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 club had to have some sort of name, and the more thoughtful and detached among them, who saw the club steadily and saw it whole, considered the point with ripe reflection, and finally called their little society the Lunatic Asylum.

"We might all stick straws in our hair for dinner, as the Romans crowned themselves with roses for the banquet," observed Hood. "It would correspond to dressing for dinner; I don't know what else we could do to vary the vulgar society trick of all wearing the same sort of white waistcoats."

"All wearing strait waistcoats, I suppose," said Crane.

"We might each dine separately in a padded cell, if it comes to that," said Hood; "but there seems to be something lacking in it considered as a social evening."

Here Wilding White, who was then in a monastic phase, intervened eagerly. He explained that in some monasteries a monk of peculiar holiness was allowed to become a hermit in an inner cell, and proposed a similar arrangement at the club. Hood, with his more mellow rationalism, intervened with a milder amendment. He suggested that a large padded chair should represent the padded cell, and be