A Conscientious Uncle

There was not a large gathering at the last meeting of the Criterion club, but it was an earnest one. There was a noticeable absence of undue levity, and the exchange of that meaningless persiflage so common when gentlemen of social predilections congregate was as if by common consent tabooed. The meeting was on the Monday evening after the memorable dry Sunday of May 8, 1887. Whether the somewhat subdued tone of the club was due to that great metropolitan phenomenon the historian of the club does not presume to say. But he has his opinion, and it is one which no amount of evidence to the contrary can change. The exhibition lunch on the caterer’s sideboard seemed more shrunk by age than usual, and showed so plainly the need of the renovating hand of the property man that there was no danger of any person, present for the first time, committing the error once made by a visitor, who, looking about the apartments, sought to sample the Saratoga chips, the English cheese, and the tempting ham, apparently just in its first slicing down to the bone. The visitor was not aware of the fact that the layout was a gift from Shed Shook and Jim Collier on their retirement from the management of the Union Square theatre some years ago, and a relic of the stage properties under that management. When Shakespeare wrote, “Age cannot wither nor custom stale its infinite variety,” he had not this bric-a-brac lunch of the Criterion club on the line of his prophetic vision. And on Monday night it showed so palpably the need of retouching that Caterer Collins humanely covered it with a cloth and hid it from the unpitying glare of the gas light above it.

“If the members present,” by and by spoke up Brother Hal Young, late of Cincinnati, “would be pleased to hear a story in which there is no extravagant straining after either a ludicrous or an ultra dramatic effect, in which I will not attempt to woo the comic muse nor… Read More