And he walked in—dear old Toole in an old coat.
I have given many another sociable dinner, but none with greater success than this at which I turned Burnand's accidentally unhappy speech into a Happy Thought.
When I was offered the chairmanship of the dinner of the London Thirteen Club, it was with a light heart that I accepted. I was under the impression that the dinner was to be a private kind of affair—a small knot of men endowed with common sense meeting to express their contempt for ignorant and harmful superstition. I had already had the honour of being elected an honorary member of the Club, but somehow or other I had never attended any of its gatherings, nor had I met with one of its members.
THIRTEEN CLUB BANQUET. THE TABLE DECORATIONS.
When the time came, it was with a heavy heart that I fulfilled my promise. This Thirteen Club idea, which hails from America, had in the meantime been "boomed," as our cousins across the Herring Pond would put it, into an affair of great magnitude. It was taken up by the Press, and paragraphs, leaderettes and leaders appeared in nearly every journal all over the country. This is the style of paragraph I received through a Press cutting agency from numberless papers:—
MR. W. H. BLANCH.