Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/445

 NOTES AND ABSTRACTS ' 431

before they married their wives, who did not play cards, and have not played since. At the last card party I attended, a young married woman for whom I had had all sympathy before, boasted that she had won twenty-five prizes within a very short time. Her husband had been a merchant and had lost nearly all they had at gambling and was then a clerk in the store he had owned two years before, and she was playing the piano part of the time in the 'Police Gem.'

"From our little crowd of young people who began playing cards together before the girls had done away with 'pig-tails,' one of the boys is a professional gambler who travels from place to place, and another one, I have certain knowl- edge, stole from certain school funds while he was school treasurer, to the extent that he could be imprisoned, and it was at a time when he was gambling a great deal. He came of a very strict Methodist family and his mother used to tell the girls of our crowd that we were ruining her boy. We thought it a great joke, but I am afraid now that it may have been true.

"I know nearly everyone who lives in E and have since your lec- tures been summing up some of the conditibns. Most of the unmarried girls do something to help support themselves. There are nearly fifty girls though, I believe, that are unemployed. Thinking I might not know all, I have been inquiring, but have not been able to count a half-dozen who do not spend a great deal of their time playing cards. Of course I may have missed some. Of those who play cards most know more or less about cooking but I know of only one who could make a shirt waist, and I do not believe that there are more than a half-dozen, if that many, married women who are card players who could do as much. Nearly all the society women and girls have every bit of their sewing done. It seems a sad thing to me that sewing is becoming a lost art with American women. Never was it made so easy as it is now with sewing- machines with every conceivable attachment and patterns in any size with chart, for only a small sum. When women begin to make their own clothes, if that time comes, and I hope it may, I believe they will dress with greater individu- ality, more becomingly, and foUow less the French fashions

"You inquired after the origins of the present conditions in our little town. I believe that it was not more than twelve years ago that the first card party

was given in E. A number of families played cards in their homes before

that, but this was the first afternoon affair where women played cards and a prize was given to the winner. Formal and informal receptions had been the

vogue until this time and cards had not been recognized to any extent by E

society. After the card party of which I spoke, and which was considered a great success, there were very few receptions, and there has not been one that I can recall within the past six or eight years, with the exception of wedding receptions. The woman who gave the first card party had been a quiet, con- servative person. She had been an active church worker in the town in which she had formerly lived, was left with some means, married rather late in life a

man much younger than herself. After she and her husband moved to E

Mr. A. invested everything his wife had and the little he possessed in mining stock. They were successful and became one of the wealthiest families in this community. About this time a young professional man and his wife moved to E. The wife had been a poor girl raised in a city, was strikingly hand- some, charming in manner, and very ambitious. I will call her Mrs. B. Mrs. A. became a friend and admirer of Mrs. B. She became anxious to be a social leader. Mrs. B. had the wit, Mrs. A. the money, and it was easily accomplished.

"Soon after the party, a card club was organized, Mrs. A., Mrs. B., and Mrs. C. being perhaps most influential in starting it. Mrs. C. is a member of the Presbyterian church, a woman of strong personality, and the church has been afraid of hurting the feelings of Mrs. C. and her followers and so has been careful to say or do nothing derogatory to card-playing. The result has been that there is more card-playing in the Presbyterian and Episcopal churches than

in any others in E. The Episcopal church is a small and comparatively

young church here and was organized by people who play cards. Mrs. A. is now a woman of perhaps seventy years of age, or older, still a leader of society