=72. Comparison of fairs with markets and modern exchanges.=—Even now the old custom of “market days” persists in some places, and once it was universal; townspeople and country people agreed on a certain day, and met in the market-place then to exchange their wares. A fair is the same kind of institution as a market, and grew up for similar reasons, but it represented a further step of development, for it attracted buyers and sellers from a far greater area, and served the needs of wholesale as well as retail trade. The fair is, of course, much less advanced than the modern exchanges (stock and produce), from the fact that it was intermittent instead of being continuous, as well as for other reasons; but in the Middle Ages it was the means by which commerce grew strong, and the prosperity of commerce could be measured by the prosperity of fairs. The fairs always attracted people for social as well as business purposes; life in the Middle Ages would be regarded as insufferably dull at the present time, and both townspeople and country people enjoyed the excitement which the fair brought with it. There were “side-shows” in plenty, then; wild animals, trained dogs, and monstrosities, poets and musicians, actors and clowns, dancing and gambling halls; and there was a good opportunity to turn a penny dishonestly as well as honestly. The court roll of the English fairs of St. Ives tells us of a defendant who was caught selling a ring of brass for 5-1/2d., saying “that the ring was of the purest gold, and that he and a one-eyed man found it on the last Sunday in the Church of St. Ives, near the Cross.”