together with such Olde Ales, Costlie Wines, and strong waters as may suit ye taste, purse, or conscience of ye Members.” The Chronicle of this club is very diverting, and begins with a motto _not_ from Goethe, Ein guter Trunk Macht Alte junk which is, after all, a very partial and temporary truth. For the guidance of other social clubs I cannot refrain from quoting _in extenso_ the article headed “Rules”:— “The Rules of the Club being of the sort once heard are never forgotten, there is no need to repeat them in this Chronicle.” So much for the Forty-niners. THE SOAKERS’ CLUB. “We’ll have flesh for holidays, fish for fasting days, and moreo’er puddings and flapjacks; and thou shalt be welcome,” was the Shakesperean motto of this frankly christened club. The pious founder of the club, in a finely printed booklet, declared that “it was deemed a requisite that your club should flourish under some rollicking epithet such as had not previously been ‘empounded’ by any other fraternity. The title should be terse; it should also be outrageous. It should smack of the _caveau_, and have the scent of the beeswing. Accordingly, many have been the creations that have in turn possessed the mind of your promoters. Fuddling clubs, gorging clubs, out Heroding Herod clubs—these comprised a whole hand of clubs, in which was not a single trump. Then did your promoters bethink themselves of that unctuous cognomen, ‘The Soakers.’ The title is a nudity.... The name of ‘The Soakers’ Club’ is selected only as conveying a sharp antithetical travestie upon our sober habits as moderate men.” This last statement is consolatory, for it would have been unpleasant if the club had come to the “Cheese” merely to make manifest their loyalty to their name. They were good fellows, and, though not quite antithetical to their designation did not allow it to run riot with their moderate tendencies. They dined at the “Cheese” regularly for years, but their numbers did not increase, owing probably to the frank brutality of their title, and the natural result was that they gradually dwindled away. THE ST. DUNSTAN’S CLUB. No wife, however shrewd, could object to her marital slave being a member of the St. Dunstan’s, while even the most angelic of ladies would scarcely like to see her lord flourishing as a leader among “The Soakers.” Therefore has the St. Dunstan’s flourished like a green bay tree for over a century. Its proud boast is that it has contributed more Common Councilmen and Aldermen (and consequently Lord Mayors) to the Corporation of the City of London than any other club in the Metropolis.