Part 3
Another very funny game is “Confession by a Die,” played with cards and dice. It would look at first like a parody on “Mother Church,” but it is not so guilty. A person takes some blank cards, and, counting the company, writes down a sin for each. The unlucky sinner when called upon must not only confess, but, by throwing the dice also, confess as many sins as they indicate, and do penance for them all. These can, with a witty leader, be made very funny.
“The Secretary” is another good game. The persons sit at a table with square pieces of paper, and pencils, and each one writes his own name, handing the paper, carefully folded down, to the Secretary, who distributes them, saying “Character!” Then each one writes out an imaginary character, hands it again to the Secretary, who says “Future!” The papers are again distributed, and the writers forecast the future. Of course, the Secretary throws in all sorts of other questions, and, when the game is through, the papers are read. They form a curious and heterogeneous piece of reading. Sometimes such curious bits of character-reading crop out that one suspects and dreads complicity. But, if it is honestly played, the game is amusing.
Of Ruses and Catch-games, Practical Jokes, and all plays involving mystification and mortification, we have a great abhorrence. They do not belong to the class of Home Amusements. Let them be relegated to that bad limbo of “college hazing,” and other ignoble tricks which some people call fun. Far better the games which call for wit, originality, and inspiration; which show knowledge, reading, and a full _repertoire_; and a familiarity with all the three homely studies--geography, arithmetic, and history, including natural history. One of these games is called “The Traveler’s Tour,” and may be made very interesting, if the leader is ingenious. It is played in this way: One of the party announces himself the “Traveler.” He is given an empty bag, and counters with numbers on are distributed among the players. Thus, if twelve persons are playing, the numbers must count up to twelve--a set of _ones_ to be given to one, _twos_ to two, and so on. Then the Traveler asks for information about the places to which he is going. The first person gives it, if he can; if not, the second, and so on. If the Traveler considers it correct information, or worthy of notice, he takes from the person one of his counters, as a pledge of the obligation he is under to him. The next person in order takes up the next question, and so on. After the Traveler reaches his destination, he empties his bag, and sees to whom he has been indebted for the greatest amount of information. He then makes him the next Traveler. Of course, this opens the door for all sorts of witty rejoinders, as the players choose to exaggerate the claims of certain hotels, the geographical position of places, and the hits at such a place as Long Branch, for instance, by describing it as an “inland spot, very retired, where nobody goes,” etc., etc. Or it can be played seriously, with the map of Europe or America in one’s memory. The absurd way is, however, the favorite style with most, as in this wise:
_Traveler._ “I am going to Newport this summer. Which is the best route?”
_Answer._ “Well, start by the Erie Railroad and try to form a junction with the Pittsburg and Ohio.”
_Trav._ “When shall I get there?”
_An._ “If you take the Southern Pacific you may reach Newport before the Fall River boat gets in” (sarcasm on the slowness of the boat).
_Trav._ “How if I go by the Northern Pacific?”
_An._ “Well, that is better than the _Wickford_ route.”
Or _Trav._ says: “I want to go to San Francisco; how shall I start?”
_An._ “Well, at the rate the Cunarders are going to Europe now, your quickest way is to take the Gallia, and on reaching Liverpool to go to India by the Overland Route, and so round the world.”
The rhyming game is also very amusing. It is done in this way:
_Speaker._ “I have a word that rhymes with _Game_.”
_Interlocutor._ “Is it something statesmen crave?”
_Sp._ “No, it is not _Fame_.”
_In._ “Is it something that goes halt?”
_Sp._ “No, it is not _Lame_.”
_In._ “Is it something tigers need?”
_Sp._ “No, it is not to _Tame_.”
_In._ “Is it what we all would like?”
_Sp._ “No, it is not _Good Name_.”
_In._ “Is it to shoot at Duck?”
_Sp._ “Yes, and that Duck to _maim_.”
Such words as Nun, Thing, Fall, etc., which admit of many rhymes, are very good ones to choose. The two who play it must be quick-witted and read each other’s thoughts.
The end rhymes, which the French like, are very ingenious.[A] Try making a poem to fit these words, for instance, and you catch the idea:
Town. Lay. Place. Long. Run. Fame. Rain. Renown. May. Space. Wrong. Sun. Name. Train.
The game of “Crambo,” in which each player has to write a noun on one piece of paper and a question on another, is curious. As, for instance, the drawer may get the noun “Mountain,” and the question, “Do you love me?” he must write a sonnet or poem in which he answers the one and brings in the other.
The game of “Preferences” has had a long and a successful career. It is a very good addition to Home Amusements to possess a blank-book lying on the parlor-table, in which each guest should be asked to write out answers to the following questions:
Who is your favorite hero in history?
Who is your favorite heroine in history?
Who is your favorite king in history?
Who is your favorite queen in history?
What is your favorite male Christian name?
What is your favorite female Christian name?
What is your favorite flower?
What is your favorite color?
What is your favorite style of music?
What is your favorite style of climate?
What is your favorite amusement?
What is your favorite study?
What is your favorite exercise?
What is your favorite book?
What is your favorite game? etc., etc.
These questions may be amplified according to the taste of the owner of the book.
These books are very common in English country houses, and the statistics of favoritism have been taken. Napoleon Bonaparte, even in the land of the Duke of Wellington, had the greatest number of admirers as a hero; Mary, Queen of Scots, was the favorite queen in a majority of instances; Lord Byron led off as a poet, and the names Edward and Alice had the greatest number of votes as admired Christian names. Joan of Arc is always ahead as a heroine. In America, after a five years’ experience, a number of books were compared, and resulted in a close tie between Washington and Napoleon as hero; between Charles X, of Sweden, and Francis I as king; with Mary, Queen of Scots, far ahead as queen; with Theodore and Mary as Christian names in advance. Yet an occasional originality crops out in these “preferences,” and the examination of the different opinions is always interesting.
The game of Authors, especially when created by the persons who wish to play it, is very interesting. The game can be bought, and is a very common one, as, perhaps, everybody knows; but it can be rendered uncommon by the preparation of the cards among the members of the family. There are sixty-four cards to be prepared, with each the name of a popular author, and any three of his works. The entire set is numbered from one to sixty-four. Any four cards containing the name and works of the same author form a book. Thus, “Henry W. Longfellow, ‘Hyperion,’ ‘Evangeline,’ ‘New England Tragedies,’” would form one set. As the shuffling and distribution of these cards, and the plan of also drawing from a pile in the middle of the table, creates the greatest uncertainty as to the whereabouts of a certain card, much amusement can be derived in the effort to make a book. The cards must be equally distributed one at a time, beginning at the left of the dealer. The players then arrange their cards in the hand. If one finds four of a kind, he immediately declares a book, and lays it face downward on the table; and then, if holding one of the “Longfellow’s,” he will say “Evangeline.” He can ask any other player for “Hyperion.” After receiving either the card or a negative answer, the next player to the left goes on with his play. Players can only call for such cards as belong to books of which they hold a portion. Should a player call for a card which he already holds, that card is forfeited to the person of whom it was called. The caller always finds the name of the card he wants among those printed in small type; the person of whom it is called finds it in large type at the top.
This game may be made very useful by using the names of kings and queens, and the learned men of their reigns, instead of authors. It is a very good way to study history. The popes can be utilized, with their attendant great men, and by playing the game for a season the dates and the events of some obscure period of history will be effectually fixed in the memory.
As the numbers affixed to the cards may be purely arbitrary, the count at the end will fluctuate with remarkable impartiality; thus, the Dickens cards may count but one, while Tupper will be named sixteen; Carlyle can be two, while Artemus Ward shall be sixty. This is made very amusing sometimes. King Henry VIII, who set no small store by himself, can be made to count very little in the kingly game, while the poor Edward IV may have a higher numeral than he was allowed in life.
VI.
FORTUNE-TELLING.
We now come to that game which interests old and young. None are so apathetic but that they relish a look behind the dark curtain. The apple-paring in the fire, the roasted chestnut and the raisin, the fire-back and the stars, have been interrogated since time began. The pack of cards, the tea-cup, the dream-book, the board with the mystic numbers, and the Bible and Key, have been consulted from time immemorial. The makers of games have given in their statistics, and they declare that there are no cards or games so sure of selling well as those which foretell the Future.
Now a very pretty Home Amusement is to cultivate, without believing much in them, the innocent sciences of palmistry and of fortune-telling. Several years ago this led to the making of a very pretty book by Mrs. Gilman, of South Carolina--a poetical and very harmless fortune-teller--made up of lines from the poets. The young ladies of the period used to draw as future husbands: “A professor, and a log cabin in the West”; “a lord, and a castle”; “a merchant prince”; “an irresolute and an obstinate fool”; “a well-favored gentleman,” and so on, the good fortunes being in great advance of the bad ones. It was a popular work, and amused many a tea-party.
Many people, since the advent of Spiritualism, have amused themselves with that wonderful toy, “Planchette,” and other curious caprices of mind-reading, clairvoyance, table-tipping, and knocks. The Key, which seems to possess strong magnetic powers, and all the performances which the unbeliever calls “nonsense,” or worse, and which the believing call “manifestations,” are also interesting; but we can not recommend this sort of tampering with nervous and exciting pleasure, as it has undoubtedly sometimes unhinged the most truly innocent minds. Such investigations should be left to strong and sober men, and should be approached in a very philosophical spirit, or not at all.
There can be no harm, however, in a playful consultation of the leaves of the daisy, the four-leaved clover, the fortunate black cat who brings us luck, the moon over the right shoulder, the oracular “You shall travel over land and sea”--believing in all the good fortune, but in none of the bad. The salt should be carefully thrown over the left shoulder, if spilled, and all the Fates and Fairies should be propitiated. It gives delightful variety to life to know all the superstitions and the lore of old nurses and grandmothers. Did we follow them back, we should find that they each had a poetical origin. We all like to believe that we can enumerate on our fingers the false friends, the enemies; but we may hope that the world could not hold the admirers and the friends whom one four-leaved clover or one black cat had given us--or promised us. To be sure, “we had dreamed of snakes, and that meant enemies.” But, after all, are not enemies next best to friends? They give us consequences, and who that is worth anything was ever without them? That would be a very colorless individual who should go through life without an enemy.
The riches which are hidden in a fortune-telling set of cards (although like Peter Goldthwaite’s treasure) are very real and comforting while they last. They are endless, they have few really trying responsibilities attached, they can not be taxed, they are absolutely where thieves can not break through and steal. They are so satisfactory, which real wealth never is; they buy everything we want; they go farther than any real fortune could go; they are our real and personal estate, and our poetical dreams; our Lamp of Aladdin, and our Chemical Bank. They are gained without hurting anybody; they are dug out of the ground without painful backache or bloodshed; they are inherited without stain, and can be spent without fear of profligacy. Of what other fortune can we say as much?
It would be an unending theme to try to make a catalogue of the superstitions of all nations. The Irish, with their wild belief in fairies, that _Leprechaun_--the little man in red, who, if you can catch him, will make you happy and prosperous for ever after; who has such a strange relationship to humanity that at birth and death the Leprechaun must be tended by a mortal! to read, as they do--these imaginative people--a sermon in every stone; to see luck beneath the four-leaved clover, and to hang a legend on every bush; to follow the more spiritually-minded Scotchman in his second sight, who holds that
“Coming events cast their shadows before.”
A very learned book has been written on the “Superstitions of Wales” alone. Eloquent and poetic are the people who have invented the Banshee, the Brownie (or domestic fairy who does all the work). The more tragic and less loving superstitions of Italy teach that the “evil eye” is always to be dreaded. The Breton superstitions are as wild as the sea-gust which sweeps from their coast. All these are subjects of profound interest to those who read the great subject of race, from ethnology, folk-lore, and ballads. The superstitions of a people tell their innermost characteristics, and are thus profoundly interesting.
The French have, however, tabularized fortune-telling for us. Their peculiar ability in arranging ceremonials and _fêtes_, and their undoubted genius for tactics and strategy, show that they are able to foresee events with unusual clearness. Their ingenuity in all technical contrivances is an additional testimony in the same direction, and we are not surprised that they have here, as is their wont, given us the practical help which we need in fortune-telling. Mlle. Lenormand, the sorceress who prophesied to Napoleon his greatness, and to many of the princes and great men of France their downfall and their misfortunes, has left us thirty-six cards (to be bought at any book-store), wherein we can read the decrees of fate. Her preface says, “Thousands of noblemen did then acknowledge her great talent already during her lifetime, and did often confess that her method was full of truth and exactness.” Lenormand was a very clever sibyl; she had great ingenuity; she throws in enough of the inevitable bad, and finds enough of the possible good, to at least amuse those who consult her oracles. Whether we have confidence or faith in the divination, we can not but look for the lucky cards. In this game “The Cavalier” is a messenger of good fortune, and, if not surrounded by unlucky cards, brings good news, which the person may expect either from his own house or from abroad. This will, however, not take place immediately, but some time after.
“The Clover Leaf” is a harbinger of good news, but if surrounded by clouds it indicates great pain; but if No. 2 lies near No. 26 or 28, the pain will be of short duration, and will soon change to a happy issue.
“The Ship,” the symbol of commerce, signifies great wealth, which will be acquired by trade or inheritance. If near to the person, it means an early journey.
“The House” is a certain sign of success and prosperity, and although the present position of the person may be disagreeable, yet the future will be bright and happy. If this card lies in the center of the cards under the person, this is a hint to beware of those who surround him.
“A Tree,” if distant from the person, signifies good health. Nine trees, of different cards together, leave no doubt about the realization of all reasonable wishes.
“Clouds”: if their clear side is turned toward the person, it is a lucky sign; with the dark side turned toward the person, something disagreeable will soon happen.
“A Serpent” is a sign of misfortune, the extent of which depends upon the greater or smaller distance from the person; it is followed invariably by deceit, infidelity, and sorrow.
“A Coffin,” very near to the person, means, without any doubt, dangerous diseases, death, or total loss of fortune; more distant from the person, the card is less dangerous.
“The Nosegay” means much happiness in every respect.
“The Scythe” indicates great danger, which will only be avoided if lucky cards surround him.
“The Rod” means quarrels in the family, domestic afflictions, want of peace among married persons, fever, and protracted illness.
“The Birds” mean hardship to be overcome, but of short duration; distant from the person, they mean the accomplishment of a pleasant journey.
These are descriptions of a few of the picture-cards with which Mlle. Lenormand tells fortunes still, although she has gone to the land of certainty, and has herself found out if her symbols and emblems, and her combinations, really did draw aside the curtain of the future with invisible strings. We advise all our readers to possess themselves of her “Fortune-telling Cards” if they wish to become amateur sibyls.
The cup of tea, and the mysterious wanderings of the grounds around the cup, so long the favorite medium of the sibyl, seems to be an English superstition. It fits itself to the old crone domesticity of the Anglo-Saxon humble home, rather than to the more out-of-door romance of the Spaniards and the Italians; and yet the most out-of-door people in the world--the gypsies--use it as a means of discerning the future.
The cup should be filled with a weak infusion of tea--grounds and all--and then carefully turning the cup toward one, the tea should be carefully turned out, waving the cup so skillfully that the tea-leaves are dispersed over the surface of the cup. Happy the maid who can turn out the tea without spilling the leaves. If one drop of tea is left in the cup it will mean--a tear.
These grounds, or tea-leaves, have been used from the earliest days as the alphabet of the Parcæ. Before Chinese tea was brought to England the old fortune-tellers made some sort of a brew out of powdered herbs, which left their mark on the cup. We can understand how that sinuous serpent who has had so much to do with our destiny, as a synonym of evil, can be pictured or “visualized” by such a process; but where the sibyl finds the light-haired young man crossing a river, where she finds gold and where trouble, we must leave to the interpreters.
That most interesting of sibyls, “Norna of the Fitful Head,” used molten lead as a means of interpreting the unseen, and that can be done by our modern soothsayers.
Cards from early antiquity have been used to tell fortunes. The Queen of Hearts is the heroine, and as about her group the propitious reds, or the gloomy blacks, so may we hope for good or dread bad luck. The Ace of Spades is a bearer of evil tidings; the King of Hearts, at the right of the Queen, is the very Fortunatus himself. And now, who is this goddess so often invoked? _Fortuna_, courted by all nations, was, in Greek, _Tyche_, or the goddess of chance. She differed from Destiny or Fate in so far that she worked without law, giving or taking at her own good pleasure, and dispensing joy or sorrow indefinitely; her symbols were those of mutability--a ball, a wheel, a pair of wings, a rudder. The Romans affirmed that, when she entered their city, she threw off her wings and shoes, and determined to live with them for ever; she seems to have thought better of it, however. She was a sister of the Parcæ, or Fates, those three who spin the thread of life, measure it, and cut it off. Fortunatus, he of the inexhaustible purse of gold and the wishing-cap, is too familiar a figure to the readers of fairy tales to be mentioned here.
And yet, although all nations have desired to propitiate Fortuna, her high-priests and interpreters have ever been in disrepute. In Scotland, that land of demonology and witchcraft, of second-sight, of dreamy superstition, fortune-tellers were denounced as vagabonds, and their punishment, by statute, was scourging and burning of the ears. We all know how the knowledge of the “black art” was denounced in Germany; and the witches of Salem, while they were approached at dead of night by a pale magistrate who desired to have his fortune told, were, at his high behest, tortured, pilloried, and hanged the next week, if the fortune was a bad one, or, if being well foretold, was slow of accomplishment. That half-belief which superstitious persons repose in their oracles, shown in the case of the Indian, who breaks or maims his God if he does not respond to his prayer, and in the remarkable story of Louis XI, of France, who used to alternately pray to and abuse his leaden images of saints, is repeated often in the history of fortune-telling.
Mother Redcap, “a very witch,” was resorted to by hundreds of persons in England as a fortune-teller; her image remains on a coin dated 1667. The well-known prophecies of her neighbor, Mother Shipton, have come down to us. Poor Redcap had all the duckings and the batings of the populace. She and her black cat were the favorite horrors of the superstitious inhabitants of Kentish Town, and hundreds of men, women, and children saw the devil come in state to carry her off. But Mother Shipton (who was born at Knaresborough in the reign of Henry VII) became the most popular of British prophets, and, although she was supposed to have sold her soul to the Old Gentleman, she yet died in her bed decently and in order at an extreme old age. So Fortuna is capricious, even in her treatment of her votaries. It is not strange that “Palmistry” should have taken higher ground than mere fortune-telling, and indeed the lines of the hand will seem to map out character, and perhaps destiny, with some accuracy. The books say that the lines running through the palm indicate will or indecision, force or weakness, quickness or slowness; indeed, all which makes character and fate. We are the arbiters of at least a part of our fortune.
The power to tell fortunes by the hand can be learned from any of the French books on palmistry, and there are one or two little English translations. It can be sufficiently curious and varied to amuse the home circle, and so long as it is done for that purpose, fortune-telling can do no harm.
But the moment we rise above the idea that the beans, the tea-grounds, the black cat, the cards, or the lines in the palm, are but blind guides, making the most palpable mistakes, then the tampering with the curtain becomes dangerous, and we had better leave the future alone.
VII.
AMUSEMENTS FOR A RAINY DAY.