It seems to me that we cannot overestimate the importance of eating and drinking, for out of these desires of the human body have come most of the clever ideas of the world. Conviviality stimulates the brain, and, while the viands may be of ever so simple a quality, the atmosphere in which they are partaken means everything to sensitive genius. From a general poverty of purse, if not of mind, sprang the Stomach Club of Paris, and likewise, if I may compare them, the Hasty Pudding Club of Harvard. It began when two or three clever men found it necessary to economize, and they made up their minds to live on that delectable New England dish—cornmeal mush. Probably, having only one kind of food to cook, they became proficient in the art, for in my day it was certainly good to eat. The three or four men had developed into a large number, and the meetings came to have a very different purpose from that of the economy of food; but never had they varied in any degree from their first idea, and not a single dish was added to their fare of—hasty pudding. A certain quality of cohesion is necessary to make a crowd of fellows stick together through so many years, so gradually, a number of tests came into being, and a novice must pass these before becoming a full-fledged member. As these tests vary in every case, but all are based on great principles of truth, honor, and manhood, I am not giving away the secrets of the organization if I tell a few of the amusing incidents of my initiation into the Hasty Pudding Club. For two weeks before his final acceptance, the candidate is required to _run_ everywhere he goes, and he must not speak a single word to anyone except the member appointed to be his keeper. I had faithfully kept this rule of silence—hard as it was for me—when one night at dinner I tried to attract the waitress’s attention, with no result. “Speak to her just this once. I won’t tell,” said Ned Higginson, who was my keeper. I argued I mustn’t, but he assured me it would be all right, so I did. When it came to the final reckoning and he was asked if I had kept the rules, he told on me. I don’t believe I was ever so righteously angry in my life. Disregarding the fact that it was a formal party and I was in evening clothes, I turned and would have knocked him down had they not held me. Then I heard laughs and cries of: “Yes, he’s the kind of a man we want.”