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himself up with a hooked rope, which was | which, in their case, cannot be learnt from

discovered with the remaining tools of his fascinating craft.

At the expiration of some three or four hours, and in the dead of night, he recovered sufficient consciousness to stand up, and he was then marched off between the two constables - locked up, and eventually punished according to law.

"On the whole," said the doctor to me later on, when we were laughing over the adventure 66 - on the whole, sir, it is a good thing for you that you tried the effect of the narcotic on some one else. Fiat experimentum in corpore vili. Take my advice, sir, and don't resort to narcotics; they are always dangerous, and that must have been especially so. The drug clearly was a very powerful one. You have had a lucky escape every way, for if you had come into conflict with that gentleman remembering how he was prepared, I am afraid he would have left his mark on you; whereas you have turned the tables, and, after a fashion, left yours on him. I wish the law would help you to make it indelible on his back with a good round dozen of the cat. It is the only way to put a stop to this armed business; it is the only thing these rascals dread. However, he will give blind men a wide berth for the future, I prognosticate, now that he has found one of them such a capital thieftaker."

From The Spectator.

LADIES' WHIST.

NOT many years ago there came from America a treatise upon whist, containing certain theories which were the subject of hot debate among our whist-players at home, and which are still known and referred to as 66 American leads." The latest ideas that have been contributed by the United States on the subject of the game are hardly so useful or worthy of discussion; but as they throw a curious and unexpected light upon a game played by ladies which is not whist, although they call it by that name we are unwilling to let them pass altogether in silence. It would appear from the American papers that the ladies of New York have decided that whist is an excellent opportunity for displaying the charms of their persons, and are become so enamored of the game in consequence, that there is a most unusual and fashionable demand among them for professors of the art an art

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any treatises that are extant; for neither does the ancient Hoyle nor the more modern Cavendish say a word about the elegances of whist-playing, or the airs and graces to be practised by the players. Their professors are required to teach them, not how to play a hand, but how to display a pretty hand and arm to the greatest advantage; a suit of diamonds is not more necessary in the pack than a suit of diamonds upon their fingers; and the privilege of dealing ranks second to that of shuffling the cards. They require a professor to teach them whist in the same way as Mr. Turveydrop, late lamented professor of deportment, would have taught them to play lawn tennis. In fact, his art is merely supplementary to that of another American professor, Manicure. This latest development of whist-playing is not likely to add to the science of the game; but, as it throws a curious side-light upon "ladies' whist in general, it is worthy of consideration.

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What we call "ladies' whist," what Charles Lamb called "sick whist," and what we have heard an elderly and morose whist-player describe as "bumblepuppy -a word with a dark but suggestive meaning are all practically the same game, a very pleasant game, but not whist in the strictest sense of the word. We would not suggest that ladies cannot play the strict game; on the contrary, some of them play it remarkably well, witness the celebrated Sarah Battle, for instance. But it cannot be denied that the average lady whist-player is addicted to play that is rather peculiar than scientific. We need not make mention of those dear ladies who, on sitting down at the whist-table, propound such riddles as "How many cards do you deal to each person?" or "Does a king count more than an ace?" for they are outside the pale; but we will content ourselves with speaking of the average player, and by these signs we may know her.

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She will invariably try to cheat in cutting for partners, for she cannot bear to leave so important a choice to be decided by chance. In dealing, she will begin with the greatest care and deliberation, but suddenly there will occur to her mind a story, which, with much animation, she will proceed to relate until the trump is turned up in the wrong place. She can never be persuaded that she has misdealt until the cards have been carefully counted at least three times. Another time she will beg her partner to deal for her, and

rules of scoring she can never master; she generally requests her partner to mark the score, but that does not prevent her from challenging the correctness of the result, should it not be in her favor. Of

most ineradicable, is the one that prompts
her to hoard her trumps. Nothing, as we
have already said, can induce her to lead
them. She prefers to save them up as a
kind of bonne bouche, a display of fireworks
for the end of the game.
She looks upon
them as things that are too precious for
use; she regards them with a superstitious
reverence. Should her partner lead them,
"What? trumps!" she exclaims in a tone
of pained surprise at his wasteful audac-
ity; she will play her card grudgingly, and
take the trick perhaps, but she will not
no, she cannot bring
herself to return his lead. There was an
eminent whist-player, of whom it was re-
lated that, whenever he found himself
seated at the whist-table with ladies, he
used to tell them the following tale as a
kind of prologue to the game: "I once
knew a lady who held five trumps in her
hand, and who failed to lead them. She
ended sadly; "- and here his voice sank
to an impressive whisper-" she died in
the workhouse." Whether or not this
precautionary measure was attended with
success tradition does not say; we should
be inclined to doubt its efficacy. But to
sum up our lady whist-player: she is de-
lightful, she is charming, she is every.
thing that is good and beautiful to look
upon, but she cannot be brought to regard
whist as a serious science; as a partner of
our joys and our woes, as a partner of
everything else in life, she is immeasur-
ably too good for us, but as a partner at
whist she leaves much to be desired,
whist one would gladly see her the partner
of one's worst enemy, and then make the
stakes as high as possible.

overwhelm him with reproachful glances should he turn up a small card for the trump. It is easy to know whether she has taken up a good or an indifferent hand; if it be a good one, she never tires of contemplating it, will arrange and rear-all her propensities, the most curious, the range it a hundred times, while she fingers with ill-concealed impatience the card that she wishes to play; if it looks but an indifferent one, she, too, will assume an air of indifference, will gaze with an abstracted look into the further corners of the room, and drum upon the table with the fingers of one hand while the other holds the cards carelessly shut up in a pack. If she has five trumps in her hand, she will not lead them, no, nothing will induce her to lead them, not even if her partner has called for them. He is illadvised if he remonstrates with her after-return his lead, wards. She looks at him with the sweetest wonder in her eyes, as she protests that she never heard him. En revanche, in the course of the next game she will trump his best card, and gather up the trick with a beaming smile of genial triumph. To do her justice, she does not often revoke; when she does revoke, she discovers her offence with the prettiest air of defiance imaginable, and at least ten minutes' discussion, combined with the display of all the back tricks, are needed before it can be proved to her satisfaction, even then she has a great deal to say, and leaves it to be finally understood that not she herself, but her partner, has been most to blame in this matter. Indeed, he is fortunate if the matter is allowed to rest then, and if he is not subjected to a spirited homily on the misleading nature of his play. She loves, above all things, to make what she calls a good trick, that is to say, a trick with lots of court cards in it. If the two of spades be led, followed by the four, she will play a knave, even though she has the ace in hand, because she cannot bear to waste the latter upon two such insignificant cards; and it is with feelings of unbounded indignation that she sees the trick fall to the queen of the fourth hand. The feelings of her partner who led from a king need not be described, because his feelings, of course, are not worth mentioning. She also loves to score by honors, but she cannot endure that her adversaries should hold them; if they do so too often, she will have grave doubts as to the advisability of counting honors at all, and will give vent to some very serious reflections upon the relative value of good hands and good play, of blind chance and science. The simple

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It is not thus that all ladies play. It was not thus that Sarah Battle played. And who was Sarah Battle? Charles Lamb shall answer that question in his own words: "A clear fire, a clean hearth, and the rigor of the game.' This was the celebrated wish of old Sarah Battle, who, next to her devotions, loved a good game of whist," - and who, it would ap pear, played an uncommonly good game too. One can imagine the old lady sitting very upright indeed, with an eye as clear and flashing as her fire, with a mob-cap as white and spotless as her hearth, and with a rigor of deportment that was unequalled even by the rigorous laws of her favorite

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game. And one can imagine, also, Elia sitting opposite to her, with his respectful admiration a good deal tempered by the fearful timidity and awe inspired by his uncompromising partner. To only one weakness did she confess, and that only in the strictest confidence: she confessed that hearts were her favorite suit. This alone would serve to show how old-fashioned she was, and how long ago she must have lived. Nowadays, if any lady could be brought to confess to such a preference, it would be for diamonds. On the other hand, she did not approve of playing for love; she considered, and rightly, too, that some kind of stake was necessary to add a point and a zest to the game. Whist she declared to be the best of all games that she knew, because the partnership of two players divided the losses while it doubled the glory of winning. Probably old Sarah Battle, as well as Talleyrand, would have found a triste vieillesse without the solace of cards. But even while he admired the thoroughness and sound

ness of Sarah Battle's views, Elia could not refrain from putting in a plea for what he called "sick whist;" and we ourselves must confess to a sneaking liking for that humble game, although we may seem to have pointed at it with the finger of scorn. It was "sick whist" that the immortal Mr. Pickwick played at Dingley Dell with old Mrs. Wardle for his partner; but it was a very different whist that he played at Bath in company with Lady Snuphanuph, Mrs. Colonel Wugsby, and Miss Bolo, and probably he preferred the first to the rigor of the second game. On the latter occasion, if we remember rightly, his partner, Miss Bolo, "rose from the table considerably agitated, and went straight home in a flood of tears, and a sedan-chair." That is a failing shared by all ladies, even the best players; though they are generally careless of the stakes, they cannot bear to lose. But what would Miss Battle or Miss Bolo have said to the whist of New York? What would they have said!

A RECENT writer in the North China Herald of Shanghai says that the climate of Asia is becoming colder than it formerly was, and its tropical animals and plants are retreating southwards at a slow rate. This is true of China, and it is also the case in western Asia. The elephant in a wild state was hunted in the eighth century B.C. by Tiglath Pileser, the king of Assyria, near Carchemish, which lay near the Euphrates in Syria. Four or five centuries before this Thothmes III., king of Egypt, hunted the same animal near Aleppo. In high antiquity the elephant and rhinoceros were known to the Chinese, they had names for them, and their tusks and horns were valued. South China has a very warm climate which melts insensibly into that of CochinChina, so that the animals of the Indo-Chinese peninsula would, if there were a secular cooling of climate, retreat gradually to the south. This is just what seems to have taken place. In the time of Confucius elephants were in use for the army on the Yangtze River. A hundred and fifty years after this Mencius speaks of the tiger, the leopard, the rhinoceros, and the elephant, as having been, in many parts of the empire, driven away from the neighborhood of the Chinese inhabitants by the founders of the Chou dynasty. Tigers and leopards are not yet by any means extinct in China. The elephant and rhinoceros are again spoken of in the first century of our era. If to these particulars regarding elephants be added the retreat from the rivers of south China of the ferocious alligators that formerly infested them, the change in the fauna of China cer

| tainly seems to show that the climate is much less favorable for tropical animals than it formerly was. In fact it appears to have become drier and colder. The water buffalo still lives, and is an extremely useful domestic animal, all along the Yangtze and south of it, but is not seen north of the old Yellow River in the province of Kiangsu. The Chinese alligator is still found in the Yangtze, but so rare is its appearance that foreign residents in China knew nothing about it till it was described by M. Fauvel. The flora is also affected by the increasing coldness of the climate in China. The bamboo is still grown in Peking with the aid of good shelter, moisture, and favorable soil, but it is not found naturally growing into forest in north China, as was its habit two thousand years ago. It grows now in that part of the empire as a sort of garden plant only. It is in Szechuan province that the southern flora reaches farthest to the northward.

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For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage

Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co.

Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, 18 cents.

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“DURATE, ET VOSMET REBUS SERVATE

SECUNDIS."

(Æneid, I. 207.)

BEFORE the present fade into the past,
The old year die and leave us living on
To face the future in untravell'd ways,
Receive my message - so the seer sung
Comrades, the dearer for the dear dead years.

As we have prosper'd journeying in the past,
Been hearten'd, holpen, by fair fellowship,
So we shall prosper, so communion make
The rough road smooth which leads us to the

stars.

Friends, fare we on together, as the birds
Cross the wide ocean in the deep of night,
Unresting till their wistful eyes at dawn
See the soft margin of the long'd-for land.

For this is solace for each several soul
When black gulfs yawn, and wild winds beat
it down;

Or drear night clasps it to her freezing breast: To feel that some regard its faltering flight; Or fain would warm it into life again.

Trust then the truth that many years have taught,

Fear not the menace of the frowning crags;
Shun not the glacier and the ice-bound cliff;
Have comfort, courage, for the cord is strong,
Wrought of imagination and dear thought,
Which binds our band together 'mid the snows;
It will not part or sever till we reach
The peak above us; there the rising sun
Shall flush our foreheads, flood our frozen
hearts,

Till each is master of a mightier strain,
Than he could utter in the vale below.
JOHN JERVIS BERESFORD.

Temple Bar.

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