elf and meeting as
chance, or winter inactivity along army lines dictated--the Mosaic Club
had no habitat. Collecting in one hospitable parlor, or another--as
good fortune happened to provide better material for the delighting
"muffin-match," or the entrancing "waffle-worry," as Will Wyatt
described those festal procedures--the intimates who chanced in town
were bidden; or, hearing of it, came to the feast of waffles and the
flow of coffee--real coffee! without bids. They were ever welcome and
knew it; and they were likewise sure of something even better than
muffins, or coffee, to society-hungry men from the camps. And once
gathered, the serious business of "teaing" over, the fun of the evening
began.

The unwritten rule--indeed, the only rule--was the "forfeit essay," a
game productive of so much that was novel and brilliant, that no later
invention of peace-times has equaled it. At each meeting two hats would
be handed round, all drawing a question from the one, a word from the
other; question and word to be connected in either a song, poem, essay,
or tale for the next meeting. Then, after the drawing for forfeits,
came the results of the last lottery of brain; interspersed with music
by the best performers and singers of the city; with jest and
seriously-brilliant talk, until the wee sma' hours, indeed.

O! those nights ambrosial, if not of Ambrose's, which dashed the somber
picture of war round Richmond, with high-lights boldly put in by
master-hands! Of them were quaint George Bagby, Virginia's pet
humorist; gallant, cultured Willie Meyers; original Trav Daniel;
Washington, artist, poet and musician; Page McCarty, recklessly
brilliant in field and frolic alike; Ham Chamberlayne, quaint,
cultivated and colossal in originality; Key, Elder and other artists;
genial, jovial Jim Pegram; Harry Stanton, Kentucky's soldier poet--and
a score of others who won fame, even if some of them lost life--on far
different fields. There rare "Ran" Tucker--later famed in Congress and
law school--told inimitably the story of "The time the stars fell," or
sang the unprecedented ballad of "The Noble Skewball," in his own
unprecedented fashion!

It was at the Mosaic that Innes Randolph first sang his now famous
"Good Old Rebel" song; and there his marvelous quickness was Aaron's
rod to swallow all the rest. As example, once he drew from one hat the
words, "Daddy Longlegs;" from the other, the question, "What sort of
shoe was made on