Everybody has known how to play BEZIQUE in this country for years,
yet within the last eighteen months, whole circles of our friends
have been seized with a midsummer madness and willingly sat glued
to a card-table through long hot afternoons and again after dinner
until day dawned on their folly.
Certain MEMOIRES of Louis Fifteenth's reign tell of an
"unravelling" mania that developed at his court. It began by some
people fraying out old silks to obtain the gold and silver threads
from worn-out stuffs; this occupation soon became the rage, nothing
could restrain the delirium of destruction, great ladies tore
priceless tapestries from their walls and brocades from their
furniture, in order to unravel those materials and as the old stock
did not suffice for the demand thousands were spent on new brocades
and velvets, which were instantly destroyed, entertainments were
given where unravelling was the only amusement offered, the entire
court thinking and talking of nothing else for months.
What is the logical deduction to be drawn from all this? Simply
that people do not see with their eyes or judge with their
understandings; that an all-pervading hypnotism, an ambient
suggestion, at times envelops us taking from people all free will,
and replacing it with the taste and judgment of the moment.
The number of people is small in each generation, who are strong
enough to rise above their surroundings and think for themselves.
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