IT is a very popular belief that cards were invented in order to amuse King Charles V1 of France, at a time when that monarch was mentally unstable. This legend, however, like so many pretty stories of the past, has no foundation in fact, as cards were known long before the mad monarchs days. It is true that a court miniature painter, named Gringonneur, did paint or originate some cards which he introduced to the Icing, but cards were first used in the East in very ancient days, and it is a curious fact that the other great world-popular indoor game, Chess, also originated in the East, and is still played to-day by means of a pack of cards. It also seems obvious that cards reached the West in the same way and by the same route as Chess, probably through the gipsies, that strange, unconquerable Eastern race of wanderers, whose actual origin still baffles our researches. Naturally a race of people with no settled home or nationality would find much difficulty in moving their personal...