Now and again would be heard the raucous voice of a disreputable-looking man who perambulated the fair, announcing that the “last dying speech and confession” of a malefactor, executed on the previous day at the county gaol, could be bought for one penny. Luckily, opportunities of this nature no longer occur. Gone, too, is the obliging individual who was so anxious to allow everyone to “prick the garter”; a short description of the procedure may therefore prove interesting:— Firstly, the exponent produced a very long, narrow leather strap; this he doubled so as to form a loop end; he then set it upon edge on the ground and rolled up the remainder of the strap around it, making several other loops as he proceeded; then he invited bystanders to prick with a long metal pin which he provided the loop considered to be the doubling of the strap. A necessary condition was that the garter pricker put down any sum he pleased, and in event of the pin remaining caught in the loop when the strap was unwound by the demonstrator, he doubled the amount laid down, the total sum becoming the property of the garter pricker; on the other hand, if the strap came away entirely from the pin, then the amount staked passed over to the strap manipulator, who could work the trick so as to win or lose at will. The period of which I write was that of the old “roundabouts.” Prior to the development of galloping powers by the wooden horses and the use of electric light, the naphtha lamps which illuminated the fair at night frequently blew out and they then added powerfully to the characteristic smell of the fair. Such then is the kind of school in which many of the wanderers, whose parents obtain a livelihood at fairs, learn their early lessons; but to the credit of the Romanies it must be said that, as a rule, they have not taken part in such distinctly swindling concerns as thimble-rigging, purse trick and the like, these ventures being mostly conducted by the cockney element which finds its way to all large fairs; in fact, the only Romany concern which partook of this nature I can recollect, was the brass arrow on the stall of the woman who dispensed the celebrated “fair rock.”