Moreover, unlike other passions, the love of gambling generally remains unimpaired by age, and instances of people of advanced years expending their few remaining energies at the card-table are not rare. There is the story of the venerable old north-country lady whom a visitor found looking very red-eyed and weary. "I fear you are suffering from a bad cold?" he inquired, solicitously. "Eh, I'se gat na cauld," was the reply; "some friends kem from Kendal on Tuesday that love a game a whist dearly, and I'se bin carding the morn and e'en, the e'en an' the morn, twa days." "Indeed, and what might you have won?" "Eh," she replied, with considerable satisfaction, "it mun be a shilling." At first sight, also, one would think that avarice and passion for play were absolutely incompatible; yet there are not a few striking instances of the two vices being combined--by men to whom the spending of a few shillings was agony, but who would risk thousands at cards with comparative equanimity. Such an one was the celebrated Mr. Elwes, who combined a passion for gambling with habits of the greatest penury. He was originally a Mr. Meggot, the name of Elwes being assumed under the terms of the will of his uncle. Sir Harvey Elwes. Sir Harvey was himself the perfect type of a miser. Timid, shy, and diffident in the extreme, he kept his household, which consisted of one man and two maid-servants, chiefly upon game from his own land and fish from his own ponds; the cows which grazed before his door furnished milk, cheese, and butter for the establishment; and what fuel he burned his own woods supplied. As he had no acquaintances and no books, the hoarding-up and the counting of his money was his greatest delight. Next to that came partridge catching--or setting, as it was then called--at which he was so great an adept that he was known to take five hundred brace of birds in one season. What partridges were not consumed by his household he turned out again, as he never gave anything away. At all times he wore a black velvet cap much over his face, a worn-out, full-dress suit of clothes, and an old great-coat, with worsted stockings drawn up over his knees. He rode a thin thoroughbred horse, and the horse and his rider looked as if a gust of wind would have blown them away together.