As for the English clubs in European towns, he was familiar with their exteriors, and with the amiable babble of their supporters at _tables d'hote,_ and his desire for further knowledge had not been so hot as to inconvenience him.

Hence he knew nothing of clubs.
Mr.Oxford's club alarmed and intimidated him; it was so big and so black.

Externally it resembled a town-hall of some great industrial town.

As you stood on the pavement at the bottom of the flight of giant steps that led to the first pair of swinging doors, your head was certainly lower than the feet of a being who examined you sternly from the other side of the glass.

Your head was also far below the sills of the mighty windows of the ground-floor.