Facts and Speculations on the Origin and History of Playing Cards

About This Book

There is an interest, of a certain kind, even in the solution of a riddle, or the explication of a conundrum; and certain learned men, such as Père Daniel, and Court de Gebelin, having assumed that the game of Cards was originally instructive, and that the figures and marks of the suits are emblematic, speaking to the intelligent of matters of great import, their amusingly absurd speculations on the subject—set forth with all the gravity of a "budge doctor" determining ex cathedra—impart to the History of Cards an interest which, intrinsically, it does not possess. But putting aside all that m...