me and which appeared in the principal local papers in
the United Kingdom, and also in the papers of America and Australia, and
added a portrait of the lady I had selected, with the following note:

"Unless the publication of this letter leads to some favourable
offers I shall send my unknown, but hymeneally disposed,
correspondent this sketch of a lady capable of looking after so
young and venturesome a man, seated at the docks waiting his
arrival, for unless he has a sketch or photograph how is he to
identify his 'love' amidst the crowd which greets the
homeward-bound steamer?"

And I have preserved a few out of the scores of letters I received, to
hand to this gentleman should I ever have the pleasure of meeting him.

Judging from this, the manager of a matrimonial agency must indeed get a
curious insight into the minds of the maids of Merry England. This
single experience has been quite enough for me.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE CONFESSIONS OF A DINER.

My First City Dinner--A Minnow against the Stream--Those Table
Plans--Chaos--The City Alderman, Past and Present--Whistler's
Lollipops--Odd Volumes--Exchanging Names--Ye Red Lyon Clubbe--The
Pointed Beards--Baltimore Oysters--The Sound Money Dinner--To Meet
General Boulanger--A Lunch at Washington--No Speeches.

THE THIRTEEN CLUB--What it was--How it was Boomed--Gruesome
Details--Squint-Eyed Waiters--Superstitious Absentees--My Reasons
for being Present--'Arry of _Punch_--The Lost "Vocal" Chords--The
Undergraduate and the Undertaker--Model Speeches--Albert Smith An
Atlantic Contradiction--The White Horse--The White Feather--Exit
13.

[Illustration]

Probably no meal varies so much in the time of its celebration as that
most important one, dinner. Some people still exist who dine at one
o'clock; some also there are who daily observe that fearsome feast
yclept "High Tea." The majority of people dine at various times ranging
between seven o'clock and half-past eight, but there is one individual
alone who dines at six. It is the City Guilder. Time was when City
princes dwelt in City palaces, and rose at five, breakfasted at seven,
lunched at twelve, dined at five and retired to rest at ten; but
nowadays these magnates are lords of the City from ten till four, and of
the West End and the suburbs for the remainder of the twenty-four hours,
and they would in the ordinary cou