It is said that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump, and it is surprising how disagreeable one cantankerous man who uses his club can make it to those around him. He is always coming upon the scene when not wanted. If you go up to the library, you find him snoring on the sofa, with the very book you have come in search of in his useless grasp. If you dine accidentally at the club, your table is sure to be placed next to his. Are you having a quiet chat with a friend, most assuredly will this wretched being drop in and spoil the conversation. He is always quarrelling with people, and asking you to support his complaints. Such a man has no friends, and the list of his acquaintances is limited. In past days old members were sometimes very severe in their comments upon newly-elected young men of whose ways they did not approve. One of the latter, just elected to a club, having somehow incurred the wrath of a certain irascible character, to his amazement heard him saying: “What an insupportable cub that fellow is! What on earth were the committee doing to elect him! Why, I’d give him a pony not to belong now.” This perturbed the new member, who left the club-house thinking what course he ought to take, and, as luck would have it, met on the staircase a member who bore the well-deserved reputation of being a thorough man of the world. Stopping the latter, he told him of the insulting remark, and inquired what he ought to do. “Do?” was the reply; “why, nothing at present. After you’ve used the club for another month, you’ll probably be offered a hundred!” In more or less every club there are one or two solemn-looking members, who are seldom known to speak to anyone, but spend their time in what is, or looks like, deep study. Votaries of almost perpetual silence, they are easily made to frown at the sound of conversation. The favourite haunt of such as these is generally the library, which they regard as their own domain, and where on no account must they be disturbed. One of this class, who in the more expansive days of his youth, twenty years before, had had a great friend who, after leaving the University, went out to live in the East, was one day, according to his usual wont, reading in the library of his club, when, to his horror, he heard the door briskly open. A robust figure, whose countenance seemed not entirely unfamiliar, strode up to him, and, seizing his hand heartily, shook it. “Well, old fellow,” said the intruder, “it’s many a long day since we met. Now let’s hear what you have been doing all these years.” Without saying a word, the ruffled student raised a warning finger, and pointed at the placard of “Silence” on the mantelpiece. “I was glad to see the man again,” said he afterwards; “but he had no business to break one of our rules.”