.
"Speaking members" were charged ten-and-sixpence per annum, which must
have worked out at an extremely moderate rate per word; and "gentlemen
whose subscriptions were more than three months in arrear," became, by
Rule seven, powerless for good or evil. We called ourselves "The Stormy
Petrels," and, under the sympathetic shadow of those wings, I laboured
two seasons towards the reformation of the human race; until, indeed,
our treasurer, an earnest young man, and a tireless foe of all that was
conventional, departed for the East, leaving behind him a balance sheet,
showing that the club owed forty-two pounds fifteen and fourpence, and
that the subscriptions for the current year, amounting to a little over
thirty-eight pounds, had been "carried forward," but as to where, the
report afforded no indication. Whereupon our landlord, a man utterly
without ideals, seized our furniture, offering to sell it back to us
for fifteen pounds. We pointed out to him that this was an extravagant
price, and tendered him five.

The negotiations terminated with ungentlemanly language on his part, and
"The Stormy Petrels" scattered, never to be foregathered together again
above the troubled waters of humanity. Now-a-days, listening to the
feeble plans of modern reformers, I cannot help but smile, remembering
what was done in Chequers Street, St. Luke's, in an age when Mrs. Grundy
still gave the law to literature, while yet the British matron was the
guide to British art. I am informed that there is abroad the question of
abolishing the House of Lords! Why, "The Stormy Petrels" abolished the
aristocracy and the Crown in one evening, and then only adjourned
for the purpose of appointing a committee to draw up and have ready a
Republican Constitution by the following Friday evening. They talk
of Empire lounges! We closed the doors of every music-hall in London
eighteen years ago by twenty-nine votes to seventeen. They had a patient
hearing, and were ably defended; but we found that the tendency of such
amusements was anti-progressive, and against the best interests of an
intellectually advancing democracy. I met the mover of the condemnatory
resolution at the old "Pav" the following evening, and we continued
the discussion over a bottle of Bass. He strengthened his argument by
persuading me to sit out the whole of the three songs sung by the "Lion
Comique"; but I subsequently retorted successfully, by bringing under
his notice the dancing of