us never name the subject again. It is the
only thing you can do for me in the matter.
Let us never name her."

"With all my heart. I only wish that she
and all belonging to her were swept back to
the place they came from."

He stood still, gazing into the fire for a
minute or two longer. Her dry dim eyes
filled with unwonted tears as she looked at
him; but she seemed just as grim and quiet
as usual when he next spoke.

"Warrants are out against three men for
conspiracy, mother. The riot yesterday helped
to knock up the strike."

And Margaret's name was no more
mentioned between Mrs. Thornton and her son.
They fell back into their usual mode of talk,
—about facts, not opinions, far less feelings.
Their voices and tones were calm and cold;
a stranger might have gone away and thought
that he had never seen such frigid indiiference
of demeanour between such near relations.

PLAY.

A YOUNG gentleman of parts, and my
friend, was once obliging enough to recount
to me the following anecdote. In his hot
youth, while partaking of the pleasures of the
town (he was of the Corinthian, or Tom and
Jerry era), he fell into the edifying and
much sought after company of the famous
Mr. Crockford. Says my friend to Mr. C.:
"What is the best main to call at
hazard?" Answers Mr. C. to my friend:
"I'll tell you what it is, young man. You
may call mains at hazard till your hair grows
out of your hat and your toes grow out of
your boots. Therefore, my advice to you is,
not to call any mains at all." This, from a
man who had laid the foundation of a
large fortune at the gaming-table; who
had called all the mains under the sun
successfully, and found that even in them was
vanity, ought surely to have been to my
friend a sufficient dissuasive against "play"
fur the remainder of his natural life. I question
if it was, though.

The author of the best work I know upon
the game of écarté chooses as a motto for his
title-page this significant precept: "Play not
at all." Said a worldly Parisian to his heir,
whom he discovered lamenting over an empty
purse: "My son, until you have four eyes in
your head risk not a sou at piquet. And yet
écarté is the nightly amusement at the Four
Kings Club (and many other clubs) till all
sorts of unholy hours; and old one-eyed
Colonel Trump plays piquet, for heavy stakes
too, at least three hundred nights a year.

Augustus de Morgan, professor of
mathematics, demonstrates the fallacy of play even
more conclusively, thus: "The infatuation
which leads persons to suppose that they can
ultimately win from a bank which has chosen
a game in which the chances are against the
player, is one which can only be cured, if at
all, by a quiet study of the theory of
probabilities"; and straightway the Professor
proceeds to show, by the chapter and verse of
mathematicians, figures, that at rouge et
noir—a game on which you can really make
more calculations of winning than on any
other—the chances of the bank (the game
being played fairly, which few, oh! how few
play games are) are seven and a half per
cent against the player.

Still the dice-box rattles. In spite of
Mr. Crockford and his mains;
notwithstanding the scholiast upon écarté and
his motto; despite the worldly Parisian
and his four eyes; in defiance of Professor
de Morgan and his predecessors—Huyghens,
James Bernouilli, Laplace and De Moivre,
with their unanswerable figures; in the teeth
of the terrible examples of Mr. Beverley's
dying agonies, the remorse of Captain Glenroy,
the lamentable end of the winner of the
lottery prize in the Farmer's Story; the
despair of Frederic Lemaitre in Thirty Years
in the Life of a Gambler, as exemplified in
the acting drama; in despite of Mr. Inspector
Beresford; of all the bills that Mr Attorney-General
can draw against gaming-houses and
betting-shops; of the fierce forays of racecourse
policemen against thimbleriggers and
charley-pitchers; in the face of morality, law, reason, and
common sense, people go on gambling in holes
and corners—furtively and surreptitiously, it
is true;—but black still wins and red still
loses; and six to two is still laid on the
caster; and gentlemen are still entreated to
make their game, for the game is made.

I have heard Man called a reasoning
animal (which he is, for he will reason
against reason), a gregarious animal, a
carnivorous animal, a pugnacious animal, and
many other animalic names. He shares
all these attributes, except the first, with
other tribes more or less anthropomorphous;
but it is not only as a reasoning
animal that he stands alone, and confined in
singularity in the scale of creation. It is the
proud prerogative of man to be innately and
solitarily (in his kind) a gaming animal.
Monkeys don't toss up for each other's cocoanuts;
cats don't go the odd man for mice.
When, as good M. Lafontaine tells us, the
lion, the goat, and the cow went a hunting,
and caught a stag, the lion did not propose to
have the "bones" in and try the highest
throw for the carcass. Even the fox, cunning
and rapacious as he is, has never been known
to go five out of nine with the wolf for a
fat goose or a baby. The learned pig, it is
true, had a weakness for cards; but he
merely went through feats of dexterity with
them: he never played for ground-nuts. So
with Alphonso, the accomplished poodle of
the Champs Elysées, and Chadernagore the
erudite elephant. Both, by a cruel fate, and
the baton of a remorseless taskmaster, were
compelled to do conjuring tricks with a
pack of cards—from telling the day of the