The Club has been
convened in many different places: in resorts of pride and in
low-ceiled reeky taphouses; in hotels where those clear cubes of
unprofitable ice knock tinklingly in the goblets; in the brightly
tinted cellars of Greenwich Village; in the saloons of ships. But
the Club would give a false impression of its mind and heart if it
allowed any one to suppose that Food is the chief object of its
quest. It is true that Man, bitterly examined, is merely a vehicle
for units of nourishing combustion; but on those occasions when the
Club feels most truly Itself it rises above such considerations.
The form and pressure of the time (to repeat Hamlet's phrase) is
such that thoughtful men--and of such the Club is exclusively
composed: men of great heart, men of nice susceptibility--are
continually oppressed by the fumbling, hasty, and insignificant
manner in which human contacts are accomplished. Let us even say,
_masculine_ contacts: for the first task of any philosopher being to
simplify his problem so that he can examine it clearly and with less
distraction, the Club makes a great and drastic purge by sweeping
away altogether the enigmatic and frivolous sex and disregarding it,
at any rate during the hours of convivial session. The Club is
troubled to note that in the intolerable rabies and confusion of
this business life men meet merely in a kind of convulsion or horrid
passion of haste and perplexity.
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