22 LITERARY ASSOCIATION. 
When we look at the Clubs of the past, we become 
doubtful whether the spirit of association is a character- 
istic of this age or of man per se. There is no scarcity 
of them in the times of which we have complete records 
and there are indications and rumors of them much far- 
ther back. 
Points of similarity have been pointed out between the 
modern club and certain organizations of ancient Greece 
and Rome. There were public tables in Sparta whose 
members were elected by ballot and were subject to 
rules. The Athenians had friendly meetings where 
everyone sent his own portion of the feast. A club in 
early Rome is said to be spoken of and Cicero tells of the 
pleasure he took in the meetings of social parties called 
contraternities, the principal satisfaction to him arising 
‘* less from the pleasures of the palate than from the op- 
portunity afforded of enjoying excellent company and 
conversation.’’ And one writer has discovered the club, 
full-fledged, in the heart of the Dark Coutinent, for he 
says —‘‘In the centre of almost every village in equa- 
torial Africa, there is a large, barn-shaped building, in 
which laws are enacted, criminals tried, &c., but which 
also is used as a club-house, where, immediately after 
the morning meal elders of the tribe resort to pass the 
heat of the day, smoking or gossiping or listening to 
singing. Here no woman is permitted to enter.”’ 
In France literary associations flourished long ago. 
Charlemagne founded an Academy in which every 
member took the name of some great poet, the King 
himself being King David. The present French Acad- 
emy had it origin in a literary club consisting of several 
inferior poets, who met early in the seventeenth century, 
at the house of one of their number. As this grew, Car- 
dinal Richelieu, wishing thus to get a hold over litera- 
ture, in the interest of the Court, founded for them the 
