k? It is time to send the
servants to bed, my dear--and to bed master and mistress go too. But
they have not wasted their time playing at cards. Oh, no! I belong to a
Club where there is whist of a night, and not a little amusing is it to
hear Brown speak of Thompson's play, and vice versa. But there is one
man--Greatorex let us call him--who is the acknowledged captain and
primus of all the whist-players. We all secretly admire him. I, for my
part, watch him in private life, hearken to what he says, note what he
orders for dinner, and have that feeling of awe for him that I used to
have as a boy for the cock of the school. Not play at whist? "Quelle
triste vieillesse vous vous preparez!" were the words of the great and
good Bishop of Autun. I can't. It is too late now. Too late! too late!
Ah! humiliating confession! That joy might have been clutched, but the
life-stream has swept us by it--the swift life-stream rushing to the
nearing sea. Too late! too late! Twentystone my boy! when you read in
the papers "Valse a deux temps," and all the fashionable dances taught
to adults by "Miss Lightfoots," don't you feel that you would like to
go in and learn? Ah, it is too late! You have passed the choreas, Master
Twentystone, and the young people are dancing without you.

I don't believe much of what my Lord Byron the poet says; but when he
wrote, "So for a good old gentlemanly vice, I think I shall put up with
avarice," I think his lordship meant what he wrote, and if he practised
what he preached, shall not quarrel with him. As an occupation in
declining years, I declare I think saving is useful, amusing, and not
unbecoming. It must be a perpetual amusement. It is a game that can be
played by day, by night, at home and abroad, and at which you must win
in the long run. I am tired and want a cab. The fare to my house, say,
is two shillings. The cabman will naturally want half a crown. I pull
out my book. I show him the distance is exactly three miles and fifteen
hundred and ninety yards. I offer him my card--my winning card. As he
retires with the two shillings, blaspheming inwardly, every curse is a
compliment to my skill. I have played him and beat him; and a sixpence
is my spoil and just reward. This is a game, by the way, which women
play far more cleverly than we do. But what an interest it imparts to
life! During the whole drive home I know I shall have my game at the
journey's end; am sure of my hand, and shall beat my a