ON THE CARDS.
To many people wholly free from superstition, except that, after spilling the salt, they are careful to throw a little over the left shoulder, and do not go out of their way to walk under ladders, and are not improved in appetite by sitting thirteen at table, and much prefer that may should not be brought into the house—to these people, otherwise so free from superstition, it would perhaps be surprising to know what great numbers of their fellow-creatures resort daily to such black arts as fortune-telling by the cards.
Yet quite respectable, God-fearing, church-going old ladies, and probably old gentlemen too, treasure this practice, to say nothing of younger and therefore naturally more frivolous folk; and many make the consultation of the two and fifty oracles a morning habit.
And particularly women. Those well-thumbed packs of cards that we know so well are not wholly dedicated to "Patience," I can assure you.
All want to be told the same thing: what the day will bring forth. But each searcher into the dim and dangerous future has, of course, individual methods—some shuffling seven times and some ten, and so forth, and all intent upon placating the elfish goddess, Caprice. There is little Miss Banks, for example, but I must tell you about her.
Nothing would induce little Miss Banks to leave the house in the morning without seeing what the cards promised her, and so open and impressionable are her mind and heart that she is still interested in the colour of the romantic fellow whom the day, if kind, is to fling across her path. The cards, as you know, are great on colours, all men being divided into three groups: dark (which has the preference), fair, and middling. Similarly for you, if you can get little Miss Banks to read your fate (but you must of course shuffle the pack yourself) there are but three kinds of charmers: dark (again the most fascinating and to be desired), fair, and middling.
It is great fun to watch little Miss Banks at her necromancy. She takes it so earnestly, literally wrenching the future's secrets from their lair.
"A letter is coming to you from some one," she says. "An important letter."
And again, "I see a voyage over water."
Or very seriously, "There's a death."
You gasp.
"No, it's not yours. A fair woman's."
You laugh. "Only a fair woman's!" you say. "Go on."
But the cards have not only ambiguities, but strange reticences.
"Oh," little Miss Banks will say, her eyes large with excitement, "there's a payment of money and a dark man."
"Good," you say.
"But I can't tell," she goes on, "whether you pay it to him or he pays it to you."
"That's a nice state of things," you say, becoming indignant. "Surely you can tell."
"No, I can't."
You begin to go over your dark acquaintances who might owe you money, and can think of none.
You then think of your dark acquaintances to whom you owe money, and are horrified at their number.
"Oh, well," you say, "the whole thing's rubbish, anyway."
Little Miss Banks's eyes dilate with pained astonishment. "Rubbish!"—and she begins to shuffle again.
Tommy (dictating letter to be sent to his wife). "The nurses here are a very plain lot—"
Nurse. "Oh, come! I say! That's not very polite to us."
Tommy. "Never mind, Nurse, put it down. It'll please her!"
From "Notes for the Use of New Chaplains," by an Indian Archdeacon:
"I have only given advice on matters where, to my own knowledge, an ignorance of procedure has led to adverse criticism with regard to breeches of etiquette."
Somebody seems to have been making fun of the venerable gentleman's continuations.