I

We are accustomed to speak with a certain light irony of the tendency which women have to gossip, as if the sin itself, if it is a sin, were of the gentler sex, and could by no chance be a masculine peccadillo.  So far as my observation goes, men are as much given to small talk as women, and it is undeniable that we have produced the highest type of gossiper extant.  Where will you find, in or out of literature, such another droll, delightful, chatty busybody as Samuel Pepys, Esq., Secretary to the Admiralty in the reigns of those fortunate gentlemen Charles II and James II of England?  He is the king of tattlers, as Shakespeare is the king of poets.

If it came to a matter of pure gossip, I would back Our Club against the Sorosis or any women’s club in existence.  Whenever you see in your drawing-room four or five young fellows lounging in easy chairs, cigar in hand, and now and then bringing their heads together over the small round Japanese table which is always the pivot of these social circles, you may be sure that they are discussing Tom’s engagement, or Dick’s extravagance, or Harry’s hopeless passion for the younger Miss Fleurdelys.  It is here old Tippleton gets execrated for that everlasting bon mot of his which was quite a success at dinner-parties forty years ago; it is here the belle of the season passes under the scalpels of merciless young surgeons; it is here B’s financial condition is handled in a way that would make B’s hair stand on end; it is here, in short, that everything is canvassed—­everything that happens in our set, I mean—­much that never happens, and a great deal that could not possibly happen.  It was at Our Club that I learned the particulars of the Van Twiller affair.

It was great entertainment to Our Club, the Van Twiller affair, though it was rather a joyless thing, I fancy, for Van Twiller.  To understand the case fully, it should be understood that Ralph Van Twiller is one of the proudest and most sensitive men living.  He is a lineal descendant of Wouter Van Twiller, the famous old Dutch governor of New York—­Nieuw Amsterdam, as it was then; his ancestors have always been burgomasters or admirals or generals, and his mother is the Mrs. Vanrensselaer Vanzandt Van Twiller whose magnificent place will be pointed out to you on the right bank of the Hudson as you pass up the historic river toward Idlewild.  Ralph is about twenty-five years old.  Birth made him a gentleman, and the rise of real estate—­some of it in the family since the old governor’s time—­made him a millionaire.  It was a kindly fairy that stepped in and made him a good fellow also.  Fortune, I take it, was in her most jocund mood when she heaped her gifts in this fashion on Van Twiller, who was, and will be again, when this cloud blows over, the flower of Our Club.