The larger cities had lists where the sons of the patricians held their knightly exercise and ran at the ring, also shooting galleries, and trenches for crossbow and rifle practice. The shooting festivities were a great source of enjoyment throughout the country, and on these occasions booths, tents, and cook-shops were erected. The people also took a lively interest in the festivals of particular guilds, and almost every town had its own public feast; for example, Erfurt had yearly prize races for the poorer classes; the men ran for stockings and the women for fur cloaks. Tennis was a favourite game of the young citizens, which unfortunately in the troubles of the century almost disappeared. There were special tennis courts, and a tennis-court master, of the town. If any gentlemen of distinction came into the town, a place in the market was strewed with sand, and a playground marked off with pegs and cords. There these distinguished persons played, and the citizens watched with pleasure from the windows, to see how a young Prince of Hesse threw the ball, and how one of Anhalt did his best. At the great yearly markets, for more than a century, Fortune's urn was a favourite game. Sometimes it was undertaken by the town itself, but generally it was granted to some speculator. How much the people were interested in this, we learn from the fact that the town chronicles frequently reported the particulars concerning it. Thus, in 1624, at Michaelmas, at Leipzig a Fortune's urn of seventeen thousand gulden was prepared; each ticket cost eighteen pfennige; there were seventeen blanks to one prize; the highest prize was three hundred and fifty gulden, and there were three hundred thousand blanks. The students at last became angry at the number of blanks; they attacked and broke down the lottery booth. The pleasure of the people in spectacles was greater than now, at least more easily satisfied; processions and city solemnities were frequent; plays undoubtedly were still a rare enjoyment, in these the children of the citizens had always the pleasure of representing the characters themselves, as bands of travelling players were still new and rare. The clerical body was already unfavourably disposed to what were called profane pieces, therefore ecclesiastical subjects and allegories with moral tendencies were always interspersed with burlesque scenes, and great was the number of the actors. At the yearly markets the play booths were more abundant than now. At the Easter fair at Leipzig in 1630, was to be seen, amongst other things, a father with six children who performed beautifully on the lute and violin, a woman who could sew, write, and convey her food to her mouth with her feet, a child of a year old quite covered with hair and with a beard; and of strange animals, there were two marmoset monkeys, a porpoise, and a spoonbill, and, as now, these monsters were recommended to the people by large pictures.