The nature of this society, such as we afterwards discovered it to
be, is soon and simply told. It is an eccentric and Bohemian Club,
of which the absolute condition of membership lies in this, that
the candidate must have invented the method by which he earns his
living. It must be an entirely new trade. The exact definition of
this requirement is given in the two principal rules. First, it
must not be a mere application or variation of an existing trade.
Thus, for instance, the Club would not admit an insurance agent
simply because instead of insuring men's furniture against being
burnt in a fire, he insured, let us say, their trousers against
being torn by a mad dog. The principle (as Sir Bradcock
Burnaby-Bradcock, in the extraordinarily eloquent and soaring
speech to the club on the occasion of the question being raised in
the Stormby Smith affair, said wittily and keenly) is the same.
Secondly, the trade must be a genuine commercial source of income,
the support of its inventor. Thus the Club would not receive a man
simply because he chose to pass his days collecting broken sardine
tins, unless he could drive a roaring trade in them. Professor
Chick made that quite clear. And when one remembers what Professor
Chick's own new trade was, one doesn't know whether to laugh or
cry.

The discovery of this strange society was a curiously refreshing
thing; to realize that there were ten new trades in the world was
like looking at the first ship or the first plough. It made a man
feel what he should feel, that he was still in the childhood of
the world. That I should have come at last upon so singular a body
was, I may say without vanity, not altogether singular, for I have
a mania for belonging to as many societies as possible: I may be
said to collect clubs, and I have accumulated a vast and fantastic