THE ERRING CIRCLERS
"It seems to me that our sewing circle never takes up with a citified, high-toned fad, but what there's something 'most like a judgment sent down on us,'" observed Mrs. Birdie Silverman, pensively contemplating the huge bundle of family mending which she had prepared to take with her to the meeting of the aforementioned "circle."
"And every time that we get a set-back, we think that we've learned our lesson and are squelched for good and all, but believe me, Mrs. Levy, it ain't no time till one of us Circlers pops up with some new hobby, which the rest of us circlers mount behind her, as you might say, and then we all prance merrily away. I feel in my bones that somebody will spring something new," she continued thoughtfully, "for it's six months just since the last meeting of us circlers as a whist club."
"You don't mean to say that you've played whist in this here little burg," Mrs. Levy, who was a new arrival from a nearby city, and consequently regarded her new neighbors with a superior and supercilious eye.
"I knew that you'd be surprised." replied Mrs. Silverman complacently. "It ain't hardly what you'd suspect of this peaceful little town. Well, Mrs. Bamberger, the wife of the bank cashier that was here just before your husband got the job, initiated us into its mysteries. She proposed changing our circle into a whist club the very first meeting that she attended.
"Some newcomers are mighty cheeky that way, you know." Mrs. Levy, who had already formulated certain ambitious plans, reddened, but said nothing. "I suppose," continued Mrs. Silverman reflectively, "that we were tired of doing our
family mending in each other’s company twice a month and yearned for a change. Any way, we jumped at her proposition, you might say, and that every afternoon she taught us the rules of the game. She’d been so certain of us that she had brought some score cards along with her, and her punch, and she was mighty proud of that punching instrument. She said it was just like a train conductor has to punch his tickets with, and that it cost nine dollars, and when we won a point, she would gracefully punch a hole in our score- card, and when the game was over and we were ready to go home, all we had to do was to count the holes in our cards to see how many points we’d made.
"And she taught us to progress, too," continued Mrs. Silverman, "To my mind, that's the best part of the game. I don't believe I'd cared so much about winning, if it hadn't have been for the privilege of getting to move to the next table.
"It was sort of strange how fascinated we circlers were with whist. Not one of us had ever before played a thing more complicated or scientific than dominoes or jackstraws or mumblepeg, but we dived into whist like we was professional gamblers. We made our husbands stay at home evenings to play with us, and would meet at each others, houses for practice games when we ought to have been doing something else. We just talked and thought and dreamed whist. If you passed a group of us on the street you'd hear such fragments of talk as, "Led from a sneak." "ridiculously poor partners." "rotten deals." You never heard a word about "Esther's new dress," or "Morris's fierce cold." And other common subjects that used to interest