Although not a flourishing community in the matter of finances, there were instances in plenty of great kindness and liberality displayed by Scuffler unto Scuffler. There were times when they brought out their myrrh and cassia, their spikenard and oil of price. When, one bitter winter morning, an unhappy Scuffler came shivering out of the debtors' side of the City Prison, they did not beat about the bush and hesitate at receiving him. Neither did they stand on any dignity or whisper any threat of expulsion. They did nothing of this kind, they simply made him drunk. It is, we hope, quite clear that these gentlemen were not professors of any sort of austerity.
It may have already dawned upon the reader that there can hardly have existed a fraternity boasting any such name as the one we have allotted to it. In this much the reader is perfectly right. The club had a title strikingly similar to that which we have adopted, and the thin disguise has only been suggested from a circumstance that we may at once frankly disclose. Suspended over the club chimney-piece was the usual notice-board, a perfect encyclopædia in its way, and covered with a trellis-work of crimson tape for the purpose of retaining the various _affiches_. In this way were displayed, from day to day, the cards and letters intended for the members of the club. For so long a time did they frequently remain exhibited, and so complete a disregard did the owners manifest for their property, that the appearance of each packet often grew quite familiar to the frequenters of the place. The individuality of the writer might be often guessed from the evidence of the various superscriptions, and when all other sources of amusement failed the contents of this stationary post-office formed a fair staple of banter and merry comment. There were to be seen perfumed and coronetted envelopes addressed to quasi-fashionable members. These were gentlemen who never seemed to call and claim their belongings. Then there were letters reputed to emanate from the great publishing houses, and there were missives surmounted with well-known theatrical monograms that were alleged to forward brilliant offers of engagements. In fact it was by the aid of such simple nest-eggs as these that the men managed to establish reputations. But there was one class of correspondence that obviously was not intended for much publicity. These were the letters couched in feminine handwriting, none of the neatest, whose tremulous writers, in addressing their envelopes, rarely succeeded in hitting off the proper style and title of the club. The early looker-in might have made a useful study of these shaky epistles,--scrawls painfully executed by milliners and toy-women. It was on the cover of one of such effusions, even worse written and worse spelt than they usually were, that we first saw the inscription, the "Scufflers' Club."