As women were left so largely to their own devices, falling the comradeship of men, they gave themselves over to the needle as the chief resource for idle hours. The _Female Spectator_ protested against this excessive needlework on the part of women: "Nor can I by any means approve of your compelling young ladies of fortune to make so much use of the needle, as they did in former days, and some few continue to do.... It always makes me smile when I hear the mother of fine daughters say: 'I always keep my girls at their needle;' one, perhaps, is working her a gown, another a quilt for a bed, and a third engaged to make a whole dozen shirts for her father. And then, when she had carried you into the nursery and shown you them all, add: 'It is good to keep them out of idleness; when young people have nothing to do, they naturally wish to do something they ought not,'" With such a narrow circle of interest, it was not strange that women who had leisure should have wasted it in frivolity. Gambling among women of fashion was more a result of too much leisure and too little intellectual stimulus than an indication of vicious propensities. _The Female Spectator_, from which we have quoted, in an article in 1745, relating an account of the visit of a country lady to a London friend, furnishes an illustration of the extent and effects of the vice. The article recites that after knocking a considerable time at the door of her friend's house,--the hour was between eleven and twelve o'clock in the day,--a footman, with his nightcap on and a general appearance of having risen from the dead, responded to her inquiry for her friend, in the interim of his yawns: "We had a racquet here last night, and my lady cannot possibly be stirring these three hours." The surprised visitor refrained from asking any questions concerning this unintelligible answer, and, after leaving her name, returned again at three o'clock. She had the good fortune to be admitted, and found her friend at her chocolate. She had a dish of this in one hand, and with the other she seemed to have been busy in sorting a large pile of guineas, which she had divided in two heaps on the table before her. Rising, she greeted her visitor with great civility, and expressed regret at the latter's disappointment on first calling, saying, with a smile, that when her friend had been a little longer in town, she would lie longer in bed in the morning. She then enlightened her as to the term "racquet," telling her that when the number assembled for cards exceeded ten tables the game was so styled; if fewer, it was called a "rout"; and if there were but two tables, it was a "drum."