Now you must not think me either stupid or blundering. I play with
magnificent effrontery, often rushing in where angels fear to tread;
but, somehow, effrontery is not the best qualification for a
whist-player. I am too lucky at holding the cards, and play each one
to win. I am lavish with trumps. I delight to lead them first hand
round, but I have not the courage of my convictions, for I always feel
little quivers of fear when I do it, because when my trumps and aces
are gone, then I'm gone too. I have no skill in finesse, in the
subtlety, the delicate moves which are the inherent qualities of a
game of whist. To tell the brutal truth, I play my own hand. Could
anything be worse, dear shade of Sarah Battle, even if I do win? In
short, my manner of playing whist is the way some men, most men, make
love.

Now you know, brothers--I call you brothers to prove how very friendly
my feelings are towards you, even if I do show you up from our
side--you know that a good whist-player is only slightly interested in
the play of the great cards. His fine instinct comes into play when
the delicate points of the game are in evidence; when it is a question
of who holds the seven of clubs, if he leads the six in the last hand,
or of the lurking-place of the thirteenth trump. I never can remember
anything below the jack, and I give up playing whist forever at least
once every month. But I am so weak that I return to it again and
again, as a smoker does to his brier-wood. I feel partly vexed and
partly sorry for myself when I realize that I cannot play--I can only
win. I have seen men win very superior girls, but they have done it in
a manner which would disgust a good whist-player. Yet they, too, keep
on with their indifferent love-making with the same fatal human
weakness which sees me brave the baleful light in my partner's eyes
night after night--when I am in a whist-playing community. Many men