will tell you your age,” says the modern “ingenious youth,” as that sporting Falstaff Mr. Jorrocks calls him, who begins with huge cigars, gin and soda-water, and billiards, much bemused, at Trappe’s. Anon, as his collars get higher, and the down upon his cheek begins to justify a nobler ambition, he aspires to the science of numbers, and lays the odds to more experienced calculators at “The Short-Grass.” But our youth is becoming a man-about-town, or thinks he is, and must have the _entrée_ to more than one of these luxurious republics; so according to his rank, his profession, or his pretensions, he affects another afternoon club, esteeming it, whichever it may be, the best and _most select_ in London. Here he has a plentiful choice. If a professional or a politician, he will find associations purposely established for those of his own practice or opinions; and here they are looming like a city of palaces--the Conflagrative, the Anarchic, the Regency, the Hat-and-Umbrella, the Chelsea, and the Peace and Plenty. Is there not the Megatherium for the literary, and the Munchausen for the travelled? But peradventure our youth is fast, and aspires to be a man of figure; so shall his carriage be seen waiting at the Godiva, or himself shall face the ballot at Blight’s. For a time all goes on smooth and sunny; but the young ones keep growing up, and they rather jostle him in his chair, and “people let in such boys now-a-days”; so in disgust he abdicates a sovereignty conferred by years, and retreats to quieter resorts, where the cutlet is equally well dressed and the wine a thought better. So we find him presiding over house-dinners at Alfred’s, or winning the odd trick after a quiet _parti carré_ at Snookes’s. But even from these celestial seats he must be ousted at last. Still that pressure from below keeps increasing year by year, “and the young men of the present day are so slangy, and so noisy, and so disagreeable,” that he can stand it no longer, and puts his name down for the first vacancy in that last refuge recommended by his old friend Sapless. Behold him at length shouldered into the harbour, and safely landed at Noodles’.