triumph for two.  Two are exalted.  Two again are mortified; which divides their disgrace, as the conjunction doubles (by taking off the invidiousness) your glories.  Two losing to two are better reconciled, than one to one in that close butchery.  The hostile feeling is weakened by multiplying the channels.  War becomes a civil game.—­By such reasonings as these the old lady was accustomed to defend her favourite pastime.

No inducement could ever prevail upon her to play at any game, where chance entered into the composition, for nothing.  Chance, she would argue—­and here again, admire the subtlety of her conclusion!—­chance is nothing, but where something else depends upon it.  It is obvious, that cannot be glory.  What rational cause of exultation could it give to a man to turn up size ace a hundred times together by himself? or before spectators, where no stake was depending?—­Make a lottery of a hundred thousand tickets with but one fortunate number—­and what possible principle of our nature, except stupid wonderment, could it gratify to gain that number as many times successively, without a prize?—­Therefore she disliked the mixture of chance in backgammon, where it was not played for money.  She called it foolish, and those people idots, who were taken with a lucky hit under such circumstances.  Games of pure skill were as little to her fancy.  Played for a stake, they were a mere system of over-reaching.  Played for glory, they were a mere setting of one man’s wit,—­his memory, or combination-faculty rather—­against another’s; like a mock-engagement at a review, bloodless and profitless.—­She could not conceive a game wanting the spritely infusion of chance,—­the handsome excuses of good fortune.  Two people playing at chess in a corner of a room, whilst whist was stirring in the centre, would inspire her with insufferable horror and ennui.  Those well-cut similitudes of Castles, and Knights, the imagery of the board, she would argue, (and I think in this case justly) were entirely misplaced and senseless.  Those hard head-contests can in no instance ally with the fancy.  They reject form and colour.  A pencil and dry slate (she used to say) were the proper arena for such combatants.

To those puny objectors against cards, as nurturing the bad passions, she would retort, that man is a gaming animal.  He must be always trying to get the better in something or other:—­that this passion can scarcely be more safely expended than upon a game at cards:  that cards are a temporary illusion; in truth, a mere drama; for we do but play at being mightily concerned, where a few idle shillings are at stake, yet, during the illusion, we are as mightily concerned as those whose stake is crowns and kingdoms.  They are a sort of dream-fighting; much ado; great battling, and little bloodshed; mighty means for disproportioned ends; quite as diverting, and a great deal more innoxious, than many of those more serious games of life, which men play, without esteeming them to be such.—­