And when you have once grown used to them, it is as impossible to go back to plain water as it is to live again in the forgotten house in a side street that you inhabited long before you became a member.
Thus the members sit and talk in undertones that float to the ear through the haze of Havana smoke.

You may hear the older men explaining that the country is going to absolute ruin, and the younger ones explaining that the country is forging ahead as it never did before; but chiefly they love to talk of great national questions, such as the protective tariff and the need of raising it, the sad decline of the morality of the working man, the spread of syndicalism and the lack of Christianity in the labour class, and the awful growth of selfishness among the mass of the people.
So they talk, except for two or three that drop off to directors' meetings; till the afternoon fades and darkens into evening, and the noiseless Chinese philosophers turn on soft lights here and there among the palm trees.

Presently they dine at white tables glittering with cut glass and green and yellow Rhine wines; and after dinner they sit again among the palm-trees, half-hidden in the blue smoke, still talking of the tariff and the labour class and trying to wash away the memory and the sadness of it in floods of mineral waters.

So the evening passes into night, and one by one the great motors come throbbing to the door, and the Mausoleum Club empties and darkens till the last member is borne away and the Arcadian day ends in well-earned repose.
* * * * * "I want you to give me your opinion very, very frankly," said Mr.
Lucullus Fyshe on one side of the luncheon table to the Rev.Fareforth Furlong on the other.
"By all means," said Mr.Furlong.
Mr.Fyshe poured out a wineglassful of soda and handed it to the rector to drink.
"Now tell me very truthfully," he said, "is there too much carbon in it ?" "By no means," said Mr.Furlong.
"And--quite frankly--not too much hydrogen ?" "Oh, decidedly not." "And you would not say that the percentage of sodium bicarbonate was too great for the ordinary taste ?" "I certainly should not," said Mr.Furlong, and in this he spoke the truth.
"Very good then," said Mr.Fyshe, "I shall use it for the Duke of Dulham this afternoon." He uttered the name of the Duke with that quiet, democratic carelessness which meant that he didn't care whether half a dozen other members lunching at the club could hear or not.

After all, what was a duke to a man who was president of the People's Traction and Suburban Co., and the Republican Soda and Siphon Co-operative, and chief director of the People's District Loan and Savings?
If a man with a broad basis of popular support like that was proposing to entertain a duke, surely there could be no doubt about his motives?
None at all.
Naturally, too, if a man manufactures soda himself, he gets a little over-sensitive about the possibility of his guests noticing the existence of too much carbon in it.
In fact, ever so many of the members of the Mausoleum Club manufacture things, or cause them to be manufactured, or--what is the same thing--merge them when they are manufactured.