"Unless the publication of this letter leads to some favourable offers I shall send my unknown, but hymeneally disposed, correspondent this sketch of a lady capable of looking after so young and venturesome a man, seated at the docks waiting his arrival, for unless he has a sketch or photograph how is he to identify his 'love' amidst the crowd which greets the homeward-bound steamer?"
And I have preserved a few out of the scores of letters I received, to hand to this gentleman should I ever have the pleasure of meeting him.
Judging from this, the manager of a matrimonial agency must indeed get a curious insight into the minds of the maids of Merry England. This single experience has been quite enough for me.
My First City Dinner--A Minnow against the Stream--Those Table Plans--Chaos--The City Alderman, Past and Present--Whistler's Lollipops--Odd Volumes--Exchanging Names--Ye Red Lyon Clubbe--The Pointed Beards--Baltimore Oysters--The Sound Money Dinner--To Meet General Boulanger--A Lunch at Washington--No Speeches.
THE THIRTEEN CLUB--What it was--How it was Boomed--Gruesome Details--Squint-Eyed Waiters--Superstitious Absentees--My Reasons for being Present--'Arry of _Punch_--The Lost "Vocal" Chords--The Undergraduate and the Undertaker--Model Speeches--Albert Smith An Atlantic Contradiction--The White Horse--The White Feather--Exit 13.
Probably no meal varies so much in the time of its celebration as that most important one, dinner. Some people still exist who dine at one o'clock; some also there are who daily observe that fearsome feast yclept "High Tea." The majority of people dine at various times ranging between seven o'clock and half-past eight, but there is one individual alone who dines at six. It is the City Guilder. Time was when City princes dwelt in City palaces, and rose at five, breakfasted at seven, lunched at twelve, dined at five and retired to rest at ten; but nowadays these magnates are lords of the City from ten till four, and of the West End and the suburbs for the remainder of the twenty-four hours, and they would in the ordinary course of things invite you to dinner at eight o'clock or so. What inscrutable law, then, compels them to hold their state dinners at the dread hour of six?