“Why ever,” one night said Arnold, “did you call your opera by such a name? There was no spirit in it from beginning to end!” “Anyhow,” exclaimed another inveterate punster, “‘Ramah Drûg’ was the most appropriate title possible, for it was literally ramming a drug down the public throat.” “True,” rejoined Cobb; “but it was a drug that evinced considerable power, for it operated on the public twenty nights in succession.” “My good friend,” said Arnold triumphantly, “that was a proof of its weakness, if it took so long in working.” “You are right, Arnold, in that respect,” retorted Cobb. “Your play” (Arnold had brought out a play, which did not survive the first night) “had the advantage of mine, for it was so powerful a drug as to be thrown up as soon as it was taken!” The first and last Saturdays of the season, and the Saturday in Easter week, were “private.” On these days no visitors were invited. The accounts were gone into, and the amount of the “whip” to regulate the past or accruing expenses decided, the qualifications of such candidates as were anxious, on the occasion of a vacancy, to join the society discussed, and other matters connected with its well-being debated. Each member paid 5s. for his dinner, and 10s. 6d. for his guest. The entrance fee was £26 5s. until 1849, when it was reduced to £10 10s., and there were generally two annual whips of £5 each. After the destruction of Covent Garden Theatre, where it had met for seventy years, the Sublime Society of Beefsteaks migrated to the Bedford Coffee-house, where it remained till the building of the Lyceum Theatre in 1809, in a special room of which it took up its abode till 1830, when the Lyceum also was burnt down. After this it adjourned to the Lyceum Tavern, in the Strand, and thence returned to the Bedford Coffee-house, where it remained until 1838, when a suite of rooms was built for it under the new roof of the Lyceum. The original gridiron, dug out of the ruins of Covent Garden and the Lyceum, formed the centre ornament of the dining-room ceiling. The entire room and ceiling were in Gothic architecture, and the walls were hung with paintings and engravings of past and present members, the former the work of Brother Lonsdale. Folding-doors, the entire width of the room, connected it with an anteroom. When the doors were opened on the announcement of dinner, an enormous grating in the form of a gridiron, through which the fire was seen and the steaks handed, afforded members a view of the kitchen. There was no blackballing, but every would-be member had to be invited at least twice as a guest, in order that his qualifications might be ascertained, and then, if he were put up, he was certain to be elected. As a matter of fact, the formality of a ballot was gone through, though there were no rejections. When a new member was initiated, he and the visitors were requested after dinner to withdraw to an anteroom, where port and punch were provided for them.