It was ever a safe piece of comic business with Old Joey Grimaldi and his favourite pupil and successor, Tom Matthews, together with all other stage clowns following them, that a penny pieman and the bright shining block-tin can should be introduced into every Christmas pantomime. The pataloon is made to be tossing the safe game of--"heads I win, tails you lose" with the stage pieman, while the roguish clown is adroitly managing to swallow the whole of the stock of pies from the can, and which are made by the stage property-man for the occasion out of tissue-paper painted in water-colours. Then follows the wry faces and spasmodic stomach-pinchings of the clown, accompanied with the echoing cries of "_Mee, mee, mow, woo!_" while the pantaloon takes from the pieman's can some seven or eight fine young kittens and the old tabby-cat--also the handy-work of the stage property-man. The whole scene usually finishes by the pantaloon pointedly sympathizing with the now woebegone clown to the tune of "Serve ye right--Greedy! greedy!! greedy!!!" when enter six supernumeraries dressed as large and motherly-looking tabbies with aprons and bibs, and bedizened with white linen night caps of the pattern known in private life to middle-aged married men only. The clown and pantaloon then work together in hunting down, and then handing over the poor pieman to the tender mercies and talons of the stage-cats, who finish up the "business" of the scene by popping the pieman into what looks like a copper of boiling water. Mr. Samuel Weller,--_otherwise_, Veller, that great modern authority on Y{e} Manners and Y{e} Customs, of Y{e} English in general, and of London Life wery Particular:--for "Mr. Weller's knowldge of London was extensive and peculiar"--has left us his own ideas of the baked "mysteries" of the pieman's ware:-- "Weal pie," said Mr. Weller, soliloquising, as he arranged the eatables on the grass. "Werry good thing is a weal pie, when you know the lady as made it, and is quite sure it an't kittens; and arter all, though, where's the odds, when they're so like weal that the wery piemen themselves don't know the difference?" "Don't they, Sam?" said Mr. Pickwick.