comfortable arm-chair cushion:  eyes close:  soft nasal music is heard.  Am I telling Club secrets?  Of afternoons, after lunch, I say, scores of sensible fogies have a doze.  Perhaps I have fallen asleep over that very book to which “Finis” has just been written.  “And if the writer sleeps, what happens to the readers?” says Jones, coming down upon me with his lightning wit.  What?  You did sleep over it?  And a very good thing too.  These eyes have more than once seen a friend dozing over pages which this hand has written.  There is a vignette somewhere in one of my books of a friend so caught napping with “Pendennis,” or the “Newcomes,” in his lap and if a writer can give you a sweet soothing, harmless sleep, has he not done you a kindness?  So is the author who excites and interests you worthy of your thanks and benedictions.  I am troubled with fever and ague, that seizes me at odd intervals and prostrates me for a day.  There is cold fit, for which, I am thankful to say, hot brandy-and-water is prescribed, and this induces hot fit, and so on.  In one or two of these fits I have read novels with the most fearful contentment of mind.  Once, on the Mississippi, it was my dearly beloved “Jacob Faithful:”  once at Frankfort O. M., the delightful “Vingt Ans Apres” of Monsieur Dumas:  once at Tunbridge wells, the thrilling “Woman in White:”  and these books gave me amusement from morning till sunset.  I remember those ague fits with a great deal of pleasure and gratitude.  Think of a whole day in bed, and a good novel for a companion!  No cares:  no remorse about idleness:  no visitors:  and the Woman in White or the Chevalier d’Artagnan to tell me stories from dawn to night!  “Please, ma’am, my master’s compliments, and can he have the third volume?” (This message was sent to an astonished friend and neighbor who lent me, volume by volume, the W. in W.) How do you like your novels?  I like mine strong, “hot with,” and no mistake:  no love-making:  no observations about society:  little dialogue, except where the characters are bullying each other:  plenty of fighting:  and a villain in the cupboard, who is to suffer tortures just before Finis.  I don’t like your melancholy Finis.  I never read the history of a consumptive heroine twice.  If I might give a short hint to an impartial writer (as the Examiner used to say in old days), it would be to act, not a la mode le pays de Pole (I think that was the phraseology), but always to give quarter.  In the story of Philip, just come to an end, I have the permission of the author to state, that he was going to drown the two villains of the piece—­a certain Doctor F——­ and a certain Mr. T. H——­ on board the “President,” or some other tragic ship—­but you see I relented.  I pictured to myself Firmin’s ghastly face amid the crowd of shuddering people on that reeling deck in the lonely ocean, and thought, “Thou ghastly lying wretch, thou shalt not be drowned:  thou shalt have a fever only; a knowledge of thy danger;