lence;
"I should like to see what sort of a bird he is." Puff, puff, went
the English cigar, and then said the English voice, trying hard to
control itself: "If you"--puff--"look hard"--puff, puff--"in this
direction, you"--puff, puff--"can tell in a minute." "You, you!"
faltered the American, getting up, "why, I thought you were the
landlord!" "Well, so I am," said the Duke, "though I don't perform the
duties." "I stay here," he added, with a twinkle in his eye, "to be
looked at."

Among the chief strongholds of the old ideas and prejudices were some
of the clubs. At the Athenaeum the only smoking-room used to be a
combined billiard-and smoking-room in the basement. It was but a few
years ago that an attic story was added to the building, and smokers
can now reach more comfortable quarters by means of a lift put in when
the alterations were made in 1900. This new smoking-room is a very
handsome, largely book-lined apartment. At the end of the room is a
beautiful marble mantelpiece of late eighteenth century Italian work.
At White's even cigars had not been allowed at all until 1845; and
when, in 1866, some of the younger members wished to be allowed to
smoke in the drawing-room, there was much perturbation, the older
members bitterly opposing the proposal. "A general meeting was held to
decide the question," says Mr. Ralph Nevill, in his "London Clubs,"
"when a number of old gentlemen who had not been seen in the club for
years made their appearance, stoutly determined to resist the proposed
desecration. 'Where do all these old fossils come from?' inquired a
member. 'From Kensal Green,' was Mr. Alfred Montgomery's reply. 'Their
hearses, I understand, are waiting to take them back there.'" The
motion for the extension of the facilities for smoking was defeated
by a majority of twenty-three votes, and as an indirect result the
Marlborough Club was founded. The late King Edward, at that time
Prince of Wales, is said to have sympathized strongly with the
defeated minority at White's, and to have interested himself in the
foundation of the Marlborough; where, "for the first time in the
history of West End Clubland, smoking, except in the dining-room, was
everywhere allowed." By "smoking" is no doubt here meant everything
but pipes, which were not considered gentlemanly even at the Garrick
Club at the beginning of the present century. The late Duc d'Aumale
was a social pioneer in pipe-smoking. His caricature in "Vanity Fair