Among the tents and sheds were eating-houses and innumerable places of refreshment, and coarse entertainment to suit the lowest tastes, with the customary sights and shows popular at such gatherings. Dwarfs and giants, jugglers and ballet-dancers and rope-dancers with their painted booths were more common than wonders from foreign lands. Mountebanks attracted also great attention, and so also did some curious clocks from Neuremberg, and Dutch figures made to move by concealed machinery. Play-actors and mummers also were to be found, some of their troupe in front of their large booths drumming and piping and shouting, and inviting the passers-by to enter and behold the wonders they had to exhibit. There were tumblers also, and fat pigs, and learned pigs, and dancing bears, indeed sufficient exhibitions of all sorts to captivate and amuse every description of taste. Brinsmead, as he walked through the fair, kept Jack close to him. The play-actors especially excited his indignation. "Don't look that way, lad," he observed; "they are seducing follies, just invented by Satan to lead the young astray, and no good ever came to those who have frequented such places. I would I were the chief magistrate, to put them all down; but the Evil One must have his way, I'm afraid, though it will be a happy day when he is driven out of the world." The magistrates' booth held an important position in the array of lath and canvas, which had been erected as soon as the harvest had been got off the ground. Here a regular court of justice was held as long as the fair lasted. The magistrates wore their gowns and gold chains of office, and arrived every day in some considerable state by water from Cambridge, when they were generally followed by a crowd of gaily-painted barges and passenger-wherries, which had, as has been said, been brought from London. All disputes arising out of the traffic of the fair were settled at the magistrates' booth, which was also duly attended by constables and several officials, to preserve order and bring up culprits.