BACKGAMMON BOARDS.
We frequently find backgammon boards with backs lettered as if they were two folio volumes. The origin of it was thus; Eudes, bishop of Sully, forbade his clergy to play at chess. As they were resolved not to obey the commandment, and yet dared not have a chess-board seen in their houses or cloisters, they had them bound and lettered as books, and played at night, before they went to bed, instead of reading the New Testament or the Lives of the Saints; and the monks called the draft or chess-board their wooden gospels. They had also drinking vessels bound to resemble the breviary, and were found drinking, when it was supposed they were at prayer.—Literary Gazette.