in the Holbein at
Hampton Court. Fun would have been proud to have broken the arm of the
Venus of Milo. Under James II. a young millionaire lord who had during
the night set fire to a thatched cottage--a feat which made all London
burst with laughter--was proclaimed the King of Fun. The poor devils in
the cottage were saved in their night clothes. The members of the Fun
Club, all of the highest aristocracy, used to run about London during
the hours when the citizens were asleep, pulling the hinges from the
shutters, cutting off the pipes of pumps, filling up cisterns, digging
up cultivated plots of ground, putting out lamps, sawing through the
beams which supported houses, breaking the window panes, especially in
the poor quarters of the town. It was the rich who acted thus towards
the poor. For this reason no complaint was possible. That was the best
of the joke. Those manners have not altogether disappeared. In many
places in England and in English possessions--at Guernsey, for
instance--your house is now and then somewhat damaged during the night,
or a fence is broken, or the knocker twisted off your door. If it were
poor people who did these things, they would be sent to jail; but they
are done by pleasant young gentlemen.

The most fashionable of the clubs was presided over by an emperor, who
wore a crescent on his forehead, and was called the Grand Mohawk. The
Mohawk surpassed the Fun. Do evil for evil's sake was the programme. The
Mohawk Club had one great object--to injure. To fulfil this duty all
means were held good. In becoming a Mohawk the members took an oath to
be hurtful. To injure at any price, no matter when, no matter whom, no
matter where, was a matter of duty. Every member of the Mohawk Club was
bound to possess an accomplishment. One was "a dancing master;" that is
to say he made the rustics frisk about by pricking the calves of their
legs with the point of his sword. Others knew how to make a man sweat;
that is to say, a circle of gentlemen with drawn rapiers would surround
a poor wretch, so that it was impossible for him not to turn his back
upon some one. The gentleman behind him chastised him for this by a
prick of his sword, which made him spring round; another prick in the
back warned the fellow that one of noble blood was behind him, and so
on, each one wounding him in his turn. When the man, closed round by the
circle of swords and covered with blood, had turned and danced about
enough, they