The procedure is to make a few long
speeches, praise the club, and re-elect the Board. Perfectly simple.
But--did you say _Liberal_ Club?" He used to sit on the Board himself,
too!
A visiting Scotch socialist proclaimed it, without passion, a "hell of
a place," and some of its most striking anarchistic leaders, "vera
interestin' but terrible damn fools"! But he was, doubtless, an
eccentric though an experienced and dyed-in-the-wool socialist who had
lectured over half the globe. It is recorded of him that once when a
certain young and energetic Village editor had been holding forth
uninterruptedly and dramatically for an hour on the rights of the
working-man, etc., etc., the visiting socialist, who had been watching
his fervent gesticulations with absorbed attention, suddenly leaned
forward and seized the lapel of his coat.
"Mon!" he exclaimed earnesly, "do ye play tennis?"
Just what is the Liberal Club?
You may have contradictory answers commensurate with the number of
members you interrogate. One will tell you that it is a fake; one that
it is the only vehicle of free speech; Arthur Moss says it is "the
most _il_-liberal club in the world"! Floyd Dell says it is
paramountly a medium for entertainment, and that it is "not so much a
clearing house of new ideas as of new people"!
The Liberal Club goes up, and the Liberal Club goes down.
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