is hardly likely to be in the form calculated to become literature.”

“That’s just what we want you for, Billy,” Bedford replied. “You know how to give a thing that last finishing-touch which will make it go, where otherwise it might forever remain a fixture in the author’s pigeon-hole. When our stories are told and type-written, we want you to go over them, correct the type-writer’s spelling, and make whatever alterations you may think, after consulting with us, to be necessary. Then, if the tales are ever published as a collection, you can have your name on the title-page as editor.”

“Thanks,” answered Billy, gratefully. “I shall be charmed.”

And then he hurried back to his apartments, and threw himself on his bed in a paroxysm of laughter which seemed never-ending, but which in reality did not last more than three hours at the most.

Hudson Rivers of Hastings, when the idea was suggested to him, was the most enthusiastic of all—so enthusiastic that the Snobbe boys thought that, in their own parlance, he ought to be “called down.”

“It’s bad form to go crazy over an idea,” they said. “If Huddy’s going to behave this way about it, he ought to be kept out altogether. It is all very well to experience emotions, but no well-bred person ever shows them—that is, not in Yonkers.”

“Ah, but you don’t understand Huddy,” said Tenafly Paterson. “Huddy has two great ambitions in this life. One is to get into the Authors’ Club, and the other is to marry a certain young woman whose home is in Boston and whose ambitions are Bostonian. To appear before the world as a writer, which the Dreamers will give him a chance to do at small expense, will help him on to the realization of his most cherished hopes; in fact, Huddy told me that he thought we ought to publish the proceedings of the club at least four times a year, so establishing a quarterly magazine, to which we shall all be regular contributors. He thinks it will pay for itself, and knows it will make us all famous, because Billy Jones is certain to see that everything that goes out is first chop, and I’m inclined to believe Huddy is right. The continual drip, drip, drip of a drop of water on a stone will gradually wear away the stone, and, by Jove! before we know it, by constant hammering away at this dream scheme of ours we’ll gain a position that won’t be altogether unenviable.”

“That’s so,” said Billy. “I wouldn’t wonder if with the constant drip, drip, drip of your drops of ink and inspiration you could wear the public out in a very little while. The only troublesome thing will be in getting a publisher for your quarterly.”

“I haven’t any idea that we want a publisher,” said Bedford Parke. “We’ve got capital enough among ourselves to bring the thing out, and so I say, what’s the use of letting anybody else in on the profits? A publisher wouldn’t give us more than ten per cent. in royalties. If we publish it ourselves we’ll get the whole thing.”

“Yes,” assented Tom Snobbe, “and, what’s more, it will have a higher tone to it if we can say on the title-page ‘Privately printed,’ eh? That’ll make everybody in society want one for his library, and everybody not in society will be crazy to get it because it’s aristocratic all through.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” said Billy Jones. “I’ve no doubt you are right, only I’d think you’d sell more copies if you’d also put on the title-page ‘For circulation among the élite only.’ Then every man, woman, or child who happened to get a copy would take pride in showing it to others, who would immediately send for it, because not having it would seem to indicate that one was not in the swim.”

Nor were the others to whom the proposition was advanced any less desirous to take part. They saw, one and all, opportunities for a very desirable distinction through the medium of the Dreamers, and within two weeks of the original formation of the plan the club was definitely organized. Physicians were consulted by the various members as to what edibles contained the properties most likely to produce dreams of the nature desired, and at the organization meeting all but Billy Jones were well stocked with suggestions for the inauguration dinner. Hudson Rivers was of the opinion that there should be six courses at that dinner, each one of Welsh-rabbit, but varying in form, such as Welsh-rabbit purée, for instance, in which the cheese should have the consistency of pea-soup rather than of leather; such as Welsh-rabbit pâté, in which the cheese should rest within walls of pastry instead of lying quiescent and inviting like a yellow mantle upon a piece of toast; then a Welsh-rabbit roast; and so on all through the banquet, rabbit upon rabbit, the whole washed down with the accepted wines of the ordinary banquet, which experience had taught them were likely in themselves to assist in the work of dream-making.

AND SO TO DREAM

Monty St. Vincent observed that he had no doubt that the Welsh-rabbit dinner would work wonders, but he confessed his inability to see any reason why the club should begin its labors by committing suicide. He added that, for his part, he would not eat six Welsh rabbits at one sitting if he was sure of Shakespeare’s immortality as his reward, because, however attractive immortality was, he preferred mortality in the flesh to the other in the abstract. If the gentlemen would begin the meal with a grilled lobster apiece, he suggested, going thence by an easy stage to a devilled bird, rounding up with a “slip-on”—which, in brief, is a piece of mince-pie smothered in a blanket of molten cheese—he was ready to take the plunge, but further than this he would not go. The other members were disposed to agree with Monty. They thought the idea of eating six Welsh rabbits in a single evening was preposterous, and that in making such a suggestion Huddy was inspired by one of but two possible motives—that he wished to leap to the foremost position in imaginative literature at one bound, or else was prompted, by jealousy of what the others might do, to wish to kill the club at its very start. Huddy denied these aspersions upon his motives with vociferous indignation, and to show his sincerity readily acquiesced in the adoption of Monty St. Vincent’s menu as already outlined.

The date of the dinner was set, Billy Jones was made master of ceremonies, the dinner was ordered, and eaten amid scenes of such revelry as was possible in the presence of the Snobbe boys, to whom anything in the way of unrestrained enjoyment was a bore and bad form, and at its conclusion the revellers went straight home to bed and to dream.

Two weeks later they met again over viands of a more digestible nature than those which lent interest to the first dinner, and told the tales which follow. And I desire to add here that my report of this dinner and the literature there produced is based entirely upon the stenographer’s notes, coupled with additional information of an interesting kind furnished me by my friend William Jones, Esq., Third Assistant Exchange Editor of The Weekly Oracle, a Journal of To-day, Yesterday, and To-morrow.