At a casual glance the place seemed unoccupied, but on more careful inspection you saw midgets creeping about, or seated in easy-chairs that had obviously been made to hold two of them; these midgets were the members of the club, dwarfed into dolls by its tremendous dimensions.

A strange and sinister race! They looked as though in the final stages of decay, and wherever their heads might rest was stretched a white cloth, so that their heads might not touch the spots sanctified by the heads of the mighty departed.

They rarely spoke to one another, but exchanged regards of mutual distrust and scorn; and if by chance they did converse it was in tones of weary, brusque disillusion.

They could at best descry each other but indistinctly in the universal pervading gloom--a gloom upon which electric lamps, shining dimly yellow in their vast lustres, produced almost no impression.

The whole establishment was buried in the past, dreaming of its Titantic yore, when there were doubtless giants who could fill those fauteuils and stick their feet on those mantelpieces.
It was in such an environment that Mr.Oxford gave Priam to eat and to drink off little ordinary plates and out of tiny tumblers.