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ONCE A CLOWN, ALWAYS A CLOWN and dinners known as Gambols were held weekly for a time at the Gaiety Restaurant, then irregularly until the circle died of inanition about 1879. It had lived long enough to plant a seed across the Atlantic, though unwittingly. Montague had borrowed the name and the terminology, apparently, without consulting his London confreres, and it is doubtful if the twelve diners at the Gaiety knew of the existence of the American offshoot. All seems to have been forgiven, however, for in 1896 the crook, bell, badge of office and other ritualistic paraphernalia were presented to the New York Lambs, and the few surviving members of the long dissolved London club were elected honorary life members. Two of them, Sir Squire Bancroft and Charles Collette, still live.

The orphaned flock of muttons, bleating very softly, wandered on wobbly young legs from the Union Square Hotel to the Matchbox, to Wallack's Theater, to the Monument House, to Number 19 East Sixteenth Street in the next few years, still only a supper club. In 1877 it was incorporated. When Montague died in San Francisco the following year its numbers had grown to sixty. Another year later, when Harry Beckett retired as treasurer,