explanation. Unfortunately the explanation he gave is frankly too ribald to be given here, for nowadays we are more squeamish than the idlers who gathered around the quack doctor's platform in Paris three or four centuries ago. The dialogs of Mondor and Tabarin were brief enough, but they often made up for their brevity in their breadth.