Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 December 1883 — Whist Stories. [ARTICLE]

Whist Stories.

There is a well-authenticated story of the late Lord Granville’s, devotion to whist. Intending to set out in the course of the afternoon for Paris, he ordered his carriage and four posters to be at Graham’s at 4. They were kept waiting till 10, when he sent out to say that he should not be ready for an hour or two, and that the horses had better be changed. They were changed three times in all, at intervals of six hours, before he started. When the party mse they were up to their ankles in cards, and the Ambassador, it was reported, was a loser to the tune of £B,OOO or £IO,OOO. About this time there was a set at Brooks’—Lord Sefton, an excellent player, being one—who played hundred guinea points, besides bets. We still occasionally hear of £3OO or £SOO on the rubber, but £5 points are above the average. The spirit of play absorbs or deadens every other feeling. Horace Walpole relates that, on a man falling down in a fit before the bay window at White’s, odds were instantly offered to a large amount against his recovery, and that, on its being proposed to bleed him, the operation was vehemently resisted as being unfair. When Lord Thanet was in the Tower, for the O’Connor riot, three friends the Duke of Bedford, the Duke de Laval and Capt. Smith—were admitted to play whist with®him, and remain till the lockup hour of 11. Early in the sitting Capt. Smith fell back in a fit of apoplexy, and one of the party rose to call for help. “Stop,” cried another, “we. shall be turned out if you make a noise! Let our friend alone till 11; we can play dummy, and he will be none the worse, for I can read death in his face. ” The clefgy, esnecially of the West of Ensland,5 land, were formerly devoted to whist. .bout the beginning of the century there was a whist club in a country town in Somersetshire, composed mostly of clergymen, that met every Sunday evening in the back parlor of a barber. Four of these were acting as pallbearers at the funeral of a reverend brother, when a delay occurred from the grave not being ready, or some other cause, and the coffin was set down in the chancel. By way of whiling away the time one of them produced a pack of cards from his pocket and proposed a rubber. -The rest gladly assented, and they were deep in their game, using the coffin as their table, when the sexton came to announce that the preparations were complete.—London Society. Men don’t like to get into a box, but they hate the worst the one they have to get into at last.