alth of the 'Thirteen Club.'

"It may be that some bright Thirteenth
They may ask me to Dinner again;
It may be I then shall be able
To speak without perfect pain.
It may be my unstrung larynx
May speak once again _with words_:
For the present, excuse me--along of
My poor Lost (Vocal) Chords!!!"

I was relieved and amused to find one present even a little more
embarrassed than myself. He was a rotund, happy-looking man of the
world, and he had to sit isolated during part of the dinner, as his
guests were afraid to attend the uncanny banquet. However, the
Secretary, being a man of resource, ordered two of the cross-eyed
attendants to fill the vacant places. I shall never forget the face of
the poor man sandwiched between them. During the course of the dinner
the black-edged business card of an "Undertaker and Funeral Furnisher,"
of Theobald's Road, Bloomsbury, was brought to me. Under the impression
that he had supplied the coffin-shaped salt-cellars, and wished to be
paid for them, I sent to enquire his business, whereupon the undertaker
sent me in the following telegram he had just received from Cambridge:

"Call upon Harry Furniss this evening Holborn Restaurant Thirteen
Club Dinner for orders _re_ funeral arrangements."

[Illustration: COFFINS, SIR!]

The receiver of the telegram, I learnt from his card, had been in
business fifty-four years, but evidently this was the first time he had
been the victim of this Theodore Hookish joke. I called the funeral
furnisher in. Unobserved by the green-tied guests and the cross-eyed
waiters, he walked through the banqueting hall, and as soon as he
arrived at the chair, black-gloved, hat in hand, with the ominous foot
rule projecting from the pocket of his funereal overcoat, I stood up and
introduced him to the company, read the telegram, and invited him to go
round the tables and take the orders. Whether it was that the man of
coffins met the gaze of any particularly cross-eyed waiter, or was
overcome by the laughter called forth by my solemn request--an outbreak
foreign to the ears of a gentleman of his calling--I know not, but he
promptly vanished. Later in the evening a request came from him for a
present of one of the coffin-shaped salt-cellars, and no doubt the one I
sent him will adorn his window for another fifty-four years, to the
delight of the Cambridge undergraduates whose little joke was so
successful.

[Illustration: THE CHAIRMAN