“Try another pack. This had a run of three months before it was detected. It is well executed, and only the most sagacious and quick-sighted are never mistaken in the cards. There is not an edition of cards that I cannot read as well by seeing one side as the other. No pack was ever edited in fairness to both parties. A man is a fool who will get out such an edition. I carried two new ones to the B—— house in London, and won thirteen nights with them.”
One of the company who had been out and returned, produced a pack with plain backs, and asked triumphantly if Mr. Malcolm would please to read them by the backs.
“This edition,” said Malcolm, “was gotten up in Edinburgh by an Irishman named Mulligan, and was popular for a while, but when he won every night with it suspicions were aroused, and finally a boy twelve years old deciphered it. I can tell each card across the room.” And he did.
And so the entertainment went on, Malcolm winning every game till supper was served; not one of the company detecting how it was done.
“Now, boys,” said Malcolm “this is my treat, and please enjoy yourselves, for I shall expect you all to be in court when my case is tried, to laugh on my side. Lawyers don’t understand the value of a chuckle in swaying a jury in a doubtful case. Lay to. ‘The art of cookery,’ says Henry Cornelius Agrippa, ‘is very useful if not dishonest.’ My appetite is good, and I trust you are all likewise minded, for Beaumont and Fletcher say, ‘What an excellent thing God did bestow upon man when he gave him a good appetite. Mine is almost equal to that of Erisichthon described by Ovid,—
‘Thus Erisichthon’s profane chops devour
All sorts of food: in him food is the cause
Of hunger: and he will employ his jaws
To whet his appetite.’
“’Tis said that Maximus, the Emperor who succeeded Alexander Memneaus, consumed forty pounds of flesh in one day, and drank an amphora of wine containing forty-eight quarts.
“Waiter, pass your wines. No blue ruin or heavy wet. In the days of the great Cæsar all feasts began with eggs and ended with fruits, cream and apples; hence the proverb, ab avo usque ad mala, and the man who did not crush his eggshell or put his folded napkin on his left knee, was considered a fool. As we have not eggs we will do our best with the napkins. No melancholy subjects at this table. So here’s luck.” And all drank a bumper.