looks, as inspired me at once with love and terror. As I was gazing on him, to my unspeakable joy, he took a quiver of arrows from his shoulder, in order to make me a present of it; but, as I was reaching out my hand to receive it of him, I knocked it against a chair, and by that means awaked. ADDISON. THE EVERLASTING CLUB. No. 72. HAVING already given my reader an account of several extraordinary clubs, both antient and modern, I did not design to have troubled him with any more narratives of this nature; but I have lately received information of a club, which I can call neither antient nor modern, that I dare say will be no less surprising to my reader than it was to myself; for which reason I shall communicate it to the public as one of the greatest curiosities in its kind. A friend of mine complaining of a tradesman who is related to him, after having represented him as a very idle worthless fellow, who neglected his family, and spent most of his time over a bottle, told me, to conclude his character, that he was a member of the Everlasting Club. So very odd a title raised my curiosity to inquire into the nature of a club that had such a sounding name; upon which my friend gave me the following account: The Everlasting Club consists of a hundred members, who divide the whole twenty-four hours among them in such a manner, that the club sits day and night from one end of the year to another; no party presuming to rise till they are relieved by those who are are in course to succeed them. By this means a mem→ ber of the Everlasting Club never wants company; for, though he is not upon duty himself, he is sure to find some who are; so that, if he be disposed to take a whet, a nooning, an evening's draught, or a bottle after midnight, he goes to the club, and finds a knot of friends to his mind. It is a maxim in this club, That the steward never dies; for, as they succeed one another by way of rotation, no man is to quit the great elbow-chair, which stands at the upper end of the table, till his successor is in readiness to fill it: insomuch that there has not been a sede vacante in the memory of man. This club was instituted towards the end (or, as some of them say, about the middle) of the civil wars, and continued without interruption till the time of the great fire, which burnt them out, and dispersed them for several weeks. The steward at that time maintained his post till he had like to have been blown up with a neighbouring house (which was demolished in order to stop the fire); and would not leave the chair at last till he had emptied all the bottles upon the table, and received repeated directions from the club to withdraw himself. This steward is frequently talked of in the club, and looked upon by every member of it as a greater man than the famous captain mentioned in my lord Clarendon, who was burnt in his ship because he would not quit it without orders. It is said that towards the close of 1700, being the great year of jubilee, the club had it under consideration whether they should break up or continue their session; but, after many speeches and debates, it was at length agreed to sit out the other century. This resolution passed in a general club nemine contradicente. Having given this short account of the institution and continuation of the Everlasting Club, I should here endeavour to say something of the manners and characters of its several members, which I shall do according to the best lights I have received in this matter. It appears by their books in general, that since their first institution they have smoked fifty tons of tobacco, drank thirty thousand butts of ale, one thousand hogsheads of red port, two hundred barrels of brandy, and a kilderkin of small beer. There has been likewise a great consumption of cards. It is also said that they observe the law in Ben Jonson's club, which orders the fire to be always kept in (focus perennis esto), as well for the convenience of lighting their pipes, as to cure the dampness of the club-room. They have an old woman in the nature of a Vestal, whose business it is to cherish and perpetuate the fire, which burns from generation to generation, and has seen the glass-house fires in and out above a hundred times. The Everlasting Club treats all other clubs with an eye of contempt, and talks even of the Kit-Cat and October as of a couple of upstarts. Their ordinary discourse (as much as I have been able to learn of it) turns altogether upon such adventures as have passed in their own assembly; of members who have taken the glass in their turns for a week together, without stirring out of the club; of others who have smoked a hundred pipes at a sitting; of others who have not missed their morning's draught for twenty years together. Sometimes they speak in raptures of a run of ale in king Charles's reign; and sometimes reflect with astonishment upon games at whist, which have been miraculously recovered by members of the so VOL. I. S ciety, ciety, when in all human probability the case was de sperate. They delight in several old catches, which they sing at all hours, to encourage one another to moisten their elay, and grow immortal by drinking; with many other edifying exhortations of the like nature. There are four general clubs held in a year, at which times they fill up vacancies, appoint waiters, confirm the old fire-maker, or elect a new one, settle contributions for coals, pipes, tobacco, and other necessaries. The senior member has outlived the whole club twice over, and has been drunk with the grandfathers of some of the present sitting members. ADDISON. BRUNETTA AND PHILLIS, A STORY. THE IN the year 1688, and on the same day of that year, were born in Cheapside, London, two females of exquisite feature and shape; the one we shall call Brunetta, the other Phillis. A close intimacy between their parents made each of them the first acquaintance the other knew in the world. They played, dressed babies, acted visitings, learned to dance and make curtsies together. They were inseparable companions in all the little entertainments their tender years were capable of which innocent happiness continued till the beginning of their fifteenth year, when it happened that Mrs. Phillis had a head-dress on, which became her so very well, that, instead of being beheld any more with pleasure for their amity to each other, the eyes of the neighbourhood were turned to remark them with comparison of their beauty. They now no longer enjoyed the ease of mind and pleasing indolence in which they were formerly happy, but all their words and actions were misinterpreted by each other, and every excellence in their speech and behaviour was looked upon as an act of emulation to surpass the other. These beginnings of disinclination soon improved into a formality of behaviour, a general coldness, and, by natural steps, into an irreconcileable hatred. These two rivals for the reputation of beauty were, in their stature, countenance, and mien, so very much alike, that, if you were speaking of them in their absence, the words in which you described the one must give you some idea of the other. They were hardly distinguishable, you would think, when they were apart, though extremely different when together. What made their enmity the more entertaining to all the rest of their sex, was, that, in detraction from each other, neither could fall upon terms which did not hit herself as much as her adversary. Their nights grew restless with meditation of new dresses to outvie each other, and inventing new devices to recall admirers, who observed the charms of the one rather than those of the other, on the last meeting. Their colours failed at each other's appearance, flushed with pleasure at the report of a disadvantage, and their countenances withered upon instances of applause. The decencies to which women are obliged made these virgins stifle their resentment so far as not to break into open violences, while they equally suffered the torments of a regulated anger. Their mothers, as it is usual, engaged |