As formulated by Dobbs and Tenafly, then, Bedford Parke's suggestion that a Dreamers' Club be formed was amplified into this: Thirteen choice spirits, consisting of Dobbs, Tenafly, Bedford Parke, Greenwich Place, Hudson Rivers of Hastings, Monty St. Vincent, Fulton Streete, Berkeley Hights, Haarlem Bridge, the three Snobbes of Yonkers--Tom, Dick, and Harry--and Billy Jones of the _Weekly Oracle_, were to form themselves into an association which should endeavor to extract whatever latent literary talent the thirteen members might have within them. It was a generally accepted fact, Bedford Parke had said, that all literature, not even excepting history, was based upon the imagination. Many of the masterpieces of fiction had their basis in actual dreams, and, when they were not founded on such, might in every case be said to be directly attributable to what might properly be called waking dreams. It was the misfortune of the thirteen gentlemen who were expected to join this association that the business and social engagements of all, with the possible exception of Billy Jones of the _Weekly Oracle_, were such as to prevent their indulgence in these waking dreams, dreams which should tend to lower the colors of Howells before those of Tenafly Paterson, and cause the memory of Hawthorne to wither away before the scorching rays of that rising sun of genius, Tom Snobbe of Yonkers. Snobbe, by-the-way, must have inherited literary ability from his father, who had once edited a church-fair paper which ran through six editions in one week--one edition a day for each day of the fair--adding an unreceipted printer's bill for eighty-seven dollars to the proceeds to be divided among the heathen of Central Africa. "It's a well-known fact," said Bedford--"a sad fact, but still a fact--that if Poe had not been a hard drinker he never would have amounted to a row of beans as a writer. His dreams were induced--and I say, what's the matter with our inducing dreams and then putting 'em down?" That was the scheme in a nutshell--to induce dreams and put them down. The receipt was a simple one. The club was to meet once a month, and eat and drink "such stuff as dreams are made of"; the meeting was then to adjourn, the members going immediately home and to bed; the dreams of each were to be carefully noted in their every detail, and at the following meeting were to be unfolded such soul-harrowing tales as might with propriety be based thereon. An important part of the programme was a stenographer, whose duty it would be to take down the stories as they were told and put them in type-written form, which Dobbs was sure he had heard an editor say was one of the first steps towards a favorable consideration by professional readers of the manuscripts of the ambitious.