y
things as cards, plays boldly at his daring game at winning position,
and risks--honor. The bright-eyed girl throws heart and soul into the
enchanting game of love, and risks--virtue. Charity, esteem, honor,
virtue,--are not these great stakes to offer, beside which my modest
risk sinks into very insignificance? Ah, we all play, and with what
varied success! How many poor, unlucky wights turn up deuces all their
life, while others, born under luckier stars, hold a fistful of kings
and queens! How many eyes grow dim over the faint chances of small
digits, while others sparkle in the reflected light of those regal
robes! Ah, my dear Madam, not only in dank forecastles, in foul taverns,
in luxurious club-houses, or elegant saloons, does Fortune deal out her
winning or losing cards. She spreads them before us on the green cloth
of life's table, in that game which counts up its gains or losses in
another world.

Did you ever see an aeronaut, when he has risen high above the earth,
scatter, with lavish hand, a host of little cards, which flutter down
upon us, twisting and turning, in showers of glittering colors? He but
typifies the hand of Fate, which deals to us, brilliant with the hopes
that tint them in rainbow beauty, the cards of life's eager game. We
gather them up joyfully; but, alas! how rapidly their fictitious beauty
fades, and what miserable pasteboard affairs they become to us, as, one
by one, we lay them down, and see our treasures dwindling away from us
with them, as they go!

Somebody must win? Yes, Madam, somebody gets the court-cards. We all get
them sometimes; and we too often play them very wrongly. We throw away
our kings and our queens. We pass by the opportunities to score, while
some happier child of fortune bears off all the honors. But not always.
Fortune rarely pursues any of us with unremitting ill-will. She sends us
all court-cards, and we have only to trust on and wait for the change
that is to bring, at last, success. Let us never throw up our hands in
despair. Somebody--he must have been a tailor, or with sartorial
proclivities--has said that there is a silver lining to every cloud. And
so we all of us hold hands, which, among deuces and treys, have some
court-cards. Let us not then inveigh against the goddess who blindly
distributes them. Be it our aim to play those well which fall to our
share, and not recklessly cast them away, because we find fewer of those
broad-shouldered, goggle-eyed