scale. The same results can be produced for two persons as for 1400, almost under the most contracted conditions of space. It is merely a question of parading a corporal’s guard instead of a regiment.
The smoking-room may be considered the sanctum sanctorum of a London club. Here it is that according to feminine opinion the foulest orgies take place! Here are the head-quarters of the great Anti-Matrimonial Conspiracy! Ladies, credite experto, this is an entire delusion! In that exceedingly simple room, with its oil-clothed floor, or possibly with its well-scrubbed boards, and leather-covered sofas, you see an apartment where a certain number of gentlemen meet after dinner to smoke their cigars, and take their coffee, and where they chat over the occurrences of the day, much in the same way that they would do in your presence. The conversation is for the most part carried on amongst knots of friends who have either dined together, or who are personally known to each other. Every London Club has of course its special “Smoking-Room Bores,” who are the greatest and most preposterous bores in the club. There is the Bore who will let nobody talk but himself; the Awful Bore, who uses the smoking-room to the annoyance of everybody present as a practising-room for the House of Commons; the Argumentative Bore; the Dictatorial Bore; the Prosy Bore; and many others of similar descriptions; but who, after all, just do in the smoking-room of a club what they would do in general society. General society should, I think, be duly grateful to the London Clubs for absorbing even for a time so many of these social nuisances.
As Mrs. J. B. and the young ladies are conducted into this room, two gentlemen, even at that early hour, were partaking of the fragrant weed within its mysterious precincts—how odd! They were friends of Mr. Tickler’s, and were presented by that gentleman to the two ladies with all due solemnity. Mr. Addison Capes, the junior partner in a well-established solicitor’s firm in Lothbury; the other, a fervid young Irish member, full of ardour and lofty aspirations. Mrs. J. B. was perfectly overpowered when Mr. Timothy O’Garry, the Honourable Member for Kilbadger, was presented to her; and although her vehement denunciations against smoking and smokers had obtained for her great notoriety amongst her own circle, within five minutes she was converted into a proselyte of the weed by that energetic Irish statesman. The happiness of a home had been denied to him;—how was he to recruit his wearied brain when wasted by the political discussions of the previous night, otherwise than by seeking relief from the fragrant weed? Had Mrs. John Baker ever made trial of the remedy herself when her susceptibilities had been shocked by contact with the world, and the world’s worldliness? Would she permit him to offer her a cigar—a Queen’s?—and the young ladies? Ah! if Mrs. Baker did but know the amount of suffering endured by men in the gloomy dens—such as the one which they now graced by their presence—she would never blame them for attempting at least to snatch from fate the boon of momentary forgetfulness. There was nothing after all in the practice to which any lady should object if only precaution was taken not to annoy her by smoking in her sacred presence, nor to offend her delicate organ of smell by the next day’s remains of the fragrant feast. Yes, London Clubs had their advantages, just like Harbours of Refuge, or Hospitals, but well did the members know that there was a Paradise—a Better Land—from which they were excluded. Ah! if amiable families would but invite him, Mr. O’Garry, to tea, and to sun himself in the fair presence of beings whom he would forbear more particularly to name!
The immediate results of this conversation were—
1st. That Messrs. Timothy O’Garry and Mr. Addison Capes were invited to accompany Mr. Horace Tickler to Number Blank, Baker Street, on a day named.
2ndly. That Mrs. J. Baker confessed on the spot that her opinions, with regard to smoking, had undergone considerable modifications.
The intermediate results were—
3rdly. That Mr. O’Garry confessed to Mr. Capes very shortly after, that his life hitherto had been conducted on mistaken principles, and that the hour had now arrived when he longed for sympathy, adding: “Ah! to think as I led her from the church-door that she was mine—mine—for life by George!” Whereupon Mr. Capes laughed, and jeered his friend most consumedly.
4thly. That the next evening two Hansom cabs drove up to the door of Number Blank, Baker Street, and out of the one stepped Mr. O’Garry with a bouquet, and out of the other Mr. Capes with another bouquet, and that Mr. O’G. offered his bouquet to Miss Anna Maria Baker; and Mr. Addison Capes his bouquet to Miss Lucy Baker.
5thly. That Mrs. John Baker, in the course of a conversation with Mr. John Baker, which occurred in the seclusion of the nuptial couch, vehemently rebuked that gentleman for being so far behind the age as never to have made a fair trial of a cigar. Mr. O’Garry had assured her that at the London Clubs the cigar had driven out the bottle, and she (Mrs. J. B.) would no longer tolerate the inebriety of Mr. John Baker and his associates.
The remote results were:
6thly. That Mr. Addison Capes, who was in a thriving way of business, readily obtained the hand of Miss Lucy Baker;—that Mr. Timothy O’Garry made similar proposals with reference to Miss Anna Maria; but as, upon inquiry, it proved that his worldly possessions were of a negative kind, consisting, for the most part, of liabilities incurred in the form of renewed bills, his proposals were rejected;—that poor little Anna Maria took it so dreadfully to heart that some time after Mr. O’Garry was sent for, lectured, blessed, and his liabilities placed in Mr. A. Capes’s hands with a view to his extrication;—that Mr. A. Capes did prevail upon the Jews to accept settlement for 25 per cent, on the amount of the nominal liabilities, and that then the Jewish gentlemen were over-paid;—that Anna Maria Baker became Mrs.