g way the most frankly emotional.

He said that the Club was not now a club in the strict sense. It
was two things preeminently and everlastingly--a memory and an
influence. He spoke with a singular sort of subdued vividness of the
influence the Club had had on him in boyhood. He then turned to the
history of the Club. And here, my dearest lady, I am pained to have
to report that he launched suddenly and dramatically into a most
extraordinary, and apparently quite sincere eulogium upon myself and
the influence I had on my schoolfellows. I will not repeat his
words--I did not believe them, but they took me by surprise and shook
me somewhat. Mr. B. N. Langdon-Davies, I may remark, and yourself,
are the only persons who have ever employed the word "genius" in
connection with me. I trust it will not occur again.

I replied. My speech was a medley, but it appeared very successful.
I discussed largely the absence of any successor to the J.D.C. I
described how I watched the boys leaving school today--a solitary
figure, clad in the latest fashion, moodily pacing the Hammersmith
Road--and asked myself "where among these is the girlish gush of a
Bentley--the passionate volubility of a Vernede, the half-ethereal
shyness of a Fordham?!!" I admitted that we had had misfortunes, one
of us had a serious illness, another had had a very good story in the
Strand Magazine: but I thought that a debating club of 12 members
that had given three presidents to the University Unions, had not
done badly. The rest was sentimental. Then began a most extraordinary
game of battledore and shuttlecock. Vernede proposed the Secretary,
Mr. Oldershaw. Mr. Oldershaw, instead of replying properly, proposed
Mr. Bentley and the absent members. Waldo responded for these or
rather instead of responding proposed Mr. Maurice Solomon. Mr.
Maurice Solomon instead of responding proposed Mr. Salter. The latter
was the only one who had not spoken and on rising he explained his
reasons for refusing. He had not been in the same room with Mr.
Cholmeley, he said, since he had sat five years ago in the Lower
Fourth and Mr. Cholmeley had told him that he talked too much. He had
no desire on his first reappearance to create in Mr. Cholmeley's mind
the idea that he had been at it ever since.

After this we passed on to singing and nearly brought down the roof
of Pino