The reading is not infrequently a little dull, especially to the uninitiated, and there have not been wanting certain sinister suggestions that now and then, during the monotonous delivery of some of the longer poems, elderly and corpulent devotees listen only with the spiritual ear, the physical sense being obscured by an abstraction not to be distinguished by an ordinary observer from slumber. The reader, however, is bound to assume that all are listening, and if some sleep and others consider their worldly concerns or speculate upon the affairs of their neighbors, it interrupts not at all the steady flow of the reading. Once this is finished, there is an end also of inattention, for the discussion begins. The central and vital principle of all these clubs is that a poem by Robert Browning is a sort of prize enigma, of which the solution is to be reached rather by wild and daring guessing than by any commonplace process of reasoning. Although to an ordinary and uninspired intellect it may appear perfectly obvious that a lyric means simply and clearly what it says, the true Browningite is better informed. He is deeply aware that if the poet seems to say one thing, this is proof indisputable that another is intended. To take a work in straightforward fashion would at once rob the Browning Club of all excuse for existence, and while parlor chairs are easy, the air warm and perfumed, and it is the fashion for idle minds to concern themselves with that rococo humbug Philistines call culture, societies of this sort must continue. Once it is agreed that a poem means something not apparent, it is easy to make it mean anything and everything, especially if the discussion, as is usually the case, be interspersed with discursions of which the chief use is to give some clever person or other a chance to say smart things. When all else fails, moreover, the club can always fall back upon allegory. Commentators on the poets have always found much field for ingenious quibbling and sounding speculation in the line of allegory. Let a poem be but considered an allegory, and there is no limit to the changes which may be rung upon it, not even Mrs. Malaprop's banks of the Nile restraining the creature's headstrong ranging. Only a failure of the fancy of the interpreter can afford a check, and as everybody reads fiction nowadays, few people are without a goodly supply of fancies, either original or acquired. Although Fenton had declined to go to Mrs. Gore's with his wife, he had finished his cigar when the carriage was announced, and decided to accompany her, after all. The parlors were filling when they arrived, and Arthur, who knew how to select good company, managed to secure a seat between Miss Elsie Dimmont, a young and rather gay society girl, and Mrs. Frederick Staggchase, a descendant of an old Boston family, who was called one of the cleverest women of her set.