And finding somewhat still amiss,
More peevish, cross, and splenetic
Than dog distract, or monkey sick.”—Hudibras.
“Some do it because they believe that if they grumble enough, it will bring them luck. Some do it in the hope that they will excite sympathy, and that their friends will feel for their ill-fortune, which, by-the-bye, whist-players never do. Some grumble to annoy their friends, and we are bound to say these succeed.”—Westminster Papers.
“The croaking nuisance lurked in every nook;
And the land stank—so numerous was the fry.”—Cowper.
[52] “They are intent on some wretched crotchet like the lowest but one.”
“Every time he can lead a lowest but one, no matter what the state of the game or the score, that lead he is sure to make, and we believe there are some neophytes who would lose their money with pleasure if they could only tell their partners afterwards that they had led the lowest but one.”—Westminster Papers.
[53] “Common sense (which in truth is very uncommon) is the best sense I know of. Abide by it; it will counsel you best.”—Chesterfield Letters.
[54] This is at first sight a rather appalling proposition, but the advice I give you I have always endeavoured to follow myself, and I am not a solitary case, for in the Nineteenth Century Review for May, 1879, I find the writer of one of the articles is in the same boat; this thoughtful writer—he must have been thoughtful, otherwise his lucubration would not have been accepted—says: “I have given up the practice of thinking, or it may be I never had it.”