The club as we know it now is essentially a British institution modelled on British lines.

More and more is the British idea being carried to the extreme, until we are associating club life with the vast club-house of spacious lounges and marble swimming pools, and a cuisine rivalling that of one of the great new hotels.

The Fifth Avenue club of half a century ago had little magnificence as we now understand the word.

It was a simpler and more limited hospitality that was offered to the friend or the distinguished stranger from overseas.

Yet that hospitality must have had a rare flavour and atmosphere.