ing,
emptying bottles and filling heads, as in the case of the old Kit-kat,
men took to the monstrous amusement of examining fate, and on
club-tables the dice rattled far more freely than the glasses, though
these latter were not necessarily abandoned. Then came the thirst for
hazard that brought men early in the day to try their fortune, and thus
made the club-room a lounge. Selwyn was an habitual frequenter of
Brookes.'

Brookes' was, perhaps, the principal club of the day, though 'White's
Chocolate House' was almost on a par with it. But Selwyn did not confine
his attention solely to this club. It was the fashion to belong to as
many of them as possible, and Wilberforce mentions no less than five to
which he himself belonged: Brookes', Boodle's, White's, Miles and
Evans's in New Palace Yard, and Goosetree's. As their names imply, these
were all, originally, mere coffee-houses, kept by men of the above
names. One or two rooms then sufficed for the requirements of a small
party, and it was not till the members were greatly increased that the
coffee-house rose majestically to the dignity of a bow-window, and was
entirely and exclusively appropriated to the requirements of the club.

This was especially the case with White's, of which so many of the wits
and talkers of Selwyn's day were members. Who does not know that
bow-window at the top of St. James's Street, where there are sure, about
three or four in the afternoon, to be at least three gentlemen, two old
and one young, standing, to the exclusion of light within, talking and
contemplating the oft-repeated movement outside. White's was established
as early as 1698, and was thus one of the original coffee-houses. It was
then kept by a man named Arthur: here Chesterfield gamed and talked, to
be succeeded by Gilly Williams. Charles Townshend, and George Selwyn.
The old house was burnt down in 1733. It was at White's--or as Hogarth
calls it in his pictorial squib, Black's--that, when a man fell dead at
the door, he was lugged in and bets made as to whether he was dead or
no. The surgeon's operations were opposed, for fear of disturbing the
bets. Here, too, did George Selwyn and Charles Townshend pit their wit
against wit; and here Pelham passed all the time he was not forced to
devote to politics. In short it was, next to Brookes', the club of the
day, and perhaps in some respects had a greater renown than even that
famous club, and its play was as high.

In Brookes'