“Kind Fortune, come, my woes assuage,
Bend down and mark a modern moan,
And bear me through the golden age,
Through age of iron, bronze, and stone;
Back, back, before the men with tails,
A million years before the flood;
To where the search of science fails,
And leave me happy in the mud.”
But if I prefer to wallow there, don’t let me thrust my opinions on you—you may object to mud; your cards may be better than mine; judge for yourselves! Deal a few hands, and if you find once in five times, or once in ten times, that the rule won’t work, then you have this formula for your guidance: “We always discard from the suit we want led, except when we have no such suit,” and mind this, the first time you fail, all the fat is in the fire; there is no retreat. When once you cast judgment and common-sense to the four winds of heaven, and submit yourselves body and soul to the rule of thumb—and such a thumb!—you cannot play fast and loose with it; you must take it for “all in all, or not at all.” Like a wife, which you may have some day, you take it for better or worse, till death do you part; and this is all worse; it is an utterly unworkable arrangement,
“That, like a wen, looks big and swells,