CARDY MUMS.
William was one of a large bunch of children, and he never grew up. On his seventh birthday a relation gave him a miniature pack of cards, and made him a whist-player for life. Our bias dates much earlier than some natural philosophers suppose. I remember William, a mere child, being one day William of Orange, and objecting to a St. Michael’s because it had no pips.
At school he was a total failure; except in reckoning the odd tricks. He counted nothing by honours, and the schoolmaster said of his head what he has since said occasionally of his hand that “it held literally nothing.”
At sixteen, after a long maternal debate between the black and red suits, William was articled to an attorney: but instead of becoming a respectable land-shark, he played double-dummy with the Common-Law Clerk, and was discharged on the 6th of November. The principal remonstrated with him on a breach of duty, and William imprudently answered that he was aware of his duty, like the ace of spades. Mr. Bitem immediately banged the door against him, and William, for the first time in his life—to use his own expression, “got a slam.”
William having served his time, and, as he calls it, followed suit for five years, was admitted as an attorney, and began to play at that finessing game, the Law. Short-hand he still studied and practised; though more in parlours than in court.
William at one period admired Miss Hunt, or Miss Creswick, or Miss Hardy, or Miss Reynolds; a daughter of one of the great card-makers, I forget which—and he cut for partners, but without “getting the Lady.” His own explanation was that he “was discarded.” He then paid his addresses to a Scotch girl, a Miss MacNab, but she professed religious scruples about cards, and he revoked. I have heard it said that she expected to match higher; indeed William used to say she “looked over his hand.”
William is short, and likes shorts. He likes nothing of longs, but the St. John of them: and he only takes to him, because that saint is partial to a rubber. Whist seems to influence his face as well as form; it is like a knave of clubs. I sometimes fancy whist could not go on without William, and certainly William could not go on without whist. His whole conversation, except on cards, is wool-gathering; and on that subject is like wool—carded. He “speaks by the card,” and never gives equivocation a chance. At the Olympic once he had a quarrel with a gentleman about the lead of Madame Vestris or Miss Sydney: he was required to give his card, and he gave the “Deuce of Hearts.” This was what he termed “calling out.”
Of late years William only goes out like a bad rushlight, earlyish of a night, and quits every table that is not covered with green baize with absolute disgust. The fairies love by night to “gambol on the green,” and so does William, and he is constantly humming with great gusto,
“Come unto these yellow sands,
And then take hands.”