I hate being in a minority. More especially do I detest being in such a decidedly pronounced minority as one joins when one drives into the City about six o'clock in the evening against a vast current of toilers of commerce homeward bound. It may be weak, but I feel it all the same. I seem to divine the thoughts of the omnibus driver as he gazes down upon me from his exalted perch—he does not think my shirt is clean. His sixteen "outsides" bestow upon me a supercilious look that conveys to me that they opine I am merely cabbing it to the station en route for a "suburban hop." But I bear up under it all, and think of the magnificent banquet of which they, poor things, know nothing, and I am beginning to feel quite proud when a brute of a fellow in charge of a van catches his wheel in that of my cab and nearly pitches me out. I hurriedly decide to decline the next invitation I receive for a City dinner.
MENU OF THE DINNER GIVEN TO ME BY THE LOTOS CLUB, NEW YORK.
However, I live to reach Cannon Street and the mansion of the "Gill."
I am soon ushered into the Cedar Room, where I am received by the Master and the Wardens in their robes.
I mingle with the Guilders and their guests, and find the members of the Worshipful Company informing their friends that they are now in the Cedar Room; then they sniff, and the guests sniff and say "Charming!" Then they remark, "What a lot of pencils it would make!" and laugh, and the artists present agree that City folks are shoppy.
On a side table the stranger sees a number of what appear to him diagrams of City improvements, with mains and drains and all sorts of things, but on closer inspection they turn out to be the plans of the table. You discover one bearing your name, and opposite it a red cross, or perhaps I ought to say an exaggerated asterisk.
When you have taken your seat downstairs in the Banqueting Hall you inspect your plan, from which you find that you can tell who everybody is. Capital idea!
"Ah, seat Number 24, the great Professor Snuffers!"