Page:Free Opinions, Freely Expressed on Certain Phases of Modern Social Life and Conduct.djvu/255

 moves me to the presumption of a parody on the Immortal Bard, thus:

An officer's wife had play-cards in her lap— And dealt and dealt. "What tricks!" quoth I! "They're tricks, you bet!" the smiling cheat replied— "My husband is 'on duty' gone, And 'green' young subalterns are all my game, And till they're drained of gold and silver, too, I'll do, I'll do, I'll do!"

And she does "do." She has found out the way to make those "green young subalterns" pay her bills and ruin themselves. It is a thoroughly up-to-date manner of spending the Sunday.

Country-house "week-end" parties are generally all bridge-parties. They are all carefully selected, with an eye to the main chance. The "play" generally begins on Saturday evening, and goes on all through Sunday up to midnight. One woman, notorious for her insensate love of gambling, lately took lessons in "cheating" at bridge before joining her country-house friends. She came away heavier in purse by five hundred pounds, but of that five hundred, one hundred and fifty had been won from a foolish little girl of eighteen, known to be the daughter of a very wealthy, but strict father. When the poor child was made to understand the extent of her losses at bridge, she was afraid to go home. So she purchased some laudanum "for the toothache," and tried to poison herself by swallowing it. Fortunately, she was rescued before it was too late, and her Spartan "dad," with tears of joy in his eyes, paid the money she had lost at cards thankfully, as a kind of ransom