decency.

There was the Hell-fire Club, where they played at being impious. It was

a joust of sacrilege. Hell was at auction there to the highest bidder in

blasphemy.

There was the Butting Club, so called from its members butting folks

with their heads. They found some street porter with a wide chest and a

stupid countenance. They offered him, and compelled him, if necessary,

to accept a pot of porter, in return for which he was to allow them to

butt him with their heads four times in the chest, and on this they

betted. One day a man, a great brute of a Welshman named Gogangerdd,

expired at the third butt. This looked serious. An inquest was held, and

the jury returned the following verdict: "Died of an inflation of the

heart, caused by excessive drinking." Gogangerdd had certainly drunk the

contents of the pot of porter.

There was the Fun Club. Fun is like cant, like humour, a word

which is untranslatable. Fun is to farce what pepper is to salt. To get

into a house and break a valuable mirror, slash the family portraits,

poison the dog, put the cat in the aviary, is called "cutting a bit of

fun." To give bad news which is untrue, whereby people put on mourning

by mistake, is fun. It was fun to cut a square hole in the Holbein at

Hampton Court. Fun would have been proud to have broken the arm of the

Venus of Milo. Under James II. a young millionaire lord who had during

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The Man Who Laughs