It was at the Savage Club that I first saw the game of poker played. The game had been introduced by some Americans who enjoyed the privileges of corresponding membership in respect of their connection with the Lotus Club, New York. It was shortly made taboo by a ukase of the Portland and Turf Clubs, and disappeared from the card-rooms of all the West End clubs. I have always thought this rather a pity. Poker is one of the best games to be got out of a pack. It calls into exercise other faculties beside memory, judgment, skill, and a nice knowledge of the value of cards. You want to be a bit of a physiognomist. Your own expression should be under control, and your manner absolutely inscrutable. It is in respect of their natural endowment in these qualities that the Yankees make such good poker-players. I became greatly interested in the game, and it was indirectly through my instrumentality that its rules were first published in this country. General Schenk drew up the enactments governing the science of the pastime, at the request of Lady Waldegrave. Lady Waldegrave had them set up in type at Strawberry Hill. She had a few dozen copies printed for the use of her acquaintances. I became the proud possessor of one of these copies. A friend of mine—or perhaps I should say a gentleman whom up to that time I had regarded as a friend—induced me to lend him the brochure to settle some dispute which had arisen between certain correspondents on his paper; for my friend was a rather distinguished writer on the sporting press. I never saw that book again, but to my intense surprise and chagrin I found the whole of the Strawberry Hill rules published in the columns of my friend’s paper, with their place of origin given, and Lady Waldegrave’s authority cited. The transaction did more harm to the gentleman who had betrayed my confidence than it did to me. In those days an act of the kind would be generally reprobated. Dog did not eat dog when Plancus was Consul. Nowadays I am given to understand that it would be regarded as a bit of smart journalism. As I write, the memory of that first game of draw-poker comes vividly back to me, and, singular as it may seem to you, it comes back to an accompaniment of music. It was night, and in the supper-room below and at the back the little pale-faced choristers in their Eton suits were singing glees for Paddy Green’s customers. These vocal exercises were resented by grumpy members of the club, but to me distance enhanced the beauty of the singing, and I never hear poker mentioned now, such is the strange influence of the association of ideas, that I do not instantly hear the far-away voices of boys singing: “Oh, who will o’er the downs with me— Oh, who will with me ride? Oh, who will up and follow me To win a blooming bride?”