ent simply because instead of insuring men's
furniture against being burnt in a fire, he insured, let us say, their
trousers against being torn by a mad dog. The principle (as Sir Bradcock
Burnaby-Bradcock, in the extraordinarily eloquent and soaring speech
to the club on the occasion of the question being raised in the Stormby
Smith affair, said wittily and keenly) is the same. Secondly, the
trade must be a genuine commercial source of income, the support of its
inventor. Thus the Club would not receive a man simply because he chose
to pass his days collecting broken sardine tins, unless he could drive
a roaring trade in them. Professor Chick made that quite clear. And when
one remembers what Professor Chick's own new trade was, one doesn't know
whether to laugh or cry.

The discovery of this strange society was a curiously refreshing thing;
to realize that there were ten new trades in the world was like looking
at the first ship or the first plough. It made a man feel what he should
feel, that he was still in the childhood of the world. That I should
have come at last upon so singular a body was, I may say without vanity,
not altogether singular, for I have a mania for belonging to as many
societies as possible: I may be said to collect clubs, and I have
accumulated a vast and fantastic variety of specimens ever since, in my
audacious youth, I collected the Athenaeum. At some future day, perhaps,
I may tell tales of some of the other bodies to which I have belonged.
I will recount the doings of the Dead Man's Shoes Society (that
superficially immoral, but darkly justifiable communion); I will explain
the curious origin of the Cat and Christian, the name of which has been
so shamefully misinterpreted; and the world shall know at last why the
Institute of Typewriters coalesced with the Red Tulip League. Of the Ten
Teacups, of course I dare not say a word. The first of my revelations,
at any rate, shall be concerned with the Club of Queer Trades, which, as
I have said, was one of this class, one which I was almost bound to come
across sooner or later, because of my singular hobby. The wild youth of
the metropolis call me facetiously 'The King of Clubs'. They also call
me 'The Cherub', in allusion to the roseate and youthful appearance I
have presented in my declining years. I only hope the spirits in the
better world have as good dinners as I have. But the finding of the Club
of Queer Trades has one very curious thing abo