THE MISSES HATHAWAY. (TWINS).
'What's on the cards?' A question common enough when the actual knowledge of the moment does not afford a positive answer; a question, too, which has an origin taking us back to the earliest use of playing cards. But to how many of those to whom playing cards as a means of recreation are familiar is it known what may be found on the cards? Yet upon these "bits of painted cardboard" there has been expended a greater amount of ingenuity and of artistic effort than is to be found in any other form of popular amusement. Pope's charming epic, "The Rape of the Lock," gives us, in poetic form, a description of the faces of the cards as known to him and to the card-players of his time:—
FIG. 1.
"Behold four kings in majesty revered,
With hoary whiskers and a forky beard;
And four fair queens, whose hands sustain a flower,
Th' expressive emblem of their softer pow'r;
Four knaves in garbs succinct, a trusty band,
Caps on their heads and halberds in their hand."