One of the latest sitters was Theodore Hook, so renowned for spontaneous wit. He was very proud of a peculiar receipt of his own for the prevention of exposure to the evil effects of night air. “I was once very ill,” said he, “and my doctor gave me particular orders not to expose myself to it; so I come up (from Fulham) every day to Crockford’s, or some other place, to dinner, ever since which I have made it a rule on no account to go home again till about four or five o’clock in the morning.” Those were the days when the closing hours of a number of West End clubs were much later than is at present the case. Now there are seldom many members to be found in a club-house after one, and fines have become rare. Up to about fifteen or twenty years ago, considerable laxity prevailed as to enforcing these penalties which are exacted for sitting up after a certain hour, but the introduction of more business-like habits into West End life has put an end to such a state of affairs. Late sittings at clubs were, of course, in the vast majority of instances, connected with card-playing; and when this pastime was more prevalent than is now the case, some confirmed lovers of whist, and later of bridge, occasionally sat very late indeed. Whist is now practically an obsolete game, and it is curious to recall that the introduction of short whist was once considered a great innovation. “Major A.,” the author of “Short Whist,” a book which was famous in the middle of the last century, gives the following account of its origin: “This revolution was occasioned by a worthy Welsh Baronet preferring his lobster for supper hot. Four first-rate whist-players—consequently four great men—adjourned from the House of Commons to Brooks’s, and proposed a rubber while the cook was busy. ‘The lobster must be hot,’ said the Baronet. ‘A rubber may last an hour,’ said another, ‘and the lobster may be cold again or spoiled before we finish.’ ‘It is too long,’ said a third. ‘Let us cut it shorter,’ said the fourth. Carried _nem. con._ Down they sat, and found it very lively to win or lose so much quicker. Besides furnishing conversation for supper, the thing was new—they were legislators, and had a fine opportunity to exercise their calling.” Another version was supplied by James Clay, who was one of the principal authorities on whist in his day. His account is as follows: “Some eighty years back, Lord Peterborough having one night lost a large sum of money, the friends with whom he was playing proposed to make the game five points instead of ten, in order to give the loser a chance, at a quicker game, of recovering his loss. The late Mr. Hoare of Bath, a very good whist-player, and without a superior at piquet, was one of this party, and used frequently to tell this story.”