Slavery & Its Results by Alfred H. Benners https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=wu.89058597360&view=1up&seq=9
tarot
Does the game of tarot exist in the United States? Consulting contemporaneous American books on cards, "The Complete Gamesters" of our day, no reference to tarot can be found. In Chatto's *Facts and Speculations on Cards" tarot is noticed 88 d game, but la Playing not described, and the inquirer is requested find some impossible French book of the time of the first empire. Examining other French "Salons des Jeux" tarot is mentioned, but generally in a supercilious and contemptuous tanner, 28 "a game played in a few obscure villages of Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain.33 There was a German book, enerelopedic of its kind, which was dreadfully diffuse and learnedly incomprehensible about tarot. Evidently tarot was the trilobite of the games of cards which had been stranded and fossiled, something contemporaneous with crossbows and arquebases and pourpoints and doublets.
Perhaps it was a game the sailors bed played on the capstan of the Santa Maria (providing that ship had a capstan) when Christopher Columbus sailed to discover a new world. There were, however, people who sald that tarot was played in New York. We bring to New York all the relies of the past and damp them here. The virtues, the vices, the madnesses of other nationalties find their way here, and blossom or wither or poison. Some one showed a pack of tarot cards.
That was proof positive. The having of the implements made it clear that tarot was played. The only trouble was to find out where tarot performances took place. There are resorts where calabrasella, ramsch, schuautz slobberhaunes are played. Did you only hunt long enough you might discover players of lanterloo, gleek, penniech, bankafalt, and even bone ace.
Somebody said in a vague war that there was a club addicted to tarot. Endeavors to discover that club proved abortive..
"hubbub" of perby-gone 18 or a to an a be number expert published, indulging, interestingly There is an expert--a Magliabecchi of cards, of all games of chance and skill. The books on chess he owns is a library. Because be has not written the most erudite work on cards arises from the simple fact that all big leisure hours are devoted to playing skat or studying chess problems. This Magliabecchi is the furthest possible from a gambler. Managing the financial busineas of a large house he finds mental recreation in cards.
If be plays for money it is for the smallest possible stake. He belongs to no club, but is the best whist player in New York. His memory is prodigious. You may blindfold him, give him the thirteen cards at whist, recite them to him in their proper order, aud then turn his back to the table, take away his cards, and inform him what his adversaries and his partner play, and be will go on with the game, and if the performers are good ones be will know what ought to be the last two or three cards in the various hands. To this expert the searcher after tarot went.
•Do you know anything about tarot?" was the queatiou. "Certainly. A stupid game. The Viennese play it, and tarot exists in Northern Italy, because Austria was the dominant power there. I played tarot when I was a child.
Some years ago in Chicago I saw some German immigrants playing tarot in a beer garden." • Do you remember anything about it?" "Of course I do. You know that way I have of remembering all games of cards. I have several packs of tarot in my cabinet. Here and, by the way, did you ever see the old- they are, est perfect pack of cards in the United States? I will show it to you. These cards were found ten years ago in an old house in New Jersey.
They are apparently brand new, and had never been played with. I was uncertain about the date until I wrote to Notes and Queries about them. I was told they were of 1640. There was quite a lengthy correspondence about them." "But tarot?" "Yes. The game is one of points, or of tricks.
The jongleur, or joker, takes everything. count 4, queens 3, and knaves, or valets, 2. Kings There are 23 trumps, and I would not advise your wasting your time with it. As it is played now it is a very dumb game. But it inay not have been handed down to us properly.
cations There might have been glorious compliwith 80 cards. I spent once eix mouths atudying the Japanese game of chess, where the men have 50 different moves. It was & delightful study, and so difficult." "You would not advise my learning tarot?" "Heaven forbid! I would not like to be disrespectful in regard to the game, because it might have been once a very fine one. It the rage in the fifteenth and sixteenth centu- was ries. There was the poet Flavio Alberto Lollio, who wrote in 1590 an invective in versi-sciolti duced against tarot, and, it is said, after having prothis admirable work, he straightway ruined himself playing tarot.
It is AD older game than primero. I will teach you primero 48 it was played in Queen Elizabeth's time, and A Russian adaptation of the game 88 it has been played in Moscow ever since the time of Peter the Great. Oh, here is a new addition to my cabipet--a pack of Indian cards made by the Apaches. You see American and Spanish influences here. The material is the thick hide of the elk, and the count or "*coat" cards are not badly designed.
The Apaches must have been very bad Indiane, for having examined these cards I find that all the backs have marks 1n- Indicating what are the faces of the cards." It ended, however, by the expert showing the It tracker after tarot how the game was played. to was a very dull game, very properly relegated and Spain, obscure villages in Germany, France, Italy though the history of it was fairly interpreted. John Adams.
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