I
simply reiterate my opinion. Why then am I to-day in a seething state
of exception to my rule? Here is the cause:

[Illustration]

After I had done with my luncheon, and had puffed a friendly cigar,
I proceeded to that room in the Club which is specially dedicated to
literature and silence. What a feast of multitudinous periodicals is
there spread out, how brightly the variegated array of books from
the circulating library attracts the leisurely, how dignified and
awe-inspiring are the far-stretching ranks of accumulated volumes upon
the shelves. And the carpet, how soft, and the chairs how comfortably
easy. Into one of these chairs I sank with a religious novel (I merely
mention the fact, whether for praise or blame I care not), and began
to think deeply about various life-problems that have much distressed
me. Why must men wear themselves out prematurely with labour? Why
must we suffer? And why, granting the necessity for pain, should I
occasionally sink under a toothache, while HARRISON, a blatant fellow
with a red face and a loud voice, continues in a condition of robust
and oppressive health? These speculations were not so painful and
disturbing as might be supposed. Indeed, they had a soothing effect.
From the rhythmical breathing and the closed eyes of two other
occupants of arm-chairs, I judged that they were similarly occupied
in philosophic reflection. I was just composing myself to a bout of
specially hard thinking, when, lo, the door opened, and in stepped Dr.
FUSSELL!

Everybody, I take it, knows Dr. FUSSELL. He is a member of countless
learned Societies. Over many of them he presides, to some he acts
as secretary. He reads papers on abstruse questions connected with
sanitation, he dashes with a kind of wild war-whoop into impassioned
newspaper controversies on the component elements of a dust particle,
or the civilisation of the Syro-Phoenicians. He is acute, dialectical,
scornful and furious. He denounces those who oppose him as the meanest
of mankind, he extols his supporters as the most illustrious and
reasonable of all who have benefited the human race. In the Club he
is always engaged in some investigation which keeps him continuously
skipping from bookshelf to bookshelf, climbing up ladders to reach
the highest shelves, rushing up and down-stairs with sheaves of paper
bulging in his coat-pockets, or stowed under his arms. He lays his
top-hat on the table, and makes it a receptacle for reams of