ase 289

MRS. THROUGHBY DAYLIGHT'S FANCY DRESS JAM.

A complicated case--Mr. Spout's offer--Dropper bewildered--Spout expatiates
upon the genius of Brown--The Turk and Choctaw--The fancy dress jam--The
Elephants at the fancy dress jam--The result 304

CONCLUSION.

The club in danger--Resolutions--The records of the club--Their
compilation--The last of the Elephant Club 318

HISTORY AND RECORDS.

HOW THEY MET.

[Enter with a Flourish of Trumpets.]

SHAKESPEARE.

[Illustration]

THERE were _no_ two horses to be seen winding along the base of a
precipitous hill; and there were _no_ dark-looking riders on those
horses which were not to be seen; and it _wasn't_ at the close of a
dusky autumn evening; and the setting sun _didn't_ gild, with his
departing rays, the steep summit of the mountain tops; and the gloomy
cry of the owl was _not_ to be heard from the depths of a neighboring
forest--first, because there _wasn't_ any neighboring forest, and,
second, because the owl was in better business, having, some hours
before, gone to bed, it now being broad daylight. The mountain tops, the
lofty summits, the inaccessible precipices, the precipitous descents,
the descending inaccessibilities, and the usual quantity of
insurmountable landscape, which forms the stereotyped opening to popular
romances, is here omitted by particular request.

The time and place to which the unfortunate reader's attention is
particularly called, are four o'clock of a melting afternoon in August,
and a labyrinth of bricks and mortar, yclept Gotham. The majority of the
inhabitants of the aforesaid place, at the identical time herein
referred to, were perspiring; others were sweltering; still others were
melting down into their boots, and the remainder were dying from
sun-stroke.

At this time, a young gentleman seated himself behind the front window
of the reading and smoking-room of the Shanghae Hotel, in Broadway. The
chair he occupied was capacious, and had been contrived originally, by
ingenious mechanics, for the purpose of inducing laziness. The gentleman
had taken possession of this article of furniture for the double purpose
of resting himself from the fatigues of a month's inactivity, and also
securing a position where he could see the ladies pass and repass, in
hopes that the sight might dispel the dull monotony