The smoking-room of the ‘Bohemian’ was full of a motley collection of men of the literary vagabond type—reporters, paragraphists, writers of penny dreadfuls, reeled off tape-wise from the thin spools of smoke-dried masculine brains; stray actors, playwrights anxious to translate the work of some famous foreigner and so get fastened on to his superior coat-tails, ‘adapters’ desirous of dramatising some celebrated novel and pocketing all the profits, anxious ‘proposers’ of new magazines looking about for ‘funds’ to back them up, and among all these an extremely casual sprinkling of the brilliant and successful workers in art and literature, who were either honorary members, or who had allowed their names to stand on the committee in order to give ‘prestige’ to a collection which would otherwise be termed the ‘rag-tag and bob-tail’ of literature. The opinions of the ‘Bohemian,’—the airily idiotic theories with which the members disported themselves, and furnished food for laughter to the profane—were occasionally quoted in the newspapers, which of course gave the club a certain amount of importance in its own eyes, if in nobody else’s. And the committee put on what is called a considerable amount of ‘side’; now and then affecting to honour some half-and-half celebrity by asking him to a Five-Shilling dinner, and dubbing him the ‘guest of the evening,’ he meantime gloomily taking note of the half-cold, badly-cooked poorness of the meal, and debating within himself whether it would be possible to get away in time to have a chop ‘from the grill’ somewhere on his way home. The ‘Bohemian’ had been a long time getting started, owing to the manner in which the gentlemen who were ‘in’ persistently black-balled every new aspirant for the honours of membership. The cause of this arose from the chronic state of nervous jealousy in which the ‘Bohemians’ lived. To a certain extent, and as far as their personal animosities would permit, they were a ‘Mutual Admiration Society,’ and dreaded the intrusion of any stranger who might set himself to discover ‘their tricks and their manners.’ They had a lawyer of their own, whose business it was to arrange the disputes of the club, should occasion require his services, and they also had a doctor, a humorous and very clever little man, who was fond of strolling about the premises in the evening, and taking notes for the writing of a medical treatise to be entitled ‘Literary Dyspepsia, and the Passion of Envy considered in its Action on the Spleen and Other Vital Organs,’ a book which he justly considered would excite a great deal of interest among his professional compeers. But in spite of the imposing Committee of Names, the lawyer and the doctor, the ‘Bohemian’ did not pay. It struggled on, hampered with debts and difficulties, like most of its members. It gave smoking-concerts occasionally, for which it charged extra, and twice a year it admitted ladies to its dinners, during which banquets speeches