[CHAPTER V]
HOLDOUTS
The term 'Holdout' is the name given to a mechanical contrivance, constructed with the object of enabling the card-sharper to 'hold-out,' or conceal one or more cards, until such time as he finds that they will be useful to him by turning the balance of fortune in his favour at some critical point of the game. They are obviously unavailable in those games where the whole pack is distributed among the players, as the cards abstracted must in that case necessarily be missed.
It will be seen, then, that although the name may appear clumsy and puerile, it is notwithstanding well chosen and expressive. The gambler 'holds out' inducements to the cheat; the market, provided by cheating, 'holds out' inducements to the manufacturer; the manufacturer 'holds out' inducements to purchase his machines; and the machines themselves 'hold out' inducements which very few sharpers can resist. It is like the nursery-rhyme of the dog that was eventually 'purwailed on' to get over the stile.
As far as we have yet travelled upon our explorations into the regions of fraud and chicanery, yclept 'sharping,' our path has been, comparatively speaking, a rosy one. The way has been by no means intricate, and the difficulties we have had to encounter have been but few. At this point, however, the course runs through a region which is, to some extent, beset with thorn and bramble, in the guise of mechanical contrivances having a more or less complex character. The non-technical reader, however, has no cause for being appalled at the nature of the ground which he is invited to traverse; the author undertakes to render his travelling easy, and to put him through, as it were, by 'Pullman-Express.' One should always endeavour to popularise science whenever the opportunity serves. The mechanically minded reader, at any rate, will revel in the examples of human ingenuity—and corruptibility—which are here presented for the first time to his admiring gaze.
As in all other instances of means well-adapted to a given end, these utensils of the holdout persuasion have taken their origin from extremely simple and antiquated devices. Perhaps we are not correct in saying 'extremely antiquated,' since 'Cavendish' is of opinion that cards have not been invented more than five hundred years. Those, however, who attribute their invention to the Chinese, æons before the dawn of western civilisation, will be inclined to the belief that the 'Heathen Chinee' of succeeding ages must have coerced the smiles of fortune, with the friendly aid of a holdout, centuries before the discovery of the land of that instrument's second or third nativity.
As to this debatable point, however, there is very little hope that we shall ever be better informed than at present. It belongs to the dead things of the dead past; it is shrouded in the mist of antiquity and buried beneath the withered leaves of countless generations; among which might be found the decayed refuse of many a family tree, whose fall could be directly traced to the invention of the deadly implements known as playing cards. Do not let the reader imagine for a moment that I am inveighing against the use of cards, when employed as an innocent means of recreation. That is not my intention by any means. Such a thing would savour of narrow-mindedness and bigotry, and should be discouraged in every possible way. The means of rendering our existence here below as mutually agreeable as circumstances will permit are by no means so plentiful that we can afford to dispense with so enjoyable a pastime as a game of cards. It is not the fault of the pieces of pasteboard, that some people have been ruined by their means; it is the fault of the players themselves. Had cards never been invented, the result would have been very similar. Those who are addicted to gambling, in the absence of cards, would have spun coins, drawn straws, or engaged in some other equally intellectual recreation. When a man has arrived at the state of mind which induces him to make 'ducks and drakes' of his property, and a fool of himself, there is no power on earth that can prevent him from so doing.
But to return. The earliest account we have of anything in the holdout line is the cuff-box described by Houdin. I for one, however, am inclined to think that there is a slight tinge of the apocryphal in the record as given by him. My reason for this opinion is twofold. In the first place the description is singularly lacking in detail, considering Houdin's mechanical genius; and secondly, the difficulty of constructing and using such an apparatus would be for all practical purposes insuperable. I should say that Houdin had never seen the machine; and that he trusted too implicitly to hearsay, without exercising his judgment. Of course there is nothing but internal evidence to support this view; still, I cannot help believing that part at least of the great Frenchman's account must be taken 'cum grano.' In any event, however, we are bound to admit that something in the nature of a holdout was known to some persons in the early part of the present century.
Houdin entitles the device above referred to—'La boite à la manche;' and his description is to the following effect.