Members of energetic temperament found the atmosphere of idle lassitude which hung about some West End clubs so stifling that a number of them, filled with a desire for exercise, formed what they called a “walking society.” One of their favourite excursions was to St. Albans, which they called their halfway house, and to this town they walked backwards and forwards to dinner every Thursday. Now that the old-fashioned club-man has disappeared, a glance at his ways may not be out of place. Generally a bachelor of the most confirmed kind, his whole life centred in his club, to which he made it a habit to go every day at the same hour, and when possible occupy the same chair, which in course of time was accorded to him as a sort of right. Often an old-fashioned beau, he was as a rule rather a hard, selfish man, provided by his club with all that he required. Not a few men of this type declined to dine out, because they said they got a better dinner at the club for some ten or twelve shillings than at the best houses in town. “Why,” inquired one of them, “should I bore myself with dull society when I can have the comfortable ease of the smoking-room? If I want to be amused, I go to the theatre; if I want to read, I go to the library. What have I to do with society,” he would ask, with a sneer—“I who have no money, and not even a pretty wife?” Such an individual was perfectly content with existence. Quiet, comfort, good living, freedom from responsibility and anxiety, were the great objects of his life, “and, begad, you don’t get that by marriage,” he would remark. The confirmed club-man of to-day is, perhaps, a shade less cynical, but a variation of the old type still exists, and in most West End clubs, especially those of an old-fashioned sort, there is to be found some member who is generally recognized as an institution of the place.