er, ate and talked like a menial. To this man was known
everything--all that passed beneath the roof. Not alone was he aware of
the difficulties, the debts, the embarrassments of the family, but to
him were confided their feelings, their shortcomings, their sorrows, and
it might be their shame. From him there was nothing secret; and he sat
there, in the midst of them, a sort of Fate, wielding the power of one
who knew every spring and motive that could stir them, every hope that
could thrill, every terror that could appal them. There was no escape
from him--cold, impassive spectator of good or evil fortune, without one
affection to attach him to life, grimly watching the play of passions
which made men his slaves, and only interested by the exercise of a
power that degraded them. The layman could not outwit him, it is true,
but he could steal something of the craft that he could not rival. This
he has done; how he has employed it any one can at least imagine who has
had dealings in Italy.

THE DECLINE OF WHIST.

What is the reason of the decline of Whist? Why is it that every year we
find fewer players, and less proficiency in those who play? It is a far
graver question than it may seem at first blush, and demands an amount
of investigation much deeper than I am able to give it here.

Of course I am prepared to hear that people nowadays are too
accomplished and too intellectual to be obliged to descend for their
pastime to a mere game at cards; that higher topics engage and higher
interests occupy them; that they read and reflect more than their
fathers and grandfathers did; and that they would look down with disdain
upon an intellectual combat where the gladiators might be the last
surviving veterans of a bygone century.

Now, if the conversational tone of our time were pre-eminently
brilliant--if people were wiser, wittier, more amusing, and more
instructive than formerly--if we lived in an age of really good
talkers,--I might assent to the force of this explanation; but what is
the truth? Ours is, of all the times recorded by history, the dullest
and dreariest: rare as whist-players are, pleasant people are still
rarer. It is not merely that the power of entertaining is gone, but so
has the ambition. Nobody tries to please, and the success is admirable!
It is fashionable to be stupid, and we are the most modish people in the
universe. It is absurd, then, in a society whose interchange of thought
is expresse