_Countryman._ Who nailed _my_ coat-tail? Constable! _12th Boy._ That’s the boy that’s got _the hammer_! _2d Boy._ What, _me?_ why _that’s_ the boy--_there_; and there’s _another_ boy hammering! and there’s a _man_ with a hammer! _1st Boy._ Who pinned that _woman_ to the gentleman? Why there’s a _dozen_ pinned together. _Countryman._ Constable! constable! _2nd Boy._ Here comes the constable. _Hark_ at him! _Const._ Clear away from the doors! Let the _customers_ go in! Make way! Let the _cakes_ come out! Go back, boy! _13th Boy._ If you please, Mr. Constable, I’m going to buy a cake! _Const._ Go _forward_, then! _Man with cakes._ By your leave! by your leave. _Const._ Clear the way! _All the Boys._ Huzza! huzza! _More_ people pinned--and _plenty_ nailed up!---- To explain, to those who may be ignorant of the practice. On Twelfth-night in London, boys assemble round the inviting shops of the pastrycooks, and dexterously nail the coat-tails of spectators, who venture near enough, to the bottoms of the window frames; or pin them together strongly by their clothes. Sometimes eight or ten persons find themselves thus connected. The dexterity and force of the nail driving is so quick and sure, that a single blow seldom fails of doing the business effectually. Withdrawal of the nail without a proper instrument is out of the question; and, consequently, the person nailed must either leave part of his coat, as a cognizance of his attachment, or quit the spot with a hole in it. At every nailing and pinning shouts of laughter arise from the perpetrators and the spectators. Yet it often happens to one who turns and smiles at the duress of another, that he also finds himself nailed. Efforts at extrication increase mirth, nor is the presence of a constable, who is usually employed to attend and preserve free “ingress, egress, and regress,” sufficiently awful to deter the offenders. Scarcely a shop in London that offers a halfpenny plain bun to the purchase of a hungry boy, is without Twelfth-cakes and finery in the windows on Twelfth-day, The gingerbread-bakers--there are not many, compared with their number when the writer was a consumer of their manufactured _goods_,--even the reduced gingerbread-bakers periwig a few plum-buns with sugar-frost to-day, and coaxingly interpolate them among their new made sixes, bath-cakes, parliament, and ladies’ fingers. Their staple-ware has leaves of untarnished dutch-gilt stuck on; their upright cylinder-shaped show-glasses, containing peppermint-drops, elecampane, sugar-sticks, hard-bake, brandy-balls, and bulls’-eyes, are carefully polished; their lolly-pops are fresh encased, and look as white as the stems of tobacco-pipes; and their candlesticks are ornamented with fillets and bosses of writing paper; or, if the candles rise from the bottom of inverted glass cones, they shine more sparkling for the thorough cleaning of their receivers in the morning.