characters are to proceed in numerical order. This done, let the cake and refreshments go round, and hey! for merriment!" The Twelfth cakes themselves were, in the higher class, almost as beautiful as wedding cakes, but they might be had of all prices, from sixpence to anything one's purse might compass; and the confectioner's (they called them pastry cooks in those days) windows were well worth a visit, and crowds did visit them, sometimes a little practical joking taking place, such as pinning two persons together, etc. Quoting Hone again: "In London, with every pastry cook in the city, and at the west end of the town, it is 'high change' on Twelfth day. From the taking down the shutters in the morning, he and his men, with additional assistants, male and female, are fully occupied by attending to the dressing out of the window, executing orders of the day before, receiving fresh ones, or supplying the wants of chance customers. Before dusk the important arrangement of the window is completed. Then the gas is turned on, with supernumerary argand lamps and manifold waxlights, to illuminate countless cakes, of all prices and dimensions, that stand in rows and piles on the counters and sideboards, and in the windows. The richest in flavour and heaviest in weight and price are placed on large and massy salvers; one, enormously superior in size, is the chief object of curiosity; and all are decorated with all imaginable images of things animate and inanimate. Stars, castles, kings, cottages, dragons, trees, fish, palaces, cats, dogs, churches, lions, milkmaids, knights, serpents, and innumerable other forms in snow-white confectionery, painted with variegated colours, glitter by 'excess of light' from mirrors against the walls, festooned with artificial wonders of Flora." As the fashion of Twelfth cakes declined, the pastry cooks had to push their sale in every way possible, not being very particular as to overstepping the law, by getting rid of them by means of drawings, raffles, and lotteries, which for a long time were winked at by the authorities, until they assumed dimensions which could not be ignored, and M. Louis Dethier was summoned at Bow Street on 26th December 1860, under the Act 42 Geo. III. cap. 119, sec. 2, for keeping an office at the Hanover Square Rooms for the purpose of carrying on a lottery "under the name, device, and pretence of a distribution of Twelfth cakes." He had brought a similar distribution to a successful conclusion in 1851, but that was the exceptional year of the Great Exhibition, and he was not interfered with; but this was for L10,000 worth of cakes to be drawn for on ten successive days, beginning 26th December--tickets one shilling each. This was an undoubted lottery on a grand scale. The case was completely proved against Dethier, but he was not punished, as he abandoned his scheme, putting up with the loss.