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;

318

The Man Who Laughs