SAFETY VALVE OF MARRIAGE

Evening Star, Issue 21216, 24 September 1932, Page 23

SAFETY VALVE OF MARRIAGE

BRIDGE PLAYER TELLS YOU TO PICK WIFE OVER CARD TABLE Bridge is not to bo blamed for quarrels between married couples. Uridge, on the contrary, is a safety valve. Bridge is a peg on which busbands and wives can hang their suppressed troubles. Moreover, you can use bridge in deciding whether a prospective wife is going to be a good wife. Watch the way in which she bids and plays—her emotional reactions, and the manner in which good or had fortune is accepted. These statements were made by Mr Ely Culbertson, the world-famous bridge champion, while stressing the importance of the game as a factor in social life during a racy speech made when he and his wife and a number of leading bridge experts were entertained by Ihe London ‘ NewsChronicle ’ at a luncheon. Mr Culbertson, in replying to the principal toast, confessed that it was Ids wife—who sometimes had flashes of genius—who made him give up his proiessorship of economics to take up bridge. She suggested that there were too many poor professors of economics and not enough really good bridge experts. “ I have never regretted the change,” added Mr Culbertson. Contract bridge was popular and spreading because it helped people to forget world depression and suchlike things. It was an intellectual pleasure, and it was true that people would work much harder for their pleasures than anything else. Incidentally, he thought bridge was a helpful factor against the menace of gambling. That was one reason perhaps why women in England and in America welcomed it. In the United States cards were not many years ago regarded as “ The Devil’s Tickets.” Now he, as a leader of the game, had been officially received by the President.

The case some time ago when a man and wife quarrelled about bridge was recalled. The man slapped his wife’s face in public, whereupon the wife shot him. “ I was called in to advise as an expert in bridge whether the particular bid made by the now esbridge player (laughter) justified this excess of emotional instability (laughter). I studied the hand very carefully and I decided that the man really' never had an opening bid. Had he played the Culbertson system he would nave been alive to-day (laughter). “ If a girl holds her thirteen cards so that everybody can see her hand you can put her down psychologically ns naive and gentle, the clinging vino type, who will require the powerful arm of the husband for the rest of her married life,” said Mr Culbertson. “ If, however, she puts down her thirteen cards in a sloppy nonchalant manner so that the ace of hearts is at the head of a diamond suit, and the ace of diamonds is leading a heart phalange, while the queen of clubs is sticking out somewhere from behind the king of spades, you may draw this important bridge inference—that the buttons of your inner and outer garments will never be sew’n on for the rest of your married life. “ If a man holds the thirteen cards so close to his chest that he himself can barely see but half of the hand, you can reckon that he will scrutinise every bill with a microscope, and as for pin money, there will be none to be had, for he will lose it himself in bridge.”