What’s Trumps

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 418, 1 September 1928, Page 8

What’s Trumps

THE QUIET CORNER.

(Written for THE SUN by the Rey. Charles Chandler, Assistant City Missioner.)

My title this week, though ungrammatical, represents a question in the way it is usually ashed, after the cards have been dealt. The mere process of cutting for trumps passes unnoticed, but ivhen the cards are in hand, and the respective players have set about to arrange them into suits, then the question at once arises: “What’s trumps?” One player thinks that he has all the “rags.” and that Ms luck is out; another silently gloats over a fist full of pictures: while another distorts his features in an effort to find out the best way to play a very indifferent hand. The last-mentioned player is the one who succeeds in the game of life. He makes the best use of the cards that have been dealt to him, and ivhen it comes to “making it,” he usually takes a plunge and pulls it off: . It requires faith to make the best use of things as they are, and courage to exercise that faith, and those people who make the most of a little, are far richer than those who make a little of a lot. Life is like a game of solo whist, with an emphasis upon the “solo,” in that it is a pilgrimage between two great eternities, which we must undertake alone. Full many a man has been dealt a misere hand at birth, but has ended up with abundance—not an abundance of this world’s goods, so much as a store of mental and spiritual treasure, “which neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through and steal.” These thoughts are mankind’s only real possessions; they do not need to be insured against burglary or fire; they are the trumps which we must play ivhen we cannot “follow suit” with the unthinking multitude. One little “rag” of a trump of a spiritual thought is enough to beat the ace of any other suit. NEXT WEEK: OVER THE STYX.