cold shiverings which quite took the power of work out of him, and that he had it in his mind to try a new remedy, which he laughingly described. He was very cheerful and looked very bright."

These three clubs - the Reform, the Garrick, and the Athenæum were the ones he loved best. There were other resorts that welcomed him the Cock, in Fleet Street, and the London Tavern, within whose hospitable oak-panelled walls he and his friends and admirers enjoyed a memorable dinner.

"Covers were laid for sixty" (I still quote from Mr. Taylor's book), "and sixty and no more sat down precisely at the minute named to do honour to the great novelist. Sixty very hearty shakes of the hand did Thackeray receive from sixty friends on that occasion; and hearty cheers from sixty vociferous and friendly tongues followed the chairman's, Mr. Charles Dickens, proposal of his health, and of wishes for his speedy and successful return among us. Dickens the best after-dinner speaker now alive - was never happier. He spoke as if he was fully conscious that it was a great occasion, and that the absence of even one reporter was a matter of congratulation, affording ampler room to unbend. The table was in the shape of a horseshoe having two vice-chairmen; and this circumstance was wrought up and played with by Dickens in the true Sam Weller and Charles Dickens manner. Thackeray, who is far from what is called a good speaker, outdid himself. There was his usual hesitation; but this hesitation becomes his manner of speaking and his matter, and is never unpleasant to his hearers,

though it is, we are assured, most irksome to himself. This speech was full of pathos, and humour, and oddity, with bits of prepared parts imperfectly recollected, but most happily made good by the felicities of the passing moment. It was a speech to remember for its earnestness of purpose and its undoubted originality. Then the chairman quitted, and many, near and at a distance, quitted with him. Thackeray was on the move with the chairman, when, inspired by the moment, Jerrold took the chair, and Thackeray remained. Who is to chronicle what now passed? what passages of wit what neat and pleasant sarcastic speeches in proposing healths — what varied and pleasant, ay, and at times, sarcastic acknowledgments? Up to the time when Dickens left, a good reporter might have given all, and with ease, to future ages; but there could be no reporting what followed. There were words too nimble and too full of flame for a dozen Gurneys, all ears, to catch and preserve. Few will forget that night. There was an 'air of wit' about the room for three days after."

It was the Reform Club which he had gladdened by his presence the week of his death that now loomed up before me out of the fog and smoke - a great, square, sullen mass of granite divided from the Carleton Club by a narrow alley as is seen in my sketch.

It looks forbidding enough outside, frowning at you from under its heavy browed windows —an aloof, stately, cold and unwelcome sort of place. Inside, it may be more cheerful and more friendly; a London coal fire, an English easy chair and there are none better, or more comfortable and a low reading lamp, may take some of the chill off.

Then again, one may be spoken to now and then by some other lost soul, hungry for companionship, but I doubt it. I am not going to scold. It is racial, perhaps, and the island is so small that it is dangerous to rub elbows against everybody, but I cannot, all the same, quite smother my feelings. My own clubs are scattered from Boston to Washington, with a few out West, and often as I prowl about London alone, and look up into the faces of the windows of these mausoleums, wondering what sort of men are behind them, I cannot help recalling the cozy corners of mine at home, into which are welcomed hundreds of strangers from all over the globe, and with a heartiness and sincerity that sets them to thinking. Some of them pinch themselves in amazement, wondering whether they are really awake. Yes, it must be racial; or, perhaps, the chill of countless fogs has gotten into their bones.

And with this came the thought: What a godsend Mr. Thackeray must have been to many within its walls, and how the warmth of his geniality must have helped to thaw out that peculiar chilly reserve which in many really fine, hearty, and ready-to-be-kind Englishmen, is due neither to rudeness nor to class distinction, but simply, strange as it may appear, to innate shyness.

The blast of a siren clearing the way for a taxi which pulled up on the right at the Carlton, unloading an important personage whom Evins told me was a member of Parliament, awoke me from my reverie. The blast was intended for me, my being anchored in the middle of the unloading space reserved for the elect being nothing short of an outrage. The upholstered porter-mostly in red - was evidently of