Nor, strictly speaking, were we remarkable as individuals; an assistant editor, a lawyer, a young army quartermaster, a bank clerk and a mining secretary--we could not separately challenge any special social or literary distinction.

Yet I am satisfied that the very name of our Club--a common Spanish colloquialism, literally meaning "a little more or less," and adopted in Californian slang to express an unknown quantity--was supposed to be replete with deep and convulsing humor.
My impression is that our extravagant reputation, and, indeed, our continued existence as a Club, was due solely to the proprietor of the restaurant and two of his waiters, and that we were actually "run" by them.

When the suggestion of our meeting regularly there was first broached to the proprietor--a German of slow but deep emotions--he received it with a "So" of such impressive satisfaction that it might have been the beginning of our vainglory.

From that moment he became at once our patron and our devoted slave.

To linger near our table once or twice during dinner with an air of respectful vacuity,--as of one who knew himself too well to be guilty of the presumption of attempting to understand our brilliancy,--to wear a certain parental pride and unconsciousness in our fame, and yet to never go further in seeming to comprehend it than to obligingly translate the name of the Club as "a leedle more and nod quide so much"-- was to him sufficient happiness.
That he ever experienced any business profit from the custom of the Club, or its advertisement, may be greatly doubted; on the contrary, that a few plain customers, nettled at our self-satisfaction, might have resented his favoritism seemed more probable.