Another queer eighteenth-century institution was the Golden Fleece Club, the members of which assumed fancy names, such as Sir Timothy Addlepate, Sir Nimmy Sneer, Sir Talkative Dolittle, Sir Skinny Fretwell, Sir Rumbus Rattle, Sir Boozy Prate-all, Sir Nicholas Ninny Sip-all, Sir Gregory Growler, Sir Pay-little, and the like. The main object of this club seems to have been a very free conviviality. Perhaps the most eccentric club of all was “the Everlasting,” which, like the modern Brook Club of New York, professed to go on for ever, its doors being kept open night and day throughout the year, whilst the members were divided into watches like sailors at sea. The craze for queerly-named clubs lasted into the nineteenth century; for instance, the King of Clubs was the fanciful name of a society founded about 1801 by Bobus Smith. At first it consisted of a small knot of lawyers, whose clients were too few, or too civil, to molest their after-dinner recreations; a few literary characters; and a small number of visitors, generally introduced by those who took the chief part in conversation, and seemingly selected for the faculty of being good listeners. The King of Clubs sat on the Saturday of each month in the Strand, at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, which at that time was a nest of boxes, each containing its club, and affording excellent cheer, though afterwards desecrated by indifferent dinners and very questionable wine. The object of the club was conversation. Everyone seemed anxious to bring his contribution of good sense or good-humour, and the members discussed books and authors and the prevalent topics of the day, except politics, which were excluded. Rogers, the banker poet, was a member of the King of Clubs. His funereal appearance gained him the nickname of the Dug-up Dandy, and all sorts of jokes were made concerning him. Once, when Rogers had been at Spa, and was telling Ward (afterwards Lord Dudley) that the place was so full that he could not so much as find a bed to lie in, and that he was obliged on that account to leave it, “Dear me,” replied Ward, “was there no room in the churchyard?” At another time Murray was showing him a portrait of Rogers, observing that “it was done to the life.” “To the death, you mean,” replied Ward. Amongst other amusing sallies of the same kind was his asking Rogers: “Why don’t you keep your hearse, Rogers? You can well afford it.”