I am really fond of the game, which is fortunate, though my partners
don't think so; but I am free to confess, that nothing short of an
absorbing admiration for it and desire to excel, could tempt me
to brave the sarcasms, even insults, to which I am subjected. Your
thoroughgoing Whist-player as such--admirable in private life as I
personally know him to be--the moment he begins the daily business
of his life, seems to cast his better nature to the winds. At another
time and place he would lend a sympathetic ear to any tale of woe; now
and here nothing seems to interest him but his own immediate welfare,
which he pursues with concentrated energy and earnestness. I verily
believe that if, at one of two adjoining tables, the chandelier fell
on the players' heads to their exceeding detriment, the occupants
of the other table would scarcely lift their eyes or interrupt their
rubber for one moment. _Fiant chartæ ruat coelum_--let the cards be
made whatever chandeliers fall.

[Illustration: "When I come to think the matter over in cold blood."]

The players at my Club are all good, one especially so, a retired
Colonel of a West Indian regiment, of whom I stand in mortal dread.
He has short shrift for any failings, even of players nearly as good
as himself, whilst as for me! though he has never yet resorted to
personal violence with a chair-leg, yet that would not surprise me;
and my pestilent fate in defiance of all mathematical odds in such
case made and provided, is to cut him as my partner three and four
times in succession in an evening. I sometimes have glimmerings of
sense, and in hands presenting no particular difficulty, if they
contain plenty of good cards--can manage to scrape along in a way I
think fairly satisfactory even--to him, though he never encourages
me by saying so. But an awful thing happened the other night. I had