conscience sensible of its own unlucky guilt.



CLUB BORES.


The London Club has been sitting in a judicial way on one of its members.
This member of the Club seems to have been what Thackeray's waiter called
"a harbitrary gent." The servants of the club had to complain that he
did not make "their lives so sweet to them that they (the servants)
greatly cared to live," if we may parody Arthur's address to his erring
queen. The Club has not made a vacancy in its ranks by requesting the
arbitrary member to withdraw. But his conduct was deemed, on the report
of the Committee, worthy of being considered by the Club. And that is
always something. In an age when clubs are really almost universal, most
men have had occasion to wish that their society would sit occasionally
on some of the members. The member who bullies the servants is a not
uncommon specimen of the club-bore. He may be called the bore truculent.
He has been excellently caricatured by Thackeray in the "Book of Snobs."

There we have the club-bore who makes such a fuss about his chop, and
scolds the waiter so terribly. "Look at it, sir; is it a chop for a
gentleman? Smell it, sir; is it fit to put on a club table?" These, or
such as these, are the words of the gallant terror of waiters. Now it is
clearly unjust to make a waiter responsible for the errors, however
grave, of a very different character, the cook. But this mistake the
arbitrary gent is continually making. The cook is safe in his
inaccessible stronghold, down below. He cannot be paraded for punishment
on the quarter-deck, where Captain Bragg, of the Gunboat and Torpedo