Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17.djvu/188

180, with lavish hand, a host of little cards, which flutter down upon us, twisting and turning, in showers of glittering colors? He but typifies the hand of Fate, which deals to us, brilliant with the hopes that tint them in rainbow beauty, the cards of life's eager game. We gather them up joyfully; but, alas! how rapidly their fictitious beauty fades, and what miserable pasteboard affairs they become to us, as, one by one, we lay them down, and see our treasures dwindling away from us with them, as they go!

Somebody must win? Yes, Madam, somebody gets the court-cards. We all get them sometimes; and we too often play them very wrongly. We throw away our kings and our queens. We pass by the opportunities to score, while some happier child of fortune bears off all the honors. But not always. Fortune rarely pursues any of us with unremitting ill-will. She sends us all court-cards, and we have only to trust on and wait for the change that is to bring, at last, success. Let us never throw up our hands in despair. Somebody—he must have been a tailor, or with sartorial proclivities—has said that there is a silver lining to every cloud. And so we all of us hold hands, which, among deuces and treys, have some court-cards. Let us not then inveigh against the goddess who blindly distributes them. Be it our aim to play those well which fall to our share, and not recklessly cast them away, because we find fewer of those broad-shouldered, goggle-eyed, party-colored gentry than we hoped for. No! let us tuck them carefully away under our thumbs, and make the most of them.

Perhaps Asmodeus may have pined in grief, playing his little deuces and never winning the great stake of fame;—but who shall tell? May not his hopeful heart break forth some day with regnant power which shall bear away the prize? Frank, you know, has toiled day and night for wealth to buy comfort and ease for his modest home. He has made his little ventures, and has seen his dreams of grand results fade from him, day by day. Let him venture on. By-and-by his vessels shall come home laden with noble freights; and his name shall be favorably known on 'Change, and be printed in the lists of men who pay heavy taxes on swelling fortunes; and you shall have your jewels and trinkets with the best. Pinxit, who has been starving in his garret, and whose walls are lined with dusty canvas, shall lay on colors which shall charm the world; his old, neglected frames shall be brought out, and the world shall find Apollos in his men, and Venuses in his women, which before were only meaner beauties; Vanitas shall loiter round his easel and command his pencil with ready gold; and Art-Journals shall rehearse his praises in strange, cabalistic words. Scripsit, who has digested his paltry rasher in moody silence, shall touch the hearts of men with new-born words of flame; and the poor epic, which once had served a clownish huckster's vulgar need, shall travel far and wide, in blue and gold, and lie on tables weighed with words familiar in all mouths. Patrista, who, thirsting for his country's good, has been, perforce, content to see all others rise and sway the crowd, while he has toiled in vain, shall shake the nation with his eloquence, and from his chair of state, whence go abroad the statutes he has framed, shall read again his earlier works, now rescued from the past to teach the young. Reporters on his words shall hang, from every window shall his sapient visage smile, and even the London Times shall think it worth the while to underrate him.

And then, my dear Madam, we rarely play alone. The melancholy unfortunates reduced to solitaire are few indeed. We have partners, Madam, to share our losses and our gains,—partners to mourn over our poor little lost deuces, and rejoice when royalty holds its court under our thumbs. Have not I beloved Mrs. Asmodeus, the lovely, kind, clever partner of my varied fortune? Did she not deal to me, one summer eve, the best bower in the pack, who reigns over all the kings and queens in or out of