“As for that, it is pretty hard to find a club without a streak of yellow in it. We’ve got to work in a vein of novelty somehow. They call it making the club attractive. The Phidias went in for Shakespeare at first. Then we found that in order to get new members we had to take up Browning too. That was well enough for a while. When the younger members got restless, we had Miss de Villeforte Volé lecture to us on ‘Degeneracy.’ This delighted everybody except Mrs. Bentwell, who lectures herself on ‘The Ascent of Man.’ After that we had some talks by Professor Prinks on the ‘Marriage Customs of Central Africa.’ There were some criticisms of this. We are bound to have objectors, and sub-objectors—women like Mrs. Prittle—do you know Mrs. Prittle? No? Well, Mrs. Prittle is one of those gorgeously upholstered women who rise with a tremendous rustling and ‘agree with what the last speaker has said.’ Just now there is a row on because some of them want to take up the North Pole.”
“What on earth do they want to do with that?” I demanded.
“I haven’t the least idea. Probably they haven’t. But they would tell you that there isn’t anything else left.”
“Anything else left?”
“You see, things last such a little while, at least with the quick clubs. Why, the Thursday Club did the ‘Origin of Species’ and ‘First Principles’ in one afternoon. We call ourselves very deliberate at the Phidias; that is to say, we never have more than one topic for a meeting; but we shall do Schopenhauer’s works to-morrow morning after our annual business meeting.”
Something in my look must have excited her suspicion, for she went on: “But I absolutely forbid your commiseration. Except for the strain of the competition, it all is very nice, I assure you. We have beautiful times.”
“Of course you do,” I hastened to say. “Even a man can see that. Do you suppose that a man who had done Sienkiewicz and d’Annunzio and Pestalozzi this afternoon, and was going to do Pythagoras, prison reform, the Brahmanas, the Zend-Avesta and bimetallism to-morrow morning, could look as well as you do?”
“I suppose,” she said, looking at me with her laughing, unperplexed eyes, “that we can do these things because we can do more with our subjective minds than you can.”
“So you have been at the Subjective Minds too?”
“One can’t get along at all nowadays without psychology. How should we ever have got back to ghost stories again without it? We had a delightful ghost afternoon at the Artemis. Then it all seems to come in well with the astral body business. Isn’t it a pity that we can’t be in several places at the same time?”