_Interlocutor._--"Is it something statesmen crave?"
_Speaker._--"No, it is not fame."
_Interlocutor._--"Is it something that goes halt?"
_Speaker._--"No, it is not lame."
_Interlocutor._--"Is it something tigers need?"
_Speaker._--"No, it is not to tame."
_Interlocutor._--"Is it something we all would like?"
_Speaker._--"No, it is not a good name."
_Interlocutor._--"Is it to shoot at duck?"
_Speaker._--"Yes, and that duck to maim." Such words as "nut,"
"thing," "fall," etc., which rhyme easily, are good choices. The two
who play it must be quick-witted.
The game of Crambo, in which each player has to write a noun on one
piece of paper, and a question on another, is curious. As, for
instance, the drawer gets the word "Africa" and the question "Have you
an invitation to my wedding?" He must write a poem in which he answers
the question and brings in the other word.
The game of Preferences has had a long and successful career. It is a
very good addition to the furniture of a country parlour to possess a
blank-book which is left lying on the table, in which each guest
should be asked to write out answers to the following questions:
Who is your favourite hero in history?
Who is your favourite heroine?
Who is your favourite king?
Who is your favourite queen?
What is your favourite Christian name for a man?
What is your favourite Christian name for a woman? etc.
The game of Authors, especially when created by the persons who wish
to play it, is very interesting. The game can be bought and is a very
common one, as perhaps every one knows, but it can be rendered
uncommon by the preparation of the cards among the members of the
family. There are sixty-four cards to be prepared, each bearing the
name of a favourite author and any three of his works. The entire set
is numbered from one to sixty-four. Any four cards containing the name
and works of the same author form a book.
Or the names of kings and queens and the learned men of their reigns
may be used, instead of authors; it is a very good way to study
history. The popes can be utilized, with their attendant great men,
and after playing the game for a season one has no difficulty in
fixing the environment of the history of an epoch.
As the numbers affixed to the cards may be purely arbitrary, the
count at the end will fluctuate with great impartiality. The Dickens
cards may count but one, while Tupper will be named sixteen. Carlyle
will only count two, while Artemas Ward will be sixty. King Henry
VIII., who set no small store by himself, may be No. I in the kingly
game, while Edward IV. will be allowed a higher numeral than he was
allotted in life.
Now we come to a game which interests old and young. None are so
apathetic but they relish a peep behind the dark curtain. The
apple-paring in the fire, the roasted chestnut and the raisin, the
fire-back and the stars, have been interrogated since time began. The
pack of cards, the teacup, the dream-book, the board with mystic
numbers, the Bible and key, have been consulted from time immemorial.
The makers of games have given in their statistics, and they declare
there are no games so popular as those which foretell the future.
Now this tampering with gruesome things which may lead to bad dreams
is not recommended, but so long as it is done for fun and an evening's
amusement it is not at all dangerous. The riches which are hidden in a
pack of fortune-telling cards are very comforting while they last.
They are endless, they are not taxed, they have few really trying
responsibilities attached, they bring no beggars. They buy all we
want, they are gained without headache or backache, they are inherited
without stain, and lost without regret. Of what other fortune can we
say so much?
Who is not glad to find a four-leaved clover, to see the moon over his
right shoulder, to have a black cat come to the house? She is sure to
bring good fortune!
The French have, however, tabularized fortune-telling for us. Their
peculiar ability in arranging ceremonials and _fêtes_, and their
undoubted genius for tactics and strategy, show that they might be
able to foresee events. Their ingenuity, in all technical
contrivances, is an additional testimony in the right direction, and
we are not surprised that they have here, as is their wont, given us
the practical help which we need in fortune-telling.
Mademoiselle Lenormand, the sorceress who foretold Napoleon's
greatness and to many of the great people of France their downfall and
misfortunes, has left us thirty-six cards in which we can read the
decrees of fate. Lenormand was a clever sybil. She knew how to mix
things, and throw in the inevitable bad and the possible good so as at
least to amuse those who consulted her.
In this game, which can be bought at any bookstore, the _cavalier_,
for instance, is a messenger of good fortune, the clover leaf a
harbinger of good news, but if surrounded by clouds it indicates great
pain, but if No. 2 lies near No. 26 or 28 the pain will be of short
duration, and so on.
Thus Mlle. Lenormand tells fortunes still, although she has gone to
the land of certainty, and has herself found out whether her symbols
and emblems and her combinations really did draw aside the curtain of
the future with invisible strings. Amateur sybils playing this game
can be sure that they add to the art of entertaining.
The cup of tea, and the mysterious wanderings of the grounds around
the cup, is used for divination by the old crone in an English
farmhouse, while the Spanish gypsy uses chocolate grounds for the same
purpose. That most interesting of tragic sybils, Norna of the Fitful
Head, used molten lead.
Cards from the earliest antiquity have been used to tell fortunes.
Fortuna, courted by all nations, was in Greek Tyche, or the goddess of
chance. She differed from Destiny, or Fate, in so far as that she
worked without law, giving or taking at her own good pleasure. Her
symbols were those of mutability, a ball, a wheel, a pair of wings, a
rudder. The Romans affirmed that when she entered their city she threw
off her wings and shoes, determined to live with them forever. She
seems to have thought better of it, however. She was the sister of the
Parcae, or Fates, those three who spin the thread of life, measure it,
and cut it off. The power to tell fortunes by the hand is easily
learned from Desbarolles' book, is a very popular accomplishment, and
never fails to amuse the company and interest the individual.
It must not be made, however, of too much importance. It never amuses
people to be warned that they may expect an early and violent death.
Then comes Merelles, or Blind Men's Morris, which can be played on a
board or on the ground, but which now finds itself reduced to a
parlour game. This takes two players. American Bagatelle can be played
alone or with an antagonist. Chinese puzzles, which are infinitely
amusing, and all the great family of the Sphinx, known as puzzles, are
of infinite service to the retired, the invalid, and weary people for
whom the active business of life is at an end.
We may describe one of these games as an example. It is called The
Blind Abbot and his Monks. It is played with counters. Arrange eight
external cells of a square so that there may be always nine in each
row, though the whole number may vary from eighteen to thirty-six. A
convent in which there were nine cells was occupied by a blind abbot
and twenty-four monks, the abbot lodging in the centre cell and the
monks in the side cells, three in each, giving a row of nine persons
on each side of the building. The abbot suspecting the fidelity of his
brethren often went out at night and counted them. When he found nine
in each row, the old man counted his beads, said an _Ave_, and went to
bed contented. The monks, taking advantage of his failing sight,
contrived to deceive him, so that four could go out at night, yet have
nine in a row. How did they do it?
The next night, emboldened by success, the monks returned with four
visitors, and then arranged them nine in a row. The next night they
brought in four more belated brethren, and again arranged them nine in
a row, and again four more. Finally, when the twelve clandestine monks
had departed, and six monks with them, the remainder deceived the
abbot again by presenting a row of nine. Try it with the counters, and
see how they so abused the privileges of conventual seclusion!
Then try quibbles: "How can I get the wine out of a bottle if I have
no corkscrew and must not break the glass or make a hole in it or the
cork?"
The _raconteur_, or story-teller, is a potent force. Any one who can
memorize the stories of Grimm, or Hans Christian Anderson, or
Browning's "Pied Piper," or Ouida's "Dog of Flanders," or Dr. Holmes'
delightful "Punch Bowl," and tell these in a natural sort of way is a
blessing. But this talent should never be abused. The man who, in cold
blood, fires off a long poetical quotation at a dinner, or makes a
speech when he is not asked, in defiance of the goose-flesh which is
creeping down his neighbours' backs, is a traitor to honour and
religion, and should be dragged to execution with his back to the
horses, like a Nihilist. It is only when these extempore talents can
be used without alarming people that they are useful or endurable.
Perhaps we might make our Christmas Holidays a little more gay. There
are old English and German customs beyond the mistletoe, and the tree,
and the rather faded legend of Santa Claus. There are worlds of
legendary lore. We might bring back the Leprechaun, the little
fairy-man in red, who if you catch him will make you happy forever
after, and who has such a strange relationship to humanity that at
birth and death the Leprechaun must be tended by a mortal. To follow
up the Banshee and the Brownie, to light the Yule log, to invoke the
Lord of Misrule, above all to bring back the waits or singing-boys who
come under the window with an old carol, and the universal study of
symbolism,--all this is useful at Christmastide, when the art of
entertaining is ennobled by the song "Glory to God in the highest, and
on earth peace, good-will toward men."
The supper-table has unfortunately fallen into desuetude, probably on
account of our exceedingly late dinners. We sup out, we sup at a ball,
but rarely have that informal and delightful meal which once wound up
every evening.
Mrs. Elizabeth Montague, in her delightful letters, talks about the
"Whisk, and the Quadrille parties, with a light supper," which amused
the ladies of her day. We still have the "Whisk," but what has become
of _lansquenet_, quadrille basset, piquet, those pretty and courtly
games?
Whist! Who shall pretend to describe its attractions? What a relief to
the tired man of affairs, to the woman who has no longer any part in
the pageant of society! What pleasure in its regulating, shifting
fortunes. We have seen, in its parody on life, that holding the best
cards, even the highest ones, does not always give us the game. We
have noticed that with a poor hand, somebody wins fame, success, and
happiness. We have all felt the injustice of the long suit, which has
baffled our best endeavours. We play our own experience over again,
with its faithless kings and queens. The knave is apt to trip us up,
on the green cloth as on the street.
So long as cards do not lead to gambling, they are innocent enough.
The great passion for gambling is behind the game of boaston, played
appropriately for beans. We all like to accumulate, to believe that we
are fortune's favourite. What matter if it be only a few more beans
than one's neighbour?
That is a poorly furnished parlour which has not a chess table in one
corner, a whist table properly stocked, and a little solitaire table
for Grandma. Cribbage and backgammon boards, cards of every variety,
bezique counters and packs, and the red and white champions for the
hard-fought battle-field of chess, should be at hand.
Playing cards made their way through Arabia from India to Europe,
where they first arrived about the year 1370. They carried with them
the two rival arts, engraving and painting. They were the _avants
couriers_ of engraving on wood and metal, and of the art of printing.
Cards, begun as the luxuries of kings and queens, became the necessity
of the gambler, the solace of all who like games. They have been one
of the worst curses and one of the greatest blessings of poor human
nature.
"When failing health, or cross event,
Or dull monotony of days,
Has brought us into discontent
Which darkens round us like a haze"--
then the arithmetical progression of a game has sometimes saved the
reason. They are a priceless boon to failing eyesight.
Piquet, a courtly game, was invented by Etienne Vignoles, called La
Hire, one of the most active soldiers of the reign of Charles VII.
This brave soldier was an accomplished cavalier, deeply imbued with a
reverence for the manners and customs of chivalry. Cards continued
from his day to follow the whim of the court, and to assume the
character of the period, through the regency of Marie de Medicis, the
time of Anne of Austria and of Louis XIV. The Germans were the first
people to make a pack of cards assume the form of a scholastic
treatise; the king, queen, knight, and knave tell of English customs,
manners, and nomenclature.
The highly intellectual game of Twenty Questions can be played by
three or four people or by a hundred. It is an unfailing delight by
the wood fire in the remote house in the wood, or by the open window
looking out on the lordly Hudson of a summer's night. It only needs
that one bright mind shall throw the ball, and half a dozen may catch.
Mr. Lowell once said there was no subject so erudite, no quotation so
little known, that it could not be reached in twenty questions.
But we are not all as bright as James Russell Lowell. We can, however,
all ask questions and we can all guess; it is our Yankee privilege.
The game of Twenty Questions has led to the writing of several books.
The best way to begin is, however, to choose a subject. Two persons
should be in the secret. The questioner begins: Is it animal,
vegetable or mineral? Is it a manufactured object? Ancient or modern?
What is its shape, size and colour? What is its use? Where is it now?
The object of the answerer is of course to baffle, to excite
curiosity; it is a mental battledore and shuttlecock.
It is strange that the pretty game of croquet has gone out of favour.
It is still, however, to be seen on some handsome lawns. Twenty years
ago it inspired the following lines:--