On Card Playing

Although Major Cartwright has been married nearly twenty years, he has never yet possessed such a piece of furniture as a card table. His rejection of cards is not accompanied with anything cynical, but from seeing and knowing the ill effects of the habit.

He was particularly pleased with a passage in a sermon of his friend George Walker, observing, that "Cards were invented for the amusement of a royal idiot; and they bid fair to make idiots of us all."

He was also much diverted with an insane nobleman he once sat down with to cards, in company with a relation who had the care of him. My lord played very gravely until tired, which happened to be in the middle of a deal. He threw down his cards and took his walk; and this the Major frequently calls the most rational game of cards he ever played.