earthen pan to the abdominal region of the Prisoner at the Bar!” In the midst of the direst torment that Scarab could inflict, I would never give the Court a clue to our hidden joys.
There is, I say, a smoking-room in that Club House. The figures on the clock which stands on the chimney-piece point thus:
We are concerned with a.m., not with p.m. The rites are on foot—the sacrificial crowd is assembled. The odours of the incense hang heavily on the perfumed air. You see upon the edges of the marble tables batteries of cigar-ashes disposed in quaint rows, indicative of the spots where the more earnest smokers have taken up their position, and exchange lofty thoughts with their fellows. Here and there, there is a crystal vase—such an one as is commonly used in the celebration of the mysteries; it contains sometimes liquid amber—sometimes pure and effervescent lymph, strangely tinged with the aromatic flavour of the juniper berry: in either case you will see in it lumps of unmelted ice, and a long straw, no doubt to remind the philosophic reveller of the vanity of human enjoyments. The members are strangely attired—they wear blouses which are buttoned up to their chins, and each man has on a skull-cap, from beneath which not a lock of hair escapes. All are smoking—very hard.
Reader—this is a solemn moment in your life. You are admitted to a glimpse of the mysteries of “The Gone Coon Club.” Notice the buttons on the blouses; on each of them is engraved in fair characters the letters G.C., inscribed in a cypress wreath. Let me warn all whom it may concern, to dismiss from their minds all thought that the scene which follows will afford them the slightest clue to the ordinary conversation—if indeed conversation ever is ordinary—in the smoking-room of the Gone Coons. The occasion is no ordinary one. The Club is composed of oppressed husbands, who, driven to utter despair by the misery of their domestic arrangements, find means from time to time to shake off their chains, and to meet in the G.C. Club House—where that may be, find out who can. Not that any gentleman who may be groaning under the yoke of a stern task-mistress need therefore despair. The G.C.s have large hearts. They are ever on the watch for such cases of domestic distress as would entitle the sufferer to their sympathy, and the privileges of their society. When such an one is found, and his character offers fair guarantees of worth and discretion, his case is taken into consideration by the Committee. If their decision is favourable, he is sounded by an emissary of the Club. So dexterously is this managed, that cases have been known in which his proximate liberation has been announced to the captive, even when he had been attending upon his owner, and carrying a pyramid of cloaks and shawls, or receiving her guests upon the landing-place of her drawing-room, and endeavouring, in a large white cravat, to entrap unwary young men into marrying her daughters. There never has been known an instance of a refusal to join the G.C.C. When the victim has once expressed his eagerness to avail himself of the means of escape, a form is handed to him, which he is required to fill up. Thus it runs:
This application is next taken into consideration. If the result is satisfactory, the victim is directed to be at a particular place at a particular time, and, in due course, is introduced into the club. He is then informed by the chairman of the committee of the various pretences or subterfuges by help of which an escape from the conjugal domicile may be most safely effected, and with fewest chances of detection, and then he is finally initiated into the greater mysteries.
It would, of course, be highly injudicious, and, in point of fact, amount to a scandalous breach of confidence, to suggest any connection between the G.C.s and those Masonic Rites of which the secret has been so well kept. There have certainly existed dark suspicions in the female mind upon the subject. It is not for me to dispel them.
The subject under the consideration of the members upon the night in question was the recent trial of Barber v. Barber in the Divorce Court. The danger of the situation, as far as British husbands were concerned, seemed to be fully understood on all sides. Where would it end? The result of the recent changes in the law