Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 2).djvu/322

 "It is a card, m' lord," says Bulliwrag, Q.C.

"A card?" prattles his lordship, in his pretty little taking way; "a card is a thing people play with, is it not?" and appears to be looking about for his rattle.

"Yes, m' lord," says the witness.

"Is it the same as a visiting card—and a race card?" says his lordship.

"No, m' lord, not quite the same," says Badgeremm, O.C., in a soothing tone, apparently designed to get baby to sleep before he can ask any more questions, and my lord bends over his notes and writes down all his new information about cards, and gazes at it in delight.

We cannot more clearly trace this remarkable evolution of innocence than by giving

After figuring as one of the chief ornaments of Eton, young Timothy Toddles—destined to be afterwards so well known to fame—entered upon his career at the University, where his unremitting application and keen relish of learning, combined with a brilliant capacity and limitless power of assimilation, rapidly won the admiration and respect of his instructors, &c., &c.

"Feel just a few chippy this morning. Haven't been to roost since last Thursday. Dashwood and the other johnnies would stick at baccarat till breakfast every evening. Got fairly cleared out this journey; and worst of it is, old Moss won't part another fiver, and Flickers dunning me to bail up over the Leger transaction. Blued every maravedi, and the ancestor not to be tapped again till the 15th, and then only for a century!

"Sam Grobbs turned up with the rats. My terrier, Bob, had a little match on for a tenner with Dashwood's Nipper, and eased him of it with fifty-five seconds to the good Saw some sweet little play between Yarmouth Bloater and Bob Ribroaster, of the Three Stars. Bob led off grandly about the region of the Bloater's headlights, and dusk supervened after a few layers of it; though the Yarmouth Practitioner did negotiate a little business connected with Bob's nibblers, some of which retired within and got digested"

Any person of insight, reading the above extract, will be irresistibly drawn to the conclusion that the study of letters did not so monopolise Mr. Toddles as to utterly banish some slight knowledge of the pursuits and customs of the life around him. At that time, indeed, indications point to the idea that he knew a thing or two—that he probably knew, at least by hearsay, the nature of the ace of spades.

But a few years later we find a marked change in him—the has set in. A sudden call to the Bar has caused his moral sense to awaken, with a cry of horror, to the enormity of his previous knowledge of a thing or two: he feels, with an absolute pang, how great a danger any knowledge of the flippant life of the age must always be to the pure soul of a pleader in the courts; and we feel his thrill of horror and aversion when confronted with a witness possessed of such knowledge. Here is an extract from the case.

The Learned Counsel (with emotion): "Cards? Do you deliberately and unblushingly stand here and tell this court that you are in the habit of playing cards?"