PLAYING CARDS.
CHAPTER I.
OF THE ORIGIN AND NAME OF CARDS
Man has been distinctively termed "a cooking animal;" and Dr. Franklin has defined him to be "a tool-making animal." He may also, with equal truth, be defined to be "a gambling animal;" since to gamble, or venture, on chance, his own property, with the hope of winning the property of another, is as peculiar to him, in distinction from other animals, as his broiling a fish after he has caught it with his hands, or making for himself a stone hatchet to enable him to fell a tree. Whether this gambling peculiarity is to be ascribed to the superiority of his intellectual or of his physical constitution, others may determine for themselves.
Other animals, in common with man, will fight for meat, drink, and lodging; and will do battle for love as fiercely as the ancient knights of chivalry, whose great incitements to heroic deeds—in plain English, killing and wounding—were ladye-love and the honour of the peacock. There is, however, no well-authenticated account of any of the lower orders of animals ever having been seen risking their property at "odd or even," or drawing lots for choice of pasturage. No shepherd has ever yet succeeded in teaching his sagacious colley to take a hand at cards with him on the hill side; the most knowing monkey has never been able to comprehend the mysteries of "tossing;" and even the learned pig, that tells people their fortune by the cards, is never able to learn what is trumps.
Seeing, then, that to gamble is exclusively proper to man,—secundum essentiam consecutive,—and admitting that,
"The proper study of mankind is man,"
it plainly follows, that as Playing Cards are the instruments of the most fascinating species of gambling that ever was devised by the ingenuity of man, their origin and history are a very proper subject for rational discussion. The cooking, tool-making, gambling animal displays its rationality, according to Dr. Franklin, by its knowing how to find or invent a plausible pretext for whatever it has an inclination to do.
Judging from the manner in which the origin and history of Playing Cards have been treated by various authors within the last hundred and fifty years, it is evident that the subject, whatever they may have made of it, is one of great "capability," to use the favorite term of a great designer in the landscape-gardening line; and it seems no less evident that some of those authors have been disposed to magnify its apparent insignificance by associating it with other topics, which are generally allowed to be both interesting and important. In this respect they have certainly shown great tact; for though many learned men have, at different periods, written largely and profoundly on very trifling subjects, yet it does seem necessary for a man, however learned and discreet, to set forth, either in his title-page or in his proemium, something like an apology for his becoming the historiographer of Playing Cards,—things in themselves slightly esteemed even by those who use them most, and frequently termed by pious people "the devil's books." The example which has thus been set I am resolved to follow; for though, in the title-page, I announce no other topic for the purpose of casting a borrowed light on the principal subject, I yet wish the reader to understand that I am writing an apology for it now; and in the progress of the work I doubt not that I shall be found as discursive as most of those who have previously either reasoned or speculated on Playing Cards.