Indian canopies. My friend Sir Andrew calls the vineyards of France our gardens; the spice-islands our hot-beds; the Persians our silk-weavers, and the Chinese our potters. Nature indeed furnishes us with the bare necessaries of life, but traffic gives us a great variety of what is useful, and at the same time supplies us with everything that is convenient and ornamental. Nor is it the least part of this our happiness, that while we enjoy the remotest products of the north and south, we are free from those extremities of weather which 10 give them birth; that our eyes are refreshed with the green fields of Britain, at the same time that our palates are feasted with fruits that rise between the tropics. For these reasons there are not more useful members in a commonwealth than merchants. They knit mankind together in a mutual intercourse of good offices, distribute the gifts of nature, find work for the poor, and wealth to the rich, and magnificence to the great. Our English merchant converts the tin of his own country into gold, and exchanges his wool for rubies. The Mahometans are clothed in our 20 British manufacture, and the inhabitants of the frozen zone warmed with the fleeces of our sheep. When I have been upon the Change, I have often fancied one of our old kings standing in person, where he is represented in effigy, and looking down upon the wealthy concourse of people with which that place is every day filled. In this case, how would he be surprised to hear all the languages of Europe spoken in this little spot of his former dominions, and to see so many private men, who in his time would have been the vassals of some powerful baron, negotiating like 30 princes for greater sums of money than were formerly to be met with in the royal treasury! Trade, without enlarging the British territories, has given us a kind of additional empire it has multiplied the number of the rich, made our landed estates infinitely more valuable than they were formerly, and added to them an accession of other estates as valuable as the lands themselves. X. ACCOUNT OF THE EVERLASTING CLUB. No. 72.] Wednesday, May 23, 1711. Genus immortale manet, multosque per annos [Addison. Virg. Georg. iv. 208. Th' immortal line in sure succession reigns, And grandsires' grandsons the long list contains.-Dryden. HAVING already given my reader an account of several extraordinary clubs, both ancient and modern, I did not design to have troubled him with any more narratives of this nature, but I have lately received information of a club which I can call neither ancient nor modern, that I daresay 10 will be no less surprising to my reader than it was to myself, for which reason I shall communicate it to the public as one of the greatest curiosities in its kind. A friend of mine complaining of a tradesman who is related to him, after having represented him as a very idle worthless fellow who neglected his family, and spent most of his time over a bottle, told me, to conclude his character, that he was a member of the Everlasting Club. So very odd a title raised my curiosity to inquire into the nature of a club that had such a sounding name, upon which my friend 20 gave me the following account : The Everlasting Club consists of a hundred members, who divide the whole twenty-four hours among them in such a manner that the club sits day and night from one end of the year to another, no party presuming to rise till they are relieved by those who are in course to succeed them. By this means a member of the Everlasting Club never wants company, for though he is not upon duty himself he is sure to find some who are; so that if he be disposed to take a whet, a nooning, an evening's draught, or a bottle after midnight, 30 he goes to the club and finds a knot of friends to his mind. It is a maxim in this club that the steward never dies; for as they succeed one another by way of rotation, no man is to quit the great elbow chair which stands at the upper end of the table, until his successor is in a readiness to fill it, insomuch that there has not been a sede vacante in the memory of man. This club was instituted towards the end (or, as some of 10 them say, about the middle) of the civil wars, and continued without interruption till the time of the great fire, which burnt them out and dispersed them for several weeks. The steward at that time maintained his post till he had like to have been blown up with a neighbouring house (which was demolished in order to stop the fire), and would not leave the chair at last till he had emptied all the bottles upon the table, and received repeated directions from the club to withdraw himself. This steward is frequently talked of in the club, and looked upon by every member of it as a greater 20 man than the famous captain mentioned in my Lord Clarendon, who was burned in his ship because he would not quit it without orders. It is said that towards the close of 1700, being the great year of jubilee, the club had it under consideration whether they should break up or continue their session; but after many speeches and debates it was at length agreed to sit out the other century. This resolution passed in a general club nemine contradicente. Having given this short account of the institution and continuation of the Everlasting Club, I should here endea30 vour to say something of the manners and characters of its several members, which I shall do according to the best lights I have received in this matter. It appears by their books in general that since their first institution they have smoked fifty tons of tobacco, drank thirty thousand butts of ale, one thousand hogsheads of red port, two hundred barrels of brandy, and a kilderkin of small beer. There has been likewise a great consumption of cards. It is also said that they observe the law in Ben Jonson's Club, which orders the fire to be always kept in (focus perennis esto) as well for the convenience of lighting their pipes, as to cure the dampness of the club-room. They have an old woman in the nature of a vestal, whose business it is to cherish and perpetuate the fire which burns from generation to generation, and has seen the glass-house fires in and out above an hundred times. The Everlasting Club treats all other clubs with an eye of 10 contempt, and talks even of the Kit-Cat and October as of a couple of upstarts. Their ordinary discourse (as much as I have been able to learn of it) turns altogether upon such adventures as have passed in their own assembly; of members who have taken the glass in their turns for a week together, without stirring out of their club; of others who have smoked an hundred pipes at a sitting; of others who have not missed their morning's draught for twenty years together; sometimes they speak in raptures of a run of ale in King Charles's reign; and sometimes reflect with astonish- 20 ment upon games at whisk which have been miraculously recovered by members of the society, when in all human probability the case was desperate. They delight in several old catches, which they sing at all hours to encourage one another to moisten their clay, and grow immortal by drinking, with many other edifying exhortations of the like nature. There are four general clubs held in a year, at which times they fill up vacancies, appoint waiters, confirm the old firemaker or elect a new one, settle contributions for coals, pipes, 30 tobacco, and other necessaries. The senior member has outlived the whole club twice over, and has been drunk with the grandfathers of some of the present sitting members. C. No. 81.] XI. PARTY PATCHES. Saturday, June 2, 1711. Qualis ubi audito venantum murmure Tigris, As when the tigress hears the hunter's din, [Addison. ABOUT the middle of last winter I went to see an opera at the theatre in the Haymarket, where I could not but take notice of two parties of very fine women, that had placed themselves in the opposite side boxes, and seemed drawn up in a kind of battle-array one against another. After a short 10 survey of them, I found they were patched differently; the faces, on one hand, being spotted on the right side of the forehead, and those upon the other on the left. I quickly perceived that they cast hostile glances upon one another; and that their patches were placed in those different situations as party signals to distinguish friends from foes. In the middle boxes, between these two opposite bodies, were several ladies who patched indifferently on both sides of their faces, and seemed to sit there with no other intention but to see the opera. Upon inquiry I found that the body of Amazons 20 on my right hand were Whigs, and those on my left Tories ; and that those who had placed themselves in the middle boxes were a neutral party, whose faces had not yet declared themselves. These last, however, as I afterwards found, diminished daily, and took their party with one side or the other insomuch that I observed in several of them the patches, which were before dispersed equally, are now all gone over to the Whig or the Tory side of the face. The censorious say that the men whose hearts are aimed at are very often the occasions that one part of the face is thus dis30 honoured, and lies under a kind of disgrace, while the other is so much set off and adorned by the owner; and that the |