The Pelican Club was founded by Mr. Ernest Wells—familiarly known as “Swears-and-Swells.” Its membership was composed chiefly of rapid men-about-town, and its principal functions were given on Sunday nights. These were concerts at which the comic element preponderated, and boxing contests conducted in a properly-appointed ring. Suitable premises were secured in Denman Street, a shy thoroughfare close to Piccadilly Circus. The place had formerly been used as the factory of a carriage-builder. The ground-floor was very spacious and very lofty, and in every way was adapted to its new purposes. There was a gallery above, off which opened card-rooms, bedrooms, and other apartments. A bar was fitted up close to the entrance, and the whole place was soon transformed into an extremely bright and cheery institution. Having secured the premises and decided on the lines on which the institution was to be run, there remained for the enterprising founder the important question of obtaining members. Mr. Wells called in to his assistance Mr. “Willie” Goldberg. A word or two concerning that remarkable little man may not be out of place. John Corlett and Reggie Brooks were taking a walk one day in the neighbourhood of Maidstone, when they came on the encouraging spectacle of a small man sitting by the roadside, and sniggering over the front page of Corlett’s newspaper. The sight was so agreeable and flattering to the wayfarers that they stopped to inquire into the exact source of the stranger’s mirth. The conversation thus commenced ended in the engagement of the small man on the staff of the _Pink ’Un_. And it turned out to be one of the best engagements that Corlett ever made. Goldberg was a ’Varsity man, his career at Oxford having been, if not brilliant, at least much more than respectable. When he left the University, he obtained a Government appointment, which, in his own phrase, he “chucked.” When encountered by Corlett on a Kentish highway, he was just idling along. He was a born Bohemian, and he idled along until the day of his death. Now, when Goldberg joined Corlett’s staff, the paper to which he was called upon to contribute was the favourite periodical literature of what constituted the rapid section of Society. And Goldberg not only catered, in his way, for the literary thirst of men-about-town, but he became personally identified with that contingent out of doors. The “Johnnies,” the “mashers,” the “rowdy-dowdy boys,” the “sports,” of the joyous days made much of him. Indeed, they made so much of him that he went to his grave a good quarter of a century before there was any absolute necessity for making that journey.