The children of Israel—whose mission in these later years is to be both our paymasters and our panders—were particularly zealous in the promotion of this kind of _réunion bohémiene_. Belasco opened the Supper Club in Percy Street, Tottenham Court Road. Sam Cohen provided the “Spooferies” in Maiden Lane. He had previously run the concern as a baccarat club, its useful career in that direction having ended in a raid, and a prosecution of the greatest number of persons ever called up at Bow Street to answer a single charge. Sam must have been a bit of a cynic in his way, for the house in which the “Spooferies” met was next door to the Jewish synagogue. A Hebrew named Foster established a similar place in Long Acre, and a coreligionist of his called Moore—a euphuism, I apprehend, for Moses—opened the Waterloo Club in Waterloo Place, Pall Mall. There were others. But those I have named are the only ones of which I had a personal knowledge. This admission may, I fear, horrify those readers who are of the dawn of the century. I can assure my prudish friends, however, that were I mischievously inclined I could give them a list of names of persons who were at one time young men about town, but who now occupy prominent positions in the Senate, at the Bar, and, generally speaking, in the public life of the country, who were to be seen, in the jocund years, thoroughly enjoying themselves in such Bohemian society as was to be found at the “Spooferies” or the Supper Club. I can see—in my mind’s eye, Horatio—some adipose, sleek, and eminently respectable householder, some Member of Parliament, London County Councillor, West End physician, fashionable painter, or what not, who has taken up these reminiscences to while away an hour. I can see this staid citizen, this respectable family man, this stickler for morality, this Justice of the Peace, and all the rest of it, squirming as he reads the above passage. With a blush he lays down the book, and, looking suspiciously around, murmurs: “Damn the fellow, he means _me_!” Yes, I undoubtedly mean _you_. But you may read on without apprehension, my excellent friend, for I am the soul of discretion. Your early trespasses are safe. In return I would only ask this: that, remembering that you and I have sown some wild-oats in the same fallows, you should exercise a little more common-sense and charity in dealing with the peccadilloes of your juniors, and that, generally speaking, you would carry yourself with a less pompous air of conscious rectitude. CHAPTER XI THE JOKER THERE are jokers and jokers. Professors of the art of practical joking are disappearing before an advancing civilization like the Red Indian of the Far West. The evanishment of the verbal joker is due to a deplorable shrinkage in the national sense of humour. There will soon be left to us the joker which is the fifty-third card in the pack, and is incapable of any sense or emotion whatever.