There is one club in London that has the reputation of never closing its doors from one year's end to the end of another. I refer to the Garrick. But I am afraid that the reputation is not entirely merited, because a few years ago the did shut up for a few weeks to carry out some structural alterations indispensable to the comfort of its members. But even then the Garrick proudly refused to ask for shelter elsewhere. The famed of does not exchange hospitalities with kindred institutions for an excellent reason. If you accept favours you must confer them. No doubt the Athenaeum would be glad to shelter the Garrick, but it is just possible that the sacred smoking-room, with its Clarkson Stansfield over the mantelpiece and its John Gilbert between the windows, is full enough at all events to do without an invasion of scientists and ecclesiastics. Be this as it may, the Garrick neither grants nor seeks hospitality. With the solitary exception to which I have referred, it has been continuously open for something like half a century. May its shadow never grow less. That shadow was