A great feature of old Edinburgh from the days of Allan Ramsay to those of Sir Walter Scott was the Clubs. These, you will understand, were not at all like the clubs of to-day, of which the modern city possesses a good number, political and social—institutions that inhabit large and stately premises with all the usual properties. The old Edinburgh club was a much simpler affair. It was a more or less formal set who met in a favourite tavern, ate, drank, and talked for some hours and then went their respective ways. Various writers have preserved the quaint names of many of these clubs, and given us a good deal of information on the subject. When you think of the famous men that were members, the talk, you believe, was worth hearing, but the memory of it has well-nigh perished, even as the speakers themselves, and bottle wit is as evanescent as that which produced it. The extant jokes seem to us of the thinnest. The Cape Club was named, it is said, from the difficulty one of its members found in reaching home. When he got out at the Netherbow Port he had to make a sharp turn to the left, and so along Leith Wynd. He was confused with talk and liquor, and he found some difficulty in “doubling the cape,” as it was called. Perhaps the obstacle lay on the other side of the Netherbow. The keeper had a keen eye for small profits, and was none too hasty in making the way plain either out of or into the city. Allan Ramsay felt the difficulty when he and his fellows lingered too long at Luckie Wood’s— “Which aften cost us mony a gill To Aikenhead.”