The places where they appear most in their element are in the country fairs, where great crowds of country bumpkins and farmers and unsophisticated people gather either for business or for pleasure. Here he has no rival and no competitor, for the regular doctor would as much disdain to set up his stand in any such places as a first-class doctor in London would wheel a barrow to some of the slums or great thoroughfares in it, and display his medicines to induce the public to patronize him. Fortunately for the quack, the country abounds in just such gatherings. The very large villages have one every second or fifth day. The farmers in the district know this, and they come with their produce and their cattle to sell to those who are in need of such. Young fellows, too, wishing for some change from the monotony of country life, come to get some enjoyment, for all kinds of entertainments are prepared by itinerant caterers for the amusement of the public, and for a few hours they forget the _ennui_ and mouldiness of their daily experience, and, having laughed at the funny things they have seen, they return with lightened hearts to their homes. Every day in the year, in a large district, there are scores of fairs that the people in the neighbourhood can attend, and it is to these that the gamblers, and puppet shows, and Punch and Judys, and conjurors resort, in the certainty that there will always be a crowd ready to be entertained, and with none of the highly critical notions that the townspeople are accustomed to indulge in. The strolling doctor selects a suitable place where he can best display the various articles that he hopes will attract those who may be in need of his services. Perhaps it is under the great boughs of a banyan-tree that cast their leafy shade between the people and the great red-hot sun, or it may be on the steps of a temple, where the grim and solemn-looking idol looks out complacently on the crowd that gathers to listen to the eloquence of the doctor. Gathered closely around him are his medicines that he is going to prescribe for his coming patients. These consist of dried roots, and withered-looking stalks cut from bushes on the hillside, and various kinds of grasses, that seem fit only to be swept into the gutter as useless rubbish. There is one little mound that he builds up with deft and careful fingers, as though he relied much upon its component parts for his success to-day. It is a gruesome sight, for on looking at it carefully, one finds it to consist of a considerable number of teeth in a pretty good state of preservation that have been extracted from patients in days gone by, and that have still sufficient vitality in them to enable them to do service in other people's mouths for some years to come.