We were admitted into the club proper by a liveried servant, and from the handsome oak-panelled vestibule we passed into a lofty apartment hung with pictures and filled with miscellaneous objects of art. All, without exception, were execrable--miserable daubs of painting, criminal essays in plastic and decorative work, and a collection of statuary that could be adequately matched only by the horrors in Central Park. "Our art gallery, gentlemen," explained Dr. Magnus. Art gallery indeed! To me it was the most melancholy of exhibitions, but Indiman was enraptured. "What a magnificent record of failure!" he exclaimed. "What miracles of ineptitude!" and Dr. Magnus smiled, well pleased. We ascended to the next floor. Here was the library, lined ceiling-high with books that had fallen still-born from the press. Gigantic cabinet presses occupied the centre of the room, the final depository of countless "unavailable" MSS. In an adjoining room were glass-cases crowded with mechanical models of unsuccessful inventions. Naturally, I expected to see a large section devoted to the resolution of the perpetual-motion problem, but in this I was disappointed, not a single specimen of the kind could I discover. "We do not attempt the impossible," explained Dr. Magnus, dryly. "Our failures must be inherent in the man, not in his subject." There were other rooms, a long succession of them, filled with melancholy evidences of incapacity and defeat in almost every department of human activity--plans of abortive military campaigns, prospectuses of moribund business enterprises, architectural and engineering drawings of structures never to be reared, charts, models, unfinished musical scores, finally a huge papier-mache globe on which were traced the routes of Mr. Colman Hoyt's four unsuccessful dashes for the North Pole. It depressed me, the sight of this vast lumber-room, this collection of useless flotsam and jetsam, cast up and rejected by the sea of strenuous life. Most moving of all, a broken golf-club standing in a dusty corner, and beside it a wofully scarred and battered ball. I pointed them out to Indiman. "A fellow-sufferer," he said, and sighed deeply. Last of all we were conducted to the common room, a spacious apartment immediately under the dome. At one end a huge stone fireplace, in which a fire crackled cheerfully. "'Non Possumus,'" read Indiman, deciphering the motto chiselled upon the chimney-breast. "An admirable sentiment indeed! Dr. Magnus, I venture to infer that the Utinam Club is the child of your own brain. Permit me, sir, to congratulate you--a glorious inception and carried out to perfection."