men's clubs have been forced to follow the lead of the
foremost of them and to realize that a club in which members merely sit
about and look out of the window is a pretty dull place to the type of
younger members they most want to attract, and that the combination of the
comfort and smartness of a perfectly run private house with every
equipment for athletics, is becoming the ideal in club-life and
club-building to-day.

=GOOD MANNERS IN CLUBS=

Good manners in clubs are the same as good manners elsewhere--only a
little more so. A club is for the pleasure and convenience of many; it is
never intended as a stage-setting for a "star" or "clown" or "monologist."
There is no place where a person has greater need of restraint and
consideration for the reserves of others than in a club. In every club
there is a reading-room or library where conversation is not allowed;
there are books and easy chairs and good light for reading both by day and
night; and it is one of the unbreakable rules not to speak to anybody who
is reading--or writing.

When two people are sitting by themselves and talking, another should on
no account join them unless he is an intimate friend of both. To be a mere
acquaintance, or, still less, to have been introduced to one of them,
gives no privilege whatever.

The fact of being a club member does not (except in a certain few
especially informal clubs) grant any one the right to speak to strangers.
If a new member happens to find no one in the club whom he knows, he goes
about his own affairs. He either sits down and reads or writes, or "looks
out of the window," or plays solitaire, or occupies himself as he would if
he were alone in a hotel.

It is courteous of a governor or habitual member, on noticing a new member
or a visitor, especially one who seems to be rather at a loss--to go up
and speak to him, but the latter must on no account be the one to speak
first. Certain New York and Boston clubs, as well as those of London, have
earned a reputation for snobbishness because the members never speak to
those they do not know. Through no intent to be disagreeable, but just
because it is not customary, New York people do not speak to those they do
not know, and it does not occur to them that strangers feel slighted until
they themselves are given the same medicine in London; or going elsewhere
in America, they appreciate the courtesy and kindness of the South and
West.

The fundamental rule for