Chapter 1 - Page 2

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
variety of specimens ever since, in my audacious youth, I
collected the Athenaeum. At some future day, perhaps, I may tell
tales of some of the other bodies to which I have belonged. I will
recount the doings of the Dead Man's Shoes Society (that
superficially immoral, but darkly justifiable communion); I will
explain the curious origin of the Cat and Christian, the name of
which has been so shamefully misinterpreted; and the world shall
know at last why the Institute of Typewriters coalesced with the
Red Tulip League. Of the Ten Teacups, of course I dare not say a
word. The first of my revelations, at any rate, shall be concerned
with the Club of Queer Trades, which, as I have said, was one of
this class, one which I was almost bound to come across sooner or
later, because of my singular hobby. The wild youth of the
metropolis call me facetiously 'The King of Clubs'. They also call
me 'The Cherub', in allusion to the roseate and youthful
appearance I have presented in my declining years. I only hope the
spirits in the better world have as good dinners as I have. But
the finding of the Club of Queer Trades has one very curious thing
about it. The most curious thing about it is that it was not
discovered by me; it was discovered by my friend Basil Grant, a
star-gazer, a mystic, and a man who scarcely stirred out of his
attic.

Very few people knew anything of Basil; not because he was in the
least unsociable, for if a man out of the street had walked into
his rooms he would have kept him talking till morning. Few people
knew him, because, like all poets, he could do without them; he
welcomed a human face as he might welcome a sudden blend of colour
in a sunset; but he no more felt the need of going out to parties
than he felt the need of altering the sunset clouds. He lived in a
queer and comfortable garret in the roofs of Lambeth. He was
surrounded by a chaos of things that were in odd contrast to the
slums around him; old fantastic books, swords, armour--the whole
dust-hole of romanticism. But his face, amid all these quixotic
relics, appeared curiously keen and modern--a powerful, legal
face. And no one but I knew who he was.

Long ago as it is, everyone remembers the terrible and grotesque
scene that occurred in--, when one of the most acute and forcible
of the English judges suddenly went mad on the bench. I had my own
view of that occurrence; but about the facts