In our last chapter we mentioned the names of some of the wits and illustrious in jest of whom Liverpool could boast a few years since. We now descend the scale, to speak of a class whom we would mildly call “the practical jokers.” The _Spectator_ makes glorious old Sir Roger de Coverley horribly afraid of the club of Mohocks who, many years since, pushed their horse-play in the metropolis into positive ruffianism, and perpetrated the most savage outrages under the name of fun and frolic. But the sports of the Liverpool mischief-mongers at the commencement of the present century were of a much more harmless and innocent character. One young gentleman, who subsequently flourished as a grave old stager amongst us, had a passion for collecting, in a kind of museum, or “curiosity shop,” all the signs and signboards which struck his fancy; and it was said that he had a large muster of black boys, carried off from the different tobacconists’ shops in the town. And sometimes he varied the amusement in the following fashion:—In Pool-lane, now modernised into South Castle-street, was a famous ship-instrument maker’s shop, in the front of which was elevated a wooden figure of a midshipman in full costume, at which we have often gazed with fond delight in ancient days, and which we are now convinced must have been the original of the one which Dickens, in Dombey, makes Captain Cuttle contemplate with so much pride and pleasure. Somewhere in the same locality was one of the tobacconists’ shops of which we have spoken, with the then usual sign of a black boy over the door. Time after time would our funny and facetious friend substitute these signs one for the other, so that, when morning broke, the midshipman would shine forth in all his glory at the door of the snuff and tobacco store, while the black boy would be grinning in front of the ship-instrument maker’s premises. At last the joke wore itself out. The perpetrator of it never was discovered. He preferred to play his “fantastic tricks” alone, and kept his own secret. But there were also associated bodies for the performance of the same kind of mad pranks. One set of them formed themselves into what they dignified with the name of “A Committee of Taste,” although they and their friends called them, over their cups, “The Minions of the Moon.” Their object seemed to be to emulate and imitate the merry doings of Falstaff and his companions. They occasionally, however, pushed their jokes somewhat too far. There was a house in Daulby-street, then a sort of _rus in urbe_, or, rather, country altogether. It had a garden in front, and was ornamented with a verandah. This it appears did not please these fastidious gentlemen, and the owner was served with a notice, signed by “the Chairman of the Committee of Taste,” directing him to alter or remove it by a certain day. To this command he paid no attention. Well, the day arrived;