192 Bankruj^tcy in Arcadia. 



than a pleasure, too often. The soi-disant match-player is 

 the greatest nuisance imaginable on a country lawn — 

 rushing about playing with both hands (which I believe to 

 be a prostitution of the game of rackets, the essence of 

 which is the back-handed play), and taking every ball, and 

 spoiling everyone else's amusement. It is the old, old 

 story — self -aggrandisement ! I don't think our grand- 

 mothers, as girls, would have competed in public before a 

 crowd, the qualifications for whose admission was only by 

 paying a shilling at the gate. 



Poker, blind hookey, and " Nap," are ousting the solemn 

 old rubber at silver threepennies, and it is not too much to 

 say that a large majority who touch a card now play for 

 money, and not for the amusement. Give me a game of 

 six-card cribbage with a Deal boatman, on a cribbage-board 

 punctuated on an old oak table, with gigantic pegs, against 

 all the modern card-playing of to-day. The solemn silence 

 of the spectators, which is only broken by a muttered 

 "Jack," or "heels," as the knave may turn up, shows the 

 undying interest in the game ; the beer remains it/itasted, 

 the quid w^iturned, the cavendish ?«/idrawn at the critical 

 moment when it is " hole and hole " within five of the 

 game, and the only chance of the dealer is playing out. It 

 is a match for glory and fame of "The Saucy Nancy" 

 against the London stranger, for twopence a game and 

 sixpence on the rub, with the " Saucy Nancy's " crew 

 looking on. The Bank of England and Barclay and 

 Perkins's Brewery wouldn't square the Deal boatmen. This 

 is real sport. 



I confess to more than a sneaking liking for the Deal 

 boatmen, as I like the company of men who will go out on 

 a night when sky and sea are a roaring chaos to save life, 

 without any salvage money, too often at the loss of their own. 

 I don't believe in all the virtues belonging to conventional 



