I was sure indeed that Miss Caroline had defined these limitations of
Clem as a financier. It was one of those enjoyable topics which we had
been free to discuss. That she had discovered how lamentably his
resources had been reduced by freight tolls on her furniture I could
only infer. But I knew, at least, that she was aware of the blistering,
rainless summer that had laid Clem's high hopes of a garden in dust and
cut off half his revenue. Plainly, Miss Caroline had more than enough of
matters fit to engage her graver moments.
For my own part I, too, had matters to dwell upon of an equal gravity in
their own poor way; though perhaps, too, I could not have defined them
as understandingly as I did the perplexities of my neighbor.
Happily the feat need not be attempted; I had the game, in which
troubles may be played away at least beyond the necessity for analyzing
them--the game which requires two decks and is to be played alone--the
most efficacious of those devices for the solitary which cards afford.
I had been made acquainted with its scheme and with some of its cruder
virtues by a certain illustrious soldier whom I was once much thrown
with. He confessed to me that he played it before a battle to inspire
him with coolness, and after a battle to learn wise behavior under
victory or defeat, as it might have been.
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