to tie a rope round your neck and slip out of the world. What use
are they? Oh, they're terrible useful. You see it doesna do for a
man in London to eat his dinner in his lodgings. Other men shake
their heads at him. He maun away to his club if he is to be
respected. Does he get good dinners at the club? Oh, they cow!
You get no common beef at clubs; there is a manzy of different
things all sauced up to be unlike themsels. Even the potatoes
daurna look like potatoes. If the food in a club looks like what
it is, the members run about, flinging up their hands and crying,
"Woe is me!" Then this is another thing, you get your letters sent
to the club instead of to your lodgings. You see you would get
them sooner at your lodgings, and you may have to trudge weary
miles to the club for them, but that's a great advantage, and cheap
at thirty pounds, is it no'? I wonder they can do it at the
price.'

My wisest policy was to remain downstairs when these withering
blasts were blowing, but probably I went up in self-defence.

'I never saw you so pugnacious before, mother.'

'Oh,' she would reply promptly, 'you canna expect me to be sharp in
the uptake when I am no' a member of a club.'

'But the difficulty is in becoming a member. They are very
particular about whom they elect, and I daresay I shall not get
in.'

'Well, I'm but a poor crittur (not being member of a club), but I
think I can tell you to make your mind easy on that head. You'll