keep him and his wife and
his child in bread, and to supply himself with whisky, by writing
sensation stories for the "penny dreadfuls." We all suspected that he
would not have received half so much for his articles had they been
paid for on their merits or at the standard price for hack writing. But
Charley Vanderhuyn had something to do with it. He sent Henry Vail--he
always sent Henry Vail on his missions of mercy--to find out where
Perdue sold his articles, and I have no doubt the price of each article
was doubled, at Vanderhuyn's expense.

And that mention of Henry Vail reminds me that I can not tell this
story rightly unless I let you know who he was. A distant relation of
Charley's, I believe. He was a studious fellow from the country, and
quite awkward in company. The contrast between him and Charley was
marked. Vanderhuyn was absolutely _au fait_ in all the usages of
society; he knew by instinct how a thing ought to be done, and his
example was law. He had a genius for it, everybody said. Vail was
afraid of his shadow; did not know just what was proper to do in any
new circumstances. His manners hung about him loosely; Vanderhuyn's
were part of himself. When Vail came to the Hasheesh Club for the first
time it was on the occasion of Charley's majority dinner. Vail
consulted Vanderhuyn about his costume, and was told that he must wear
evening dress; and, never having seen anything but provincial society,
he went with perfect assurance to a tailor's and ordered a new frock
coat and a white vest. When he saw that the other gentlemen present
wore dress coats, and that most of them had black vests, he was in some
consternation. He even debated whether he should not go out and hire a
dress coat for the evening. He drew Charley aside, and asked him why he
did not tell him that those sparrow-tail things had come into fashion
again!

But he never took kindly to the club life; he soon saw that however
harmless it might be to some men, it was destruction to others. After
attending a few times, Henry Vail, who was something of a Puritan and
much of a philanthropist, declared his opposition to what he called an
English dissipation.

Henry Vail was a scholarly fellow, of real genius, and had studied for
the ministry; but he had original notions, and about the time he was to
have taken deacon's orders in the Episcopal Church he drew back. He
said that orders would do for some men, but he did not intend to build
a wall bet