Country-house “week-end” parties are generally all bridge-parties. They are all carefully selected, with an eye to the main chance. The “play” generally begins on Saturday evening, and goes on all through Sunday up to midnight. One woman, notorious for her insensate love of gambling, lately took lessons in “cheating” at bridge before joining her country-house friends. She came away heavier in purse by five hundred pounds, but of that five hundred, one hundred and fifty had been won from a foolish little girl of eighteen, known to be the daughter of a very wealthy, but strict father. When the poor child was made to understand the extent of her losses at bridge, she was afraid to go home. So she purchased some laudanum “for the toothache,” and tried to poison herself by swallowing it. Fortunately, she was rescued before it was too late, and her Spartan “dad,” with tears of joy in his eyes, paid the money she had lost at cards thankfully, as a kind of ransom to Death. But she was never again allowed to visit at that “swagger” house where she had been “rooked” so unmercifully. And when we remember how fond Society is of bragging of its little philanthropies, its “bazaars” and carefully-calculated “charities,” we may, perhaps, wonder whether, among the list of good and noble deeds it declares itself capable of, it would set its face against bridge, and make “gambling-parties” once for all unfashionable and in “bad form”? This would be true philanthropy, and would be more productive of good than any amount of regular church attendance. For there is no doubt that very general sympathy is accorded to people who find that going to church is rather an irksome business. It is not as if they were often taught anything wonderfully inspiring or helpful there. They seldom have even the satisfaction of hearing the service read properly. The majority of the clergy are innocent of all elocutionary art. They read the finest passages of Scripture in the sing-song tone of a clerk detailing the items of a bill. It is a soothing style, and quickly induces sleep; but that is its only recommendation.