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A CLEAR fire, a hearth, and the rigour of the game." This was the celebrated wish of old Sarah Battle (now with God) who, o her devotions, loved a good game at whist. She was none of your lukewarm gamesters, your half and half who have no obje to take a hand, if you want oo make up a rubber: who affirm that they have no pleasure in winning; that they like to win one game, and lose ahat they while away an hour very agreeably at a card-table, but are indifferent whether they play or no; and will desire an adversary, who has slipt a wrong card, to take it up and lay ahese insufferable triflers are the curse of a table. One of these flies will spoil a whole pot. Of such it may be said, that they do not play at cards, but only play at playing at them.Battle was none of that breed. She detested them, as I do, from her heart and soul; and would not, save upon a striking emergency, willingly seat herself at the same table with them. She loved a thh-paced partner, a determined enemy. She took, and gave, no cessions. She hated favours. She never made a revoke, nor<mark>.</mark> ever passed it over in her adversary without exag the utmost forfeiture. She fought a good fight: cut and thrust. She held not her good sword (her cards) "like a dancer." She sate bolt upright; aher showed you her cards, nor desired to see ours. All people have their b]ind side -- their superstitions: and I have heard her declare, uhe rose, that Hearts was her favourite suit.
I never in my life -- and I knew Sarah Battle many of the best years of it -- saw her take out her snuff-box when it was her turn to play: or snuff a dle in the middle of a game; for a servant, till it was fairly over. She never introduced, or ived at, miscellaneous versation during its process. As she emphatically observed, cards were cards: and if I ever saw unmingled distaste in her fine last-tury te was at the airs of a youleman of a literary turn, who had been with difficulty persuaded to take a hand, and who, in his excess of dour, declared, that he thought there was no harm in unbending the mind now and then, after serious studies, in recreations of that kind! She could not hear to have her noble occupation, to which she wound up her faculties, sidered in that light . It was her business, her duty, the thing she came into the world to do, -- and she did it. She u her mind afterwards -- over a book.
Pope was her favourite author: his Rape of the Lock her favourite work. She once did me the favour to play over with me (with the cards) his celebrated game of Ombre in that poem; and to explain to me how far it agreed with, and in oints it would be found to differ from, tradrille. Her illustrations were apposite and poignant; and I had the pleasure of sending the substance of them to Mr. Bowles: but I suppose they came too late to be ied among his ingenious notes upon that author.
Quadrille, she has often told me, was her first love; but whist had engaged her maturer esteem. The former, she said, was showy and specious, and likely to allure young persons. The uainty and quick shifting of partners -- a thing which the stancy of whist abhors -- the dazzling supremad regal iure of Spadille -- absurd as she justly observed, in the pure aristocracy of whist, where and garter give him no proper power above his brother-nobility of the Aces; -- the giddy vanity, so taking to the inexperienced, of playing alone --above all, the overp attras of a Sans Prendre Vole, -- to the triumph of which there is certainly nothing parallel or approag, in the tingencies of whist ; -- all these, she would say, make quadrille a game of captivation to the young ahusiastic. 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 co-extend in duration with an evening. They gave time to form rooted friendships, to cultivate steady enmities. She despised the ce-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 ging postures and exions; bitter foe, to-day, sugared darlings to-morrow; kissing and scratg in a breath -- but the wars of whist were parable to the long, steady, deep-rooted, rational, antipathies of the great Frend English nations.
A grave simplicity was what she chiefly admired in her favourite 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 set in -- that and one should claim four by virtue of holding cards of the same mark and colour, without refereo 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 colours 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 -- o take the field ? -- She even wished that whist were more simple than it is; and, in my mind, would have stript it of some appendages, which, iate of human frailty, may be venially, and even endably allowed of. She saw no reason for the deg of the trump by the turn of the card. Why not one suit always trumps ? Why two colours, when the mark of the suits would have suffitly 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 tries, where the musid the paintings draw in many to worship, whom your quaker spirit of unsensualizing would have kept out. -- You, yourself, have a pretty colle of paintings -- but fess to me, whether, walking in yallery at Sandham, among those clear Vandykes, or among the Paul Potters ie-room, you ever felt your bosom glow with a delight, at all parable to that you have it in your power to experience most evenings over a well-arranged assortment of the court cards? -- the pretty antic habits, like heralds in a procession -- the gay triumph-assuring scarlet -- the trasting 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, picture-less. But the beauty of cards would be extinguished for ever. Stripped of all that is imaginative in them,<var></var> they must degee intambling. -- Imagine a dull deal board, or drum head, to spread them on, instead of that nice verdant carpet (o natures), fittest arena for those courtly batants to play their gallant jousts and turneys in ! -- Exge those delicately-turned ivory markers -- work of ese artist, unscious of their symbol, -- or as profanely slighting their true application as the arra Ephesian journeyman that turned out those little shrines for the goddess) -- exge them for little bits of leather (our aors money) or chalk and a slate!" -
The old lady, with a smile, fessed the soundness of my logid to her approbation of my arguments on her favourite topic that evening, I have always fancied myself ied for the legacy of a curious cribbage board, made of the fi 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 fess 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 to it. She could never heartily bring her mouth to pronounce "go " -- or "thats a go." She called it an ungrammatical game. The pegging teased her. I onew 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 heed." There somethiremely genteel in this sort of self-denial. Sarah Battle was a gentlewoman born.
Piquet she held the best at the cards for two persons, though she would ridicule the pedantry of the terms -- such as pique -- repique -- the capot -- they savoured (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 enter, the ends proposed are too palpable. By themselves, it is too close a fight; with spectators, it is not much bettered. No looker on be ied, except for a bet, and then it is a mere affair of money; he cares not for your luck bbr></abbr>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 tradictory is, a succession of heartless leagues, and not much more hearty infras of them, as in tradrille. -- But in square games (she meant whist) all that is possible to be attained in card-playing is aplished. There are the iives of profit with honour, on to every species -- though the latter be but very imperfectly enjoyed in those ames, 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 rality or some i beyond its sphere. You glory in some surprising stroke of skill or fortune, not because a cold -- or even an ied bystander wit, but because your partner sympathises in the tingency. You win for two. You triumph for two. Two are exalted. Two again are mortified; which divides their disgrace, as the jun doubles (by taking off the invidiousness) ylories. Two losing to two are better reciled, thao one in that close butchery. The hostile feeling is weakened by multiplying the els. War bees a civil game. -- By such reasonings as these the old lady was aced to defend her favourite pastime.
No i could ever prevail upoo play at any game, where tered into the position, for nothing. ce, she would argue -- and here again, admire the subtlety of her clusion! -- ce i<bdo></bdo>s nothing, but where something else depends upon it. It is obvious, that ot be glory. What rational cause of exultation could it give to a man to turn up size ace a huimes together by himself? or before spectators, where no stake was depending? -- Make a lottery of a huhousand tickets with but one fortunate number -- and ossible 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 backgammon, where it was not played for money. She called it foolish, and those people idiots, who were taken with a lucky hit under such circumstances. Games of pure skill were as little to her fancy. Played for a stake, they were a mere system of over-reag. Played flory, they were a mere setting of one mans wit, -- his memory, or bination -- faculty rather -- against anothers; like a mogagement at a review, bloodless and profitless. -- She could not ceive a game wanting the spritely infusion of ce, -- the handsome excuses of good fortuwo people playing at chess in a er of a room, whilst whist was stirring in the tre, would inspire her with insufferable horror and ennui. Those well-cut similitudes of Castles, and Knights, the imagery of the board, she would argue, (and I think in this case justly) were entirely misplaced and senseless. Those hard head-tests in no instance ally with the fancy. They reje and colour. A pencil and dry slate (she used to say) were the proper arena for subatants.
To those puny objectainst cards, as nurturing the bad passions, she would retort, that man is a gaming animal. He must -- always trying to get the better in something or other -- that this passion scarcely be more safely expehan upon a game at cards: that cards are a temporary illusion; in truth, a mere drama; for we do but play at being mightily ed, where a few idle shillings are at stake, yet, during the illusion, we are as mightily ed as those whose stake is s and kingdoms. They are a sort of dream-fighting; much ado; great battling, and little bloodshed; mighty means for disproportioned ends; quite as diverting, and a great deal more innoxious, than many of those more serious games of life, which men play, without esteeming them to be such.-
With great defereo the old ladys judgment on these matters, I think I have experienced some moments in my life, when playing at cards for nothing has even been agreeable. When I am in siess, or not in the best spirits, I sometimes call for the cards, play a game at piquet for love with my cousin Bridget -- Bridget Elia.
I grant there is something sneaking in it; but with a tooth-ache or a sprained ancle, -- when you are subdued and humble, -- ylad<mark>藏书网</mark> to put up with an inferior spring of a,
There is such a thing in nature, I am vinced, as sick whist. -
I grant it is not the highest style of man -- I deprecate the manes of Sarah Battle -- she lives not, alas! to whom I should apologise.
At such times, those terms which my old friend objected to, e in as something admissible. -- I love to get a tierce or a quatorze, though they mean nothing. I am subdued to an inferior i. Those shadows of winning amuse me.
That last game I had with my sweet cousin (I capotted her) -- (dare I tell thee, how foolish I am ?) -- I wished it might have lasted for ever, though we gained nothing, and lost nothing, though it was a mere shade of play; I would be tent to go on in that idle folly for ever. The pipkin should be ever boiling, that was to prepare the gentle lenitive to my foot, which Bridget was doomed to apply after the game was over: and, as I do not much relish appliances, it should ever bubble. Bridget and I should be ever playing.
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