suggestion of the governors that you would be welcome. A charter member
pays dues, but not always an initiation fee; an honorary member pays
neither dues nor initiation, he is really a permanent guest of the club. A
life member is one who pays his dues for twenty years or so in a lump sum,
and is exempted from dues even if he lives to be a hundred. Few clubs
have honorary members and none have more than half a dozen, so that this
type of membership may as well be disregarded.

The ordinary members of a club are either resident, meaning that they live
within fifty miles of the club; or non-resident, living beyond that
distance and paying less dues but having the same privileges.

In certain of the London clubs, one or two New York ones, and the leading
club in several other cities, it is not unusual for a boy's name to be put
up for membership as soon as he is born. If his name comes up while he is
a minor, it is laid aside until after his twenty-first birthday and then
put at the head of the list of applicants and voted upon at the next
meeting of the governors.

In all clubs in which membership is limited and much sought after, the
waiting list is sure to be long and a name takes anywhere from five to
more than ten years to come up.

=HOW A NAME IS "PUT UP"=

Since a gentleman is scarcely likely to want to join a club in which the
members are not his friends, he tells a member of his family, or an
intimate friend, that he would like to join the Nearby Club, and adds, "Do
you mind putting me up? I will ask Dick to second me." The friend says,
"I'll be very glad to," and Dick says the same. It is still more likely
that the suggestion to join comes from a friend, who says one day, "Why
don't you join the Nearby Club? It would be very convenient for you." The
other says, "I think I should like to," and the first replies, "Let me put
you up, and Dick will be only too glad to second you."

It must be remembered that a gentleman has no right to ask any one who is
not really one of his best friends to propose or second him. It is an
awkward thing to refuse in the first place, and in the second it involves
considerable effort, and on occasion a great deal of annoyance and
trouble.

For example let us suppose that Jim Smartlington asks Donald Lovejoy to
propose him and Clubwin Doe to second him. His name is written in the book
kept for the purpose and signed by both proposer and seconder:

Smartlington, James