THE SAN ANTONIO LIGHT

San Antonio, Texas, U.S.A.

4 February 1917

(page 13)

IN SOCIETY.

Everybody is quite busy learning the new game—pirate bridge. Of course, live would not be worth living if all the things had been learned and everybody knew everything. Just as soon as one learns all about a new dance or a new game or a new language or a new cult, it is old and one begins to find fault with it and then someone puts on this thinking cap and discovers something to add to it or take away from it, to make it new again.

Well, so it is with this pirate bridge. Away back in the days when the simple game of cards was played with forty-eight cards, only those persons who had been presented at court had the pleasure of playing with them. That game was called “swabbers.” In 1674, when the other four cards were added, the game became known as whist. People went on playing whist for a long time, when suddenly in 1893, somebody changed the game and it became “bridge.” Some years later, somebody else came along and made some changes and the game of auction bridge was evolved. And now comes this man Aleister Crowley, from India, and presents the card-playing folk with a brand new version—pirate bridge.