The Background for Good Conversation : Page 98

Sometimes, regrettably, I think one must know poker, too. I have often been inconvenienced socially, and even literarily, for not knowing this pestilent game. One of the first books I ever bought, ordered at fifteen from Montgomery Ward, was Hoyle's Card Games. I remember learning Rummy, "Schafskopf," Sixty-Six, Pinochle, Five Hundred, Skat, and Auction Bridge. Knowing these has been of much conversational help to me. It was a pity that Whist was not among these. This deficiency I feel keenly whenever I read or teach Charles Lamb's "Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist." In that essay I cannot fully appreciate his comparing Whist with Quadrille and with Cribbage, which latter Mrs. Battle scorns as an "ungram-matical game," for it employs such "solecisms" as that's a go, and two for his heels! But not having learned poker (owing to a latent fear of gambling) has been an even worse conversational liability. I calculate it has cut my talkability