Besides these fashionable beaus, there were those who, in the language of the day, were called bully-beaus,—fellows figuring in Ramillies’ perukes, laced hats, black cockades, and scarlet suits; and who maintained a reputation for courage, by empty swagger and violent assaults on the peaceable members of society. These gallants, instead of confining their follies and their fopperies within the compass of the metropolis, very often made country excursions to bamboozle fox-hunting squires, and to make love to their unsophisticated daughters. The fair rustics were dazzled by the surpassing finery of such manners, dress, and speech; while young clod-poll squires were set agog to emulate the captivating visitor. In this way many a youth, whose gayest party had been a country wake, was translated into a London fop. As soon as his father had broken his neck over a six-barred gate, or fairly drunk himself into his coffin, the rustic aspirant turned his back on the old mansion of his progenitors, and hied to London, dressed in his best leathern breeches tied at the knee with red taffeta, his new blue jacket, and his fashionable greatcoat, both adorned with buttons of the orthodox size and shape. Bully-beaus and sharpers took him into training; tailors, silk-mercers, and cabinetmakers hastened to his levees; whilst prize-fighters, horse-racers, fiddlers, and dancing-masters, pimps and parasites, soon transformed a raw country bumpkin into a finished gentleman of town. Besides the fashionable and bully-beaus, already mentioned, there were the Darby-Captains, the Tash-Captains, the Cock-and-bottle Captains, and the Nickers. But of all the turbulent characters of the period, none were so distinguished as the Mohocks. These fellows, after drinking to an outrageous extent to qualify themselves for action, would rush into the streets with drawn swords, cutting, stabbing, and carbonading all the unlucky persons that happened to cross their path. Sometimes they “tipped the lion” on their victim, that is, flattened his nose and gouged out his eyes; sometimes they were “dancing-masters,” because they made people cut capers by thrusting swords into their legs; and sometimes they were “tumblers,” because they would place a woman topsy-turvy upon her head, or tumble her into an empty barrel, and send it rolling down Snow Hill. Rightly were they designated “Mohocks,” for they out-did the atrocities of the tribe of Indian savages whose name they used.