The Project Gutenberg EBook of In the Fog, by Richard Harding Davis

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Title: In the Fog

Author: Richard Harding Davis

Release Date: April, 2005 [EBook #7884]
Posting Date: July 30, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN THE FOG ***

Produced by Eric Eldred

IN THE FOG

By Richard Harding Davis

[Illustration: 01 I cannot tell you how much I have to thank you for]

[Illustration: 02 The four strangers at supper were seated together]

IN THE FOG

CHAPTER I

The Grill is the club most difficult of access in the world. To be
placed on its rolls distinguishes the new member as greatly as though he
had received a vacant Garter or had been caricatured in "Vanity Fair."

Men who belong to the Grill Club never mention that fact. If you were
to ask one of them which clubs he frequents, he will name all save that
particular one. He is afraid if he told you he belonged to the Grill,
that it would sound like boasting.

The Grill Club dates back to the days when Shakespeare's Theatre stood
on the present site of the "Times" office. It has a golden Grill which
Charles the Second presented to the Club, and the original manuscript
of "Tom and Jerry in London," which was bequeathed to it by Pierce Egan
himself. The members, when they write letters at the Club, still use
sand to blot the ink.

The Grill enjoys the distinction of having blackballed, without
political prejudice, a Prime Minister of each party. At the same sitting
at which one of these fell, it elected, on account of his brogue and his
bulls, Quiller, Q. C., who was then a penniless barrister.

When Paul Preval, the French artist who came to London by royal command
to paint a portrait of the Prince of Wales, was made an honorary
member--only foreigners may be honorary members--he said, as he signed
his first wine card, "I would rather see my name on that, than on a
picture in the Louvre."

At which. Quiller remarked, "That is a devil of a compliment, because
the only men who can read their names in the Louvre to-day have been
dead fifty years."

On the night after the great fog of 1897 there were five mem