We frequently find backgammon boards with backs lettered as if they
were two folio volumes. The origin of it was thus; Eudes, bishop of
Sully, forbade his clergy to play at chess. As they were resolved not
to obey the commandment, and yet dared not have a chess-board seen in
their houses or cloisters, they had them bound and lettered as books,
and played at night, before they went to bed, instead of reading the
New Testament or the Lives of the Saints; and the monks called the
draft or chess-board their _wooden gospels_. They had also drinking
vessels bound to resemble the breviary, and were found drinking, when
it was supposed they were at prayer.--_Literary Gazette_.
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