Orleans independent standard. [volume] (Irasburgh, Vt.) 1856-1871, 1857-02-06
" Card Playing"

I'll VNA hAss 90 ~ ~
cation from the Vermont Chronicle on
the above subject We have been per-
sonally conversed with by gentlemen OF
high standing, both in this and neighbor-
ing towns, and urged to say something
against this as a growing vice. 1t Is at
ter all a very difficult subject for US to
handle, for we sometimes fear the reader
may say physician heal thyself--
Still, right is right, and wrong is wrong,
however we may stand in regard to it
When it has come to this, that scholars
leave the school room to visit some va
cant hall for card playing, and when Sc
date and sober gentlemen and ladies sit
I'D till two o'clock at night, or later, for a
similar purpose, it would seem that it was
carrying the thing a little too far The
example, too, Of the upper ten Is
claimed as leading on this practice
The gentry in an aspiring town not tar
of, claim it as all right because the "Prin-
cipal men" in another town, church men,
bers and all, play whist This Is about
the only argument that weighs with Us.
We see not bow the spending an hour
in whist can be proved to be wicked, or
injurious. We are not perfectly familiar
with the Scriptures, bat do not now re-
collect a passage which can even be so
construed as to show card playing TO be
worse than al the sins OF the calendar.
But we do not deny that there is gam
bling by cards more than by any or all
othergames. Our cities, when the grand
summing up takes place, will be found to
have a great load of this kind Of guilt.
And our large villages perhaps follow
hard after them. If the children and
young men, yea, young and beautiful la
dies, also, play to excess, and quote such
persons as examples, perhaps the charge
will have some force. And we suggest
whether the inhuential-attorney judges
and church members, should not look to
it that none of the blood be found in their
skirts. Letthem ponder il carefully.
But we do not design to spoil the ar.
gument in our quotation, by our weaker
notions. 1t is an Eastern game. Card,
appear to have been discovery of the
Gipsies. Their Oriental name signifies
dirinatiOn or PrognosticatioR. 1t is as
serted that the Arabs, or Saracens, learn
ed cards of the Gipsies. Coming from
the East, card playing difused itself over
Europe. The first cards were painted
and the first italian cards of A d. 1899
are acknowledged to have been so. The
art Of printing cards was discovered by
the Germans between 1850 and 1860.
The first certain trace Of card playing in
France occurs in the year 1861, and
Charles the 9th is said to have amused
himself with it during his sickness at the
end Of the I4th century. It seems,
therefore, that the world has existed un-
til the last few hundred years without
cards. 1t is also shown that cards instead
Of being a discovery of modern civiliza-
ton, are in reality a relic of barbariSm
adopted from the miserable men called
Gipsies. When, therefore, their origin
Is known, and their evil tendency so ap-
parent, does it not become modern en-
lightenment TO discard" them, and send
them back into the darkness where they
belong: Surely there must be amuse-
ments equally interesting, with no evil ten
dency, or else we must give the devil
credit for all our best amusements.