Note 156 — Chapter III · THE PROGRESS OF CARD-PLAYING.
Reading edition
Malone's Supplemental Observations on Shakspeare, cited by Barrington. Dr. Moore, in his Views of Society and Manners in Italy, mentions the card-playing at the opera at Florence. "I was never more surprised," says he, "than when it was proposed to me to make one of a whist party, in a box which seemed to have been made for the purpose, with a little table in the middle. I hinted that it would be full as convenient to have the party somewhere else; but I was told, good music added greatly to the pleasure of a whist party; that it increased the joy of good fortune, and soothed the affliction of bad."