Around the World in Eighty Days

MASTER, THE

Reform Club, though he seemed always to avoid attracting attention; an enigmatical personage, about whom little was known, except that he was a polished man of the wor

incoln's Inn, or Gray's Inn; nor had his voice ever resounded in the Court of Chancery, or in the Exchequer, or the Queen's Bench, or the Ecclesiastical Courts. He certainly was not a manufacturer; nor was he a merchant or a gentleman farmer. His name was strange to the scientific and learned societies, and he never was known to take part in t

member of the Refor

dmission to this exclusiv

an open credit. His cheques were regularly paid at s

cious; for, whenever he knew that money was needed for a noble, useful, or benevolent purpose, he supplied it quietly and sometimes anonymously. He was, in short, the least communicative of men. He talked very little, and seemed

with it. He often corrected, with a few clear words, the thousand conjectures advanced by members of the club as to lost and unheard-of travellers, pointing out the true

en him anywhere else. His sole pastimes were reading the papers and playing whist. He often won at this game, which, as a silent one, harmonised with his nature; but his winnings never went into his purse, being reserv

y midnight, only to retire at once to bed. He never used the cosy chambers which the Reform provides for its favoured members. He passed ten hours out of the twenty-four in Saville Row, either in sleeping or making his toilet. When he chose to take a walk it was with a regular step in the entrance hall with its mosaic flooring, or in the circular gallery with its dome supported by twenty red porphyry Ionic columns, and illumined by blue painted windows. When he breakfasted or dined all

entric, it must be confessed that the

Phileas Fogg required him to be almost superhumanly prompt and regular. On this very 2nd of October he had dismissed James Forster, because that luckless youth had brou

his body straight, his head erect; he was steadily watching a complicated clock which indicated the hours, the minutes, the seconds, the days,

cosy apartment where Phileas Fogg was seated, an

servant,"

f thirty adva

lieve," asked Phileas Fogg

when I used to vault like Leotard, and dance on a rope like Blondin. Then I got to be a professor of gymnastics, so as to make better use of my talents; and then I was a sergeant fireman at Paris, and assisted at many a big fire. But I quitted France five years ago, and, wishing to taste the sweets of d

. "You are well recommended to me; I hear a

mons

hat time

ned Passepartout, drawing an enormous si

o slow," sa

onsieur, it i

on the error. Now from this moment, twenty-nine minutes after e

left hand, put it on his head with an aut

out. He heard it shut again; it was his predecessor, James Forster, depa