, and was fresh from the
disagreeable memories of it--the trembling and suspense, the burning
lustful greed, the terrible nerve-devouring excitement. He had hoped
that he would not soon have to go through such an experience again-and
here was the prospect of an endless dalliance with it!

For that was the meaning of bridge; it was a penalty which people were
paying for getting their money without earning it. The disease got into
their blood, and they could no longer live without the excitement of
gain and the hope of gain. So after their labours were over, when they
were supposed to be resting and enjoying themselves, they would get
together and torment themselves with an imitation struggle, mimicking
the grim and dreadful gamble of business. Down in the Street, Oliver
had pointed out to his brother a celebrated "plunger," who had
sometimes won six or eight millions in a single day; and that man would
play at stocks all morning, and "play the ponies" in the afternoon, and
then spend the evening in a millionaires' gambling-house. And so it was
with the bridge fiends.

It was a social plague; it had run through all Society, high and low.
It had destroyed conversation and all good-fellowship--it would end by
destroying even common decency, and turning the best people into vulgar
gamblers.--Thus spoke Mrs. Billy Alden, who was one of the guests; and
Montague thought that Mrs. Billy ought to know, for she herself was
playing all the time.

Mrs. Billy did not like Mrs. Winnie Duval; and the beginning of the
conversation was her inquiry why he let that woman corrupt him. Then
the good lady went on to tell him what bridge had come to be; how
people played it on the trains all the way from New York to San
Francisco; how they had tables in their autos, and played while they
were touring over the world. "Once," said she, "I took a party to see
the America's Cup races off Sandy Hook; and when we got back to the
pier, some one called, 'Who won?' And the answer was, 'Mrs. Billy's
ahead, but we're going on this evening.' I took a party of friends
through the Mediterranean and up the Nile, and we passed Venice and
Cairo and the Pyramids and the Suez Canal, and they never once looked
up--they were playing bridge. And you think I'm joking, but I mean just
literally what I say. I know a man who was travelling from New York to
Philadelphia, and got into a game with some strangers, and rode all the
way to Palm Beach to finish it!"

Mon