University of Virginia Library

This is, certainly, a very amusing circumstance; particularly when the partner has betted upon the rubber with half a dozen persons; and expects, that what was the effect of chance, originated in a thorough knowledge of the game, which he too soon finds out, by lamentable experience, was not the case.

For a splenetic man, and a very fine player, or a crabbed old maid, that has, for the last twenty years, been glued to a whist table, and who places great reliance on her card money, to experience this circumstance, is a shock easier conceived than expressed, and productive of effects, not unlikely to set all the company present in a dreadful uproar.

This game, which solely depends on science and practice, is too often mangled by unskilful hands: and the ridiculous attitudes into which it frequently throws, not only the player, but the bye standers, is well exposed in Bunbury's caricature of the Billiard Room.

This race of fools is very extensive; no card room being without some of its votaries, to the no small discomfiture of such as have to own them for partners in a game.