be said that the troubles and discussions of the first months of the
Club's existence centred practically round the question of order, the
first of the great difficulties of this most difficult enterprise.
How boys who could scarcely be got to behave quietly under the
strictest schoolmasters could ever be brought to obey the rebuke of
their equal and schoolfellow: how a heterogeneous pack of average
schoolboys could organise themselves into a self-governing republic,
these were problems of real and stupendous difficulty. The fines of a
penny and of twopence, which were instituted at the first meeting,
were found hopelessly incompetent to cope with the bursts of
oblivious hilarity. Fordham in particular, whose constant breaches of
order threatened to exhaust even the extensive treasury of that
spoilt and opulent young gentleman, soon left calculation far behind,
nor can the story be better or more brightly told than by himself.
"Mr. F.," he wrote, "at one time, after considerable calculation
found that he was in debt to the extent of some 10 or 11 shillings;
but as he felt that by refusing to pay the sum he would be striking a
blow for the liberty of the subject, he manfully held out against
what he considered an unjust punishment for such diminutive
frivolities as he had indulged in." . . . At times incidents of a
disturbing and playful nature have roused the wrath of the Chairman
and Secretary to a pitch awful to behold. At one time Mr. H. (a
member who soon resigned) spent a considerable part of a meeting
under the table, till he found himself used as a public footstool and
a doormat combined. At another as Mr. Bentley was departing from the
scene of chaos a penny bun of the sticky order caressingly stung his
honoured cheek, sped upon its errand of mercy by the unerring aim of
Mr. F.**

[* He was, in fact, sixteen when the J.D.C. began.]

[** MS. _History of the J.D.C_.]

Mr. Fordham well remembers how G.K. one day took him
aside at the Oldershaws' house and told him that he really must
be less exuberant. This historic occasion was always alluded
to later as "the day on which the Chairman spoke seriously to
Mr. F."

After various resignations order was restored, and a little later two
of the chief recalcitrants asked to be received back into the Club.
"I feel so lonely without it," one of them had remarked; and G.K.
comments, "This