ll sit downe, I am contente, for surelye I would Winne
no manne's moneye here, but even as much as woulde pay for my supper."
Then speaketh the thirde to the honeste man that thought not to
play:--"What? Will you play your twelve-pence?" If he excuse him--"Tush!
man!" will the other saye, "sticke not in honeste company for
twelve-pence; I will beare your halfe, and here is my moneye." Nowe all
this is to make him to beginne, for they knowe if he be once in, and be
a loser, that he will not sticke at his twelve-pence, but hopeth ever to
get it againe, whiles perhappes he will lose all. Then every one of them
setteth his shiftes abroache, some with false dyse, some with settling
of dyse, some with having outlandish silver coynes guilded, to put awaye
at a time for good golde. Then, if there come a thing in controversye,
must you be judged by the table, and then farewell the honeste man's
parte, for he is borne downe on every syde.'

It is evident from this graphic description of the process, that the
villany of sharpers has been ever the same; for old Roger's account
of the matter in his day exactly tallies with daily experience at the
present time.

The love of card-playing was continued through the reign of Elizabeth
and James I.,(60) and in the reign of the latter it had reached so high
a pitch that the audiences used to amuse themselves with cards at the
play-house, while they were waiting for the beginning of the play.
The same practice existed at Florence. If the thing be not done at
the present day, something analogous prevails in our railway carriages
throughout the kingdom. It is said that professed card-sharpers take
season-tickets on all the lines, and that a great DEAL of money is made
by the gentry by duping unwary travellers into a game or by betting.

(60) King James, the British Solomon, although he could not 'abide'
tobacco, and denounced it in a furious 'Counterblaste,' could not
'utterly condemn' play, or, as he calls it, 'fitting house-pastimes.'
'I will not,' he says, 'agree in forbidding cards, dice, and other like
games of Hazard,' and enters into an argument for his opinion, which
is scarcely worth quoting. See Basilicon Doron--a prodigy of royal
fatuity--but the perfect 'exponent' of the characteristics of the Stuart
royal race in England.

There is no reason to suppose that the fondness for this diversion
abated, except during the short 'trump or triumph of the fanatic
suit'--in the hard ti