HAT'S on the cards?'
A question common
enough when the
actual knowledge of
the moment does not afford a positive answer;
a question, too, which has an origin taking
us back to the earliest use of playing
cards. But to how many of those to whom
playing cards as a means of recreation
are familiar is it known what may be found
on the cards? Yet upon these "bits of
painted cardboard" there has been expended
a greater amount of ingenuity and of artistic
effort than is to be found in any other form
of popular amusement. Pope’s charming
epic, "The Rape of the Lock", gives us, in
poetic form, a description of the faces of
the cards as known to him and to the card-players of his time:—
With hoary whiskers and a forky beard;
And four fair queens, whose hands sustain a flower,
Th' expressive emblem of their softer pow'r;
Four knaves in garbs succinct, a trusty band,
Caps on their heads and halberds in their hand."
Fig. 1.
It is not our purpose to historically trace the evolution of cards—this is a subject beyond the reach of the present article—but a look further afield will give us evidence that during the last three centuries there has been a constant adaptation of cards to purposes which take them beyond their intention as the instruments for card playing only. The idea that playing cards had their origin the later years of Charles VI. of Trance may be disposed of at once as a popular error, though it is true that the earliest
