The Thirteen Club.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5256, 11 May 1895, Page 6

The Thirteen Club.

Tha annual banquet of the Thirteen Club, which was held at the Holborn Eestaurant with all the usual uncanny Burroundinge, six or seven weeks ago, appears to have been a more sober affair than its immodi-

ate predecessor. There was a large attendance, including a number of "distinguished visitors," and the proceedings took quite an instructive turn. The banqueting hnll was prettily decorated with Japanese lanterns and scrolls, peacocks' feathers, counterfeit presentments of black cats and owls, and other things of evil omen. Among the items the guesti had to cheerfully tolerate , under their very noses were miniature skulls and skeletons and salt-cellars shaped to resemble coffins, but they had been braced for the ordeal by the experience, which nose could avoid in passing from the reception-room to the dining-hall, of walking under a ladder. The President stated that the Club existed to stamp out superstitions, and to assist charities, and he pointed proudly to three gentlemen present — Mr Joseph Hatton, Sir A. Dent and Mr Candy, Q.O.— to indicate the influential support it received. The honorary Secretary supplied further testimony under the same head. Ho read a letter from Professor Huxley, in which the famous savant asked to be allowed to assure the President and Committee of his " hearty sympathy " with their pro.

gramme.

The Rev E. J. C. Welldon,

head-master of Harrow, wrote t "I sympathise with the objects of your club. Superstition has been the bano of human life." He was, he continued, accustomed to make a distinction between superstitions which were only irrational, and superstitions, like the objection to thirteen, which might be eaid to have some historic or intelligible origin. "The latter have," the letter added, " no doubt, more tenacity and life than the former, but it is a good work to expose the folly of both." Two other letters were read. One was from Sir Robert' Reid, M.P., the Attorney-General, who wrote : — " The objects of your olub have my sincere sympathy, and, if my arrangements had permitted, nothing would have afforded me greater pleasure than to have dined with the President and members of the Thirteen Club." Sir James Linton, president of tho Eoyal Institute of Painters in Watercolours, wrote that he thoroughly endorsed the programme of the o\i\ Altogether the promoters appear to have won a good deal of sympathy and BUpport from gentlemen who might have been expected to regard the orgaaieaWon as a rather questionable jjoke. •