r surprise was to greet them.
They entered a rear parlor on the first floor, where an excellent
dinner was waiting them, got up at the expense of Mr. John Spout,
Higholdboy of the Elephant Club.

[Illustration]

A good dinner is an excellent ending for any thing--even a chapter.

THE ELEPHANTINE DEN.

Off with his head so much.--SHAKSPEARE.

[Illustration]

THE Club now being organized, and the eager members anxious to begin at
once their expeditions in search of the pachydermatous animal whose
peculiar habits, in a state of metropolitan domesticity, were to be
henceforth their care and study, it became necessary to fix upon some
convenient place of rendezvous, at which they might convene to prepare
for their excursions, and where they might reassemble, should any
desperate chance divide their strength, and separate their numbers.
After some discussion as to the most convenient locality, a room in
Broadway was selected, as being less likely to attract attention if
lighted up and showing signs of occupancy at an unseasonable hour; and
as being easily accessible in case a member was compelled to evade the
pursuit of an avenging M.P.; or should he be taken suddenly drunk, and
stand in need of brotherly assistance. It was not on the first floor,
lest it should be mistaken for a tavern; nor on the second, lest the
uninvited public should stray up stairs, thinking it to be a billiard
saloon; neither was it in the attic, as the gas didn't run so high; but
on the third floor of an imposing building, a room was discovered,
appropriate in dimensions, convenient in locality, and the rent of which
was not so high but that its altitude was easily admeasured by a weekly
V. It is not our present intention to designate the identical numeral
which, in the directory, would point out the precise latitude of this
mysterious apartment to the anxious inquirer. Suffice it to say that it
was in the immediate vicinity of the public office of the man whose name
is synonymous with that of the adolescent offspring of the bird whose
unmelodious note once saved the imperial city from its fierce invaders,
and that the occupation of this man of the ornithological appellation is
to provide food and drink for hungry humanity. The relative situations
of the club-room and this restaurant were such, that a plummet, dropped
from the chair of the Higholdboy, would, if unimpeded by interposing
floors, fall directly upon the private bottle of th