shifting of partners—a thing which the constancy of whist abhors; the dazzling supremacy and regal in vestiture of Spadille - absurd, as she justly observed, in the pure aristocracy of whist, where his crown and garter give him no proper power above his brothernobility of the Aces;- the giddy vanity, so taking to the inexperienced, of playing alone; above all, the overpowering attractions of a Sans Prendre Vole, — to the triumph of which there is certainly nothing parallel or approaching, in the contingencies of whist ;- all these, she would say, make quadrille a game of captivation to the young and enthusiastic. But whist was the solider game that was her word. It was a long meal ; not, like quadrille, a feast of snatches. One or two rubbers might coextend in duration with an evening. They gave time to form rooted friendships, to cultivate steady enmities. She despised the chance-started, capricious, and ever fluctuating alliances of the other. The skirmishes of quadrille, she would say, reminded her of the petty ephemeral embroilments of the little Italian states, depicted by Machiavel: perpetually changing postures and connections; bitter foes to-day, sugared darlings to-morrow; kissing and scratching in a breath ;—but the wars of whist were comparable to the long, steady, deep-rooted, rational antipathies of the great French and English nations. A grave simplicity was what she chiefly admired in her favorite game. There was nothing silly in it, like the nob in cribbage-nothing superfluous. No flushes that most irrational of all pleas that a reasonable being can set up; - that any one should claim four by virtue of holding cards of the same mark and color, without reference to the playing of the game, or the individual worth or pretensions of the cards themselves! She held this to be a solecism; as pitiful an ambition at cards as alliteration is in authorship. She despised superficiality, and looked deeper than the colors of things.Suits were soldiers, she would say, and must have a uniformity of array to distinguish them; but what should we say to a foolish squire, who should claim a merit from dressing up his tenantry in red jackets, that never were to be marshalled never to take the field? - She even wished that whist were more simple than it is; and, in my mind, would have stripped it of some appendages, which in the state of human frailty, may be venially, and even commendably, allowed of. She saw no reason for the deciding of the trump by the turn of the card. Why not one suit always trumps?-Why two colors, when the mark of the suits would have sufficiently distinguished them without it? "But the eye, my dear Madam, is agreeably refreshed with the variety. Man is not a creature of pure reason he must have his senses delightfully appealed to. We see it in Roman Catholic countries, where the music and the paintings draw in many to worship, whom your Quaker spirit of unsensualizing would have kept out. You yourself have a pretty collection of paintings, but confess to me, whether, walking in your gallery at Sandham, among those clear Vandykes, or among the Paul Potters in the anteroom, you ever felt your bosom glow with an elegant delight, at all comparable to that you have it in your power to experience most evenings over a wellarranged assortment of the court-cards?— the pretty antic habits, like heralds in a procession-the gay - 6 triumph-assuring scarlets — the contrasting deadly-killing sables the hoary majesty of spades'- Pam in all his glory! "All these might be dispensed with; and with their naked names upon the drab pasteboard, the game might go on very well, pictureless. But the beauty of cards would be extinguished forever. Stripped of all that is imaginative in them, they must degenerate into mere gambling. Imagine a dull deal board, or drum-head, to spread them on, instead of that nice verdant carpet (next to Nature's), fittest arena for those courtly combatants to play their gallant jousts and tourneys in! - Exchange those delicately turned ivory markers (work of Chinese artist, unconscious of their symbol, or as profanely slighting their true application as the arrantest Ephesian journeyman that turned out those little shrines for the goddess) -exchange them for little bits of leather (our ancestors' money), or chalk and a slate!" The old lady, with a smile, confessed the soundness of my logic; and to her approbation of my arguments on her favorite topic that evening, I have always fancied myself indebted for the legacy of a curious cribbage-board, made of the finest Sienna marble, which her maternal uncle (old Walter Plumer, whom I have elsewhere celebrated,) brought with him from Florence; this, and a trifle of five hundred pounds, came to me at her death. The former bequest (which I do not least value) I have kept with religious care; though she herself, to confess a truth, was never greatly taken with cribbage. It was an essentially vulgar game, I have heard her say,- disputing with her uncle, who was very partial "Go or to it. She could never heartily bring her mouth to "That's a go." pronounce She called it an ungrammatical game. The pegging teased her. I once knew her to forfeit a rubber (a five-dollar stake), because she would not take advantage of the turn-up knave, which would have given it her, but which she must have claimed by the disgraceful tenure of declaring "two for his heels." There is something extremely genteel in this sort of self-denial. Sarah Battle was a gentlewoman born. -- Piquet she held the best game at the cards for two persons, though she would ridicule the pedantry of the terms, such as pique- repique- the capot,- - they savored (she thought) of affectation. But games for two, or even three, she never greatly cared for. She loved the quadrate, or square. She would argue thus: Cards are warfare: the ends are gain, with glory.. But cards are war, in disguise of a sport: when single adversaries encounter, the ends proposed are too palpable. By themselves, it is too close a fight; with spectators, it is not much bettered. No looker-on can be interested, except for a bet, and then it is a mere affair of money; he cares not for your luck sympathetically, or for your play. - Three are still worse; a mere naked war of every man against every man, as in cribbage, without league or alliance; or a rotation of petty and contradictory interests, a succession of heartless leagues, and not much more hearty infractions of them, as in tradrille. But in square games (she meant whist), all that is possible to be attained in card-playing is accomplished. There are the incentives of profit with honor, common to every species, though the latter can be but very imperfectly enjoyed in those VOL. III. - 5 · other games, where the spectator is only feebly a participator. But the parties in whist are spectators and principals too. They are a theatre to themselves, and a looker-on is not wanted. He is rather worse than nothing, and an impertinence. Whist abhors neutrality, or interests beyond its sphere. You glory in some surprising stroke of skill or fortune, not because a cold or even an interested bystander witnesses it, but because your partner sympathizes in the contingency. You win for two. You triumph for two. Two are exalted. Two again are mortified; which divides their disgrace, as the conjunction doubles (by taking off the invidiousness) your glories. Two losing to two are better reconciled, than one to one in that close butchery. The hostile feeling is weakened by multiplying the channels. War becomes a civil game. - By such reasonings as these the old lady was accustomed to defend her favorite pastime. No inducement could ever prevail upon her to play at any game, where chance entered into the composition, for nothing. Chance, she would argue, and here again, admire the subtlety of her conclusion, — chance is nothing, but where something else depends upon it. It is obvious that cannot be glory. What rational cause of exultation could it give to a man to turn up size ace a hundred times together by himself? or before spectators, where no stake was depending? -Make a lottery of a hundred thousand tickets with but one fortunate number, and what possible principle of our nature, except stupid wonderment, could it gratify to gain that number as many times successively, without a prize? Therefore she disliked the mixture of chance in backgammon, where it was not played |