ist its aggressors for so long a time that in
the end there would be an intervention from other powers. Perhaps from
this site no 'residential' affair was destined to scrape the sky?
Perhaps that saint to whom the club had dedicated itself would
reappear, at length, glorious equestrian, to slay the dragons who had
infested and desecrated his premises? I wondered whether he would then
restore the ruins, reinstating the club, and setting it for ever on a
sound commercial basis, or would leave them just as they were, a fixed
signal to sensibility.

But, when first I saw the poor facade being pick-axed, I did not 'give'
it more than a fortnight. I had no feeling but of hopeless awe and
pity. The workmen on the coping seemed to me ministers of inexorable
Olympus, executing an Olympian decree. And the building seemed to me a
live victim, a scapegoat suffering sullenly for sins it had not
committed. To me it seemed to be flinching under every rhythmic blow of
those well-wielded weapons, praying for the hour when sunset should
bring it surcease from that daily ordeal. I caught myself nodding to
it--a nod of sympathy, of hortation to endurance. Immediately, I was
ashamed of my lapse into anthropomorphism. I told myself that my pity
ought to be kept for the real men who had been frequenters of the
building, who now were waifs. I reviewed the gaping, glassless windows
through which they had been wont to watch the human comedy. There they
had stood, puffing their smoke and cracking their jests, and tearing
women's reputations to shreds.

Not that I, personally, have ever heard a woman's reputation torn to
shreds in a club window. A constant reader of lady-novelists, I have
always been hoping for this excitement, but somehow it has never come
my way. I am beginning to suspect that it never will, and am inclined
to regard it as a figment. Such conversation as I have heard in clubs
has been always of a very mild, perfunctory kind. A social club (even
though it be a club with a definite social character) is a collection
of heterogeneous creatures, and its aim is perfect harmony and
good-fellowship. Thus any definite expression of opinion by any member
is regarded as dangerous. The ideal clubman is he who looks genial and
says nothing at all. Most Englishmen find little difficulty in
conforming with this ideal. They belong to a silent race. Social clubs
flourish, therefore, in England. Intelligent foreigners, seeing them,
recognise th