make its details into a book. As such he printed it. Doubtless he thought that a betrayed secret may lawfully be re-betrayed as fully as possible.

Nevertheless, it was not so much of a re-betrayal. For less than what a publisher of this day would call one fair-sized edition of "The Square of Sevens," printed for Antrobus by the great John Gowne, of The Mask book-shop, has ever appeared. And, to account for the semi-privacy surrounding the little work, must be set forth the dolesome incident of a printing-house fire burning, "all except about a dozen or so of copies," before there had been any "distribution of the Book" among the author's "Friends, Male or, Female, or to the Publick." By some sudden change of his own mind or his conscience, Mr. Antrobus did not order any new edition. The prefatory "Afterthought" mentioned may be found, only if stuck in some of the copies of the volume—doubtless by quick and clumsy after-pastings.

Why Antrobus did not give the volume real currency is not known. That he was urged to do so is certain. It is likely, however, that about this same time some pecuniary losses withheld him from such expensive bobbies as printing books. He returned to Bath, and died there in 1740. We have no particulars of the event, nor are there more than allusions to it in the journal of the date or in the letters of contemporaries. Lady Lavinia Pitt, however, mentions the disease as the smallpox, then so much dreaded.

He left no family—except his young ward, the mysterious daughter of "Mr. George"—of the Tretelly Inn. To her Antrobus had given his name, and she inherited half his estate. Shortly after her kind guardian's death she married an Exeter gentleman of high family. Her father, "Mr. George," died in the course of Mr. Antrobus's stay at Tretelly.

To some beaux and belles of the reigns of George II. and George III. this book, originating in the conversation of another George—George the Unknown—could well seem an interesting matter. All the more might it be so in view of its scarceness, from the first. There are no more copies of it, despite the fact that fashionable dilettanti in things occult have borne it in mind. Could anything be more characteristic of Horace Walpole than to find him in a letter, from serene Strawberry Hill, confessing—to no purpose—that he is "desirous of getting hold of that damned queer old woman's fortune-telling book, by Bob Antrobus." In the Diary of the sprightly Louisa Josepha Adelaide, Countess of Bute (afterward so unfortunate a wife and an even more unfortunate mother), she describes a droll scene at a Scotch castle one evening, in which the unexpected statements of  "The Square of Sevens" as to the lives and characters of the company "put to the blush several persons of distinction" who rashly tempted its wisdom—especially including the aged Earl of Lothian. For what Lady Morgan thought of it, and the characteristic story of the peculiar terms on which she offered "to sell her copy to Archbishop Dacre," the reader is referred to the Bentijack Correspondence.

It is on its face a model method of fortune-telling with cards; easily the first for completeness and directness. Our author, in a letter to his cousin, Henry Antrobus, quotes the eminent Brough as styling it not only the most authoritative little book on its topic, certainly the most interesting one; hit the only volume on the subject "which is not a confusing and puerile farrago of nonsense—troublesome to look into and unsatisfactory to acquire." Certainly our ancient enthusiasts record can be learned and used systematically, exactly as is the case with such excellent and approved systems of chiromancy as Mr. Heron-Allen's and others. It may be thought fortunate for modern students of card-divination that the work has survived, so complete and clear. Its discreetness, too, is delightfully adroit, when it suggests that its tenses, past, present, and future, are not as definite as one might desire.

There is no copy of the hook in the British Museum, nor in the Paris Bibliothèque Nationale, nor in any public collection of America, England, or France that I can name. One worn but perfect MS copy is to be found in a private library in the United States. Another might yet be sought in far Australia, if still owned by descendants of Mr. Antrobus's young ward. Only by a special personal interest in the matter, and with a sense of risk to an heirloom, I am permitted to make the manuscript for this edition.

Undoubtedly, as "R.A.," Mr. Antrobus dressed the mystic "Significances" of the cards in the book's "Tavola" in English less blunt and uncultivated than they came to his ears from the lips of the dying "George—." But that he took no other liberties of the least consequence is pretty certain. He respected the "Supernaturall" here, as in his grave brochure on the Cock Lane Ghost, which spectre, alas! mightily took him in. And, by the way, the reader will please observe in his pages here following that though the method of "building" and so of forming the "Square," and of "reducing" it, seems at first glance bothersome and complicated, it is only a childishly easy performance in the way of making a square of seven rows of seven cards, and then of making the rows only three cards deep, at most! Crazy superstition and the aim at mummery have added the details of process that seem tedious. And, really, they are not ineffective in a drawing-room.

What we read of thus as carefully put together, conscientiously printed as a thing to be taken with seriousness, in its author's time, may in our social day serve a lighter end—and entertain the parlor, rather than awe the boudoir. With this intent, as well as in offering something of a literary curio, the present Editor assists it toward the glimpses of—not the moon, but the electric chandelier. And its Nineteenth-Century sponsor hopes that many curious and pleasant "fortunes" may be read by it; and that in its pages the ominous Spade, the mischief-working "Influencing-Card," the stern "Master-Card," the evil "Female or Male Enemy," and the "Vain and Amoratious Man" (who must be ever, indeed, a terrible combination to endure) may not be frequently encountered—in any case, that along with many other troubles and trials, such unpleasing meetings may not come outside the vagaries of a pack of cards.

E. IRENAEUS STEVENSON.

New York, 1896.

BRADAMANTE. But is this authentic? Is it an original? Is it a true, original thing, sir?

GRADASSO (making a leg). Madam, 'tis as authentic as very authenticity itself—
'tis truth's kernel, originality's core—provided you are but willing to believe it such.

BRADAMANTE. Sir, you quibble.

GRADASSO (making a leg). Madam, 'tis precisely in my vocation to quibble,—and delicately.

     From The Superglorious Life and Death of Prince Artius: A Tragedy. Act LI., sc. li.

Take a Pack of Fifty-Two Cards, Shuffle the same well, Seven times. Then present the Pack to the Person whose Queries you seek to answer, who accordingly shall be called your Querist. Therewith must your Querist chuse from the Pack, without seeing the cards in it—three several Cards, which are to be called his Wish-Cards; the same being chosen with a Cut between each Choice. The Querist must not seek to see these same Wish-Cards; they are to be laid apart on the Table, or left to Repose in the Querist's care, till all that followeth of the Square, the Parallelogram, and the Reading be ended.

Of the Dealing of a First Seven Cards.

Again take in hand your Pack and Shuffle it yet smartly,