One day during the holidays, when some fourteen or fifteen friends had dropped in _quite promiscuous_, and were playing all kinds of tricks, a certain gentleman, imported from England, an officer in the Guards, genus Swell, "pwoposed" that we should play the _Muffin man_. As none of us had ever heard of this gentleman or the muffin business, there was a general cry for light.
"Oh, its vewy jolly, I asshua yaw. We all sit wound in a wing, yaw know, and one of us, yaw know, sings:
"'Do yaw know the muffin man, Do yaw know his name, Do yaw know the muffin man, That lives in Cwumpet Lane.'
"'Oh, yes, I know the muffin man, Oh, yes, I know the muffin man, Oh, yes, I know the muffin man, Who lives in Cwumpet[3] Lane.'
Then he turns to the next person, and when each person has sung his verse, yaw know, he then joins in the cawus,[4] until it has gone all wound;[5] then, yaw know, we all sing together:
"'We all know the muffin man, We all know his name; We all know the muffin man, Who lives in Cwumpet Lane.'
The game is, yaw know, to keep a gwave[6] face all the time. If yaw laugh yaw pay a forfeit."
"The muffin man, the muffin man," echoed half a dozen voices; "let us play the muffin man."
The proposition being carried _nem. con._, we all sat "wound in a wing," or round in a ring, a circle of individuals of every age from three up to seventy. The Englishman, as head instigator, started the game, but before he got half through his verse we were all in convulsions of laughter; the next person took it up, but it was utterly useless to think of collecting the forfeits; we were all, in spite of every effort, like a party of maniacs reeling in our seats with merriment. There was something so utterly idiotic and absurd in a large party of respectable, rational beings, congratulating themselves in song that they "knew the muffin man of Crumpet Lane."
The English swell was immediately made an honorary member of our order, which is, as yet, without a name.
As we had all laughed our throats dry, Mr. Crofton invited us into the next room to _see a man_, as the Immortal Artemus delicately expresses it, so we all went in and saw the man. Some of us saw him in ice claret, some in hot punch, and some in cool champagne. One of Crofton's children, a maiden aged three years, whom they called Toney, as the diminutive of her Christian name, Antonia, came toddling in with the rest and said: