Now my first eight cards are down in a horizontal row.  There are two kings among them, which is auspicious, for kings must be placed sometime at the top.  There is a red queen, also auspicious, to be placed on one of the black kings.  There is an ace of diamonds and its deuce.  Good, again!  The ace is placed above the row, beginning a row of aces to be placed there as fast as they fall, and the deuce is placed atop of it, for in that row the suits will be built up, each in its kind.  In the lower rows the suits are to be built down and crossed, as when I played the red queen on the black king, so that only the top of his crowned head can be seen.  Then I play a red eight on a black nine and a black seven on the red eight.  I am now left most fortunately with five spaces when I deal off my second row of eight,—­five spaces into which, it may be, a king or two shall happily fall.

The game usually becomes intense after the third eight cards are played.  By that time a choice must be made.  Shall this black six or the other be played on the red seven?  One must be wise, for either will release important cards.

The game has started so well that it promises to play out too easily—­which is one of its tricks.  Presently a deuce will be covered by a king for which no space is ready, a dark queen will be buried under a succession of smaller cards, crowding along with apparent carelessness, but relentlessly.  Now a space is opened for the king that covers the deuce, but the king has meantime been covered by an insignificant but unmanageable four-spot, and cannot be reached.  The game is not so absurdly easy as it promised to be.  Still it may be won by clever playing.  There follow eight cards that prove to be immovable, and the issue is almost in doubt.  Now the last eight cards are down, and the game is suddenly seen to be lost.  One small other shuffle might have won it; if that tray of spades had fallen one place to the right or left, the thing would now be easy; if it were a deuce or a four, the thing were easy.  One spot on the card has brought ruin.  The game has foiled us with its own peculiar cleverness.

But then, we learn to expect failure; and, most important of all, we learn to succeed while failing.  We learn to see our cards fall wretchedly without a tremor.  We learn to take small gains that offer, and to watch unmoved while splendid chances come to naught.  We learn to live life and to waste no energy in vain wishing that we had shuffled differently.  We learn even to marvel admiringly at the unobtrusive cunning which thwarts us of our dream’s own—­to wonder that cards ever should come right for any player in that maze of chances and faulty judgments.  And we learn, above all, to brush the things together without loss of time and to play a new hand with the same old hope.

As I studied the cards, making sure of my defeat—­one must be most careful to do that; a way is sometimes to be found—­it was not strange that I fell to thinking of the face on my neighbor’s wall.