Almost five thousand years agone, there were pilgrims walking to the Celestial City, as these two honest persons are; and Beelzebub, Apollyon, and Legion, with their companions, perceiving by the path that the pilgrims made that their way to the City lay through this town of Vanity, they contrived here to set up a fair; a fair wherein should be sold all sorts of vanity, and that it should last all year long. Therefore at this Fair are all such merchandise sold, as houses, lands, trades, places, honours, preferments, titles, countries, kingdoms, lust, pleasures and delights of all sorts, as whores, bawds, wives, husbands, childrens, masters, servants, lives, blood, bodies, souls, silver, gold, pearls, precious stones, and what not. And moreover, at this Fair there is at all times to bee seen jugglings, cheats, games, plays, fools, apes, knaves, and rogues, and that of all sorts. — John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress

— Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson (Baroque Cycle, #1)