This was an admission drawn, or extracted, as Cartwright would say, like a double tooth from the mouth of William’s mother; an amiable and excellent lady, who ever reluctantly confessed foibles in her family, and invariably endeavoured to exhibit to the world the sunny side of her children. There can be no possibility of doubt that William _was_ fond of whist. He doted on it. Whist was his first passion--his first love; and in whist he experienced no disappointment. The two were made for each other. [Illustration: CARDY MUMS.] William was one of a large bunch of children, and he never grew up. On his seventh birthday a relation gave him a miniature pack of cards, and made him a whist-player for life. Our bias dates much earlier than some natural philosophers suppose. I remember William, a mere child, being one day William of Orange, and objecting to a St. Michael’s because it had no pips. At school he was a total failure; except in reckoning the odd tricks. He counted nothing by honours, and the schoolmaster said of his head what he has since said occasionally of his hand that “it held literally nothing.” At sixteen, after a long maternal debate between the black and red suits, William was articled to an attorney: but instead of becoming a respectable land-shark, he played double-dummy with the Common-Law Clerk, and was discharged on the 6th of November. The principal remonstrated with him on a breach of duty, and William imprudently answered that he was aware of his duty, like the ace of spades. Mr. Bitem immediately banged the door against him, and William, for the first time in his life--to use his own expression, “got a slam.” William having served his time, and, as he calls it, followed suit for five years, was admitted as an attorney, and began to play at that finessing game, the Law. _Short-hand_ he still studied and practised; though more in parlours than in court. William at one period admired Miss Hunt, or Miss Creswick, or Miss Hardy, or Miss Reynolds; a daughter of one of the great card-makers, I forget which--and he cut for partners, but without “getting the Lady.” His own explanation was that he “_was discarded_.” He then paid his addresses to a Scotch girl, a Miss MacNab, but she professed religious scruples about cards, and he _revoked_. I have heard it said that she expected to match higher; indeed William used to say she “looked over his hand.”