"Some eighty years back, Lord Peterborough, having one night lost a large sum of money, the friends with whom he was playing proposed to make the game five points instead of ten, in order to give the loser a chance, at a quicker game, of recovering his loss. The new game was found to be so lively, and money changed hands with such increased rapidity, that these gentlemen and their friends, all of them leading members of the Clubs of the day, continued to play it. It became general in the Clubs, thence was introduced to private houses, travelled into the country, went to Paris, and has long since so entirely superseded the whist of Hoyle's day, that of short whist alone I propose to treat. I shall thus spare the reader, the learning much in the old works that it is not necessary for him to know, and not a little which, if learned, should be at once forgotten." Graham's, in St. James's-street, the greatest of Card Clubs, was dissolved about five-and-twenty years back. FOOTNOTES: [34] Abridged from the _Times_ journal. [35] _The Laws of Short Whist_, edited by J. L. Baldwin, and a Treatise on the Game, by J. C. Harrison, 59, Pall Mall. PRINCE'S CLUB RACQUET COURTS. In the early history of the metropolis we find the Londoners warmly attached to outdoor sports and pastimes; although time and the spread of the great city have long obliterated the sites upon which these popular amusements were enjoyed. Smithfield, we know, was the town-green for centuries before it became the focus of its fanatic fires; Maypoles stood in various parts of the City and suburbs, as kept in remembrance by name to this day; football was played in the main artery of the town--Fleet-street and the Strand, for instance; _paille malle_ was played in St. James's Park, and the street which is named after the game; and tennis and other games at ball were enjoyed on open grounds long before they were played in covered courts; while the bowling-greens in the environs were neither few nor far between, almost to our time. Tennis, we need scarcely state here, was originally played with the hand, at first naked, then covered with a thick glove, to which succeeded the bat or racquet, whence the present name of the game. A few of our kings have been tennis-players. In the sixteenth century tennis courts were common in England, being attached to country mansions. Later, playing-courts were opened in the metropolis: for example, to the houses of entertainment which formerly stood at the opposite angles of Windmill-street and the Haymarket were attached tennis-courts, which lasted to our time: one of these courts exists in James-street, Haymarket, to this day. To stroll out from the heated and crowded streets of the town to the village was a fashion of the last century, as we read in the well-remembered line-- "Some dukes at Marybone bowl time away."