to be bound by it."

Here Doctor Johnson touched the electric bell, and in an instant the
shade of a buttons appeared.

"Boy, is Adam in the club-house to-day?" asked the sage.

"I'll go and see, sir," said the boy, and he immediately departed.

"Good boy that," said Thackeray.

"Yes; but the service in this club is dreadful, considering what we might
have," said Darwin. "With Aladdin a member of this club, I don't see why
we can't have his lamp with genii galore to respond. It certainly would
be more economical."

"True; but I, for one, don't care to fool with genii," said Munchausen.
"When one member can summon a servant who is strong enough to take
another member and do him up in a bottle and cast him into the sea, I
have no use for the system. Plain ordinary mortal shades are good enough
for me."

As Munchausen spoke, the boy returned.

"Mr. Adam isn't here to-day, sir," he said, addressing Doctor Johnson.
"And Charon says he's not likely to be here, sir, seeing as how his
account is closed, not having been settled for three months."

"Good," said Thackeray. "I was afraid he was here. I don't want to have
him asked about his Eden experiences in my behalf. That's personality."

"Well, then, there's only one other thing to do," said Darwin.
"Munchausen claims to be able to speak Simian. He might seek out some of
the prehistoric monkeys and put the question to them."

"No, thank you," said Munchausen. "I'm a little rusty in the language,
and, besides, you talk like an idiot. You might as well speak of the
human language as the Simian language. There are French monkeys who
speak monkey French, African monkeys who talk the most barbarous kind of
Zulu monkey patois, and Congo monkey slang, and so on. Let Johnson send
his little Boswell out to drum up information. If there is anything to
be found out he'll get it, and then he can tell it to us. Of course he
may get it all wrong, but it will be entertaining, and we'll never know
any difference."

Which seemed to the others a good idea, but whatever came of it I have
not been informed.

CHAPTER VII: A DISCUSSION AS TO LADIES' DAY

"I met Queen Elizabeth just now on the Row," said Raleigh, as he entered
the house-boat and checked his cloak.

"Indeed?" said Confucius. "What if you did? Other people have met Queen
Elizabeth. There's nothing original about that."

"True; but she made a suggestion to me about this house-boat which I
thi