SAFETY VALVE OF MARRIAGE

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19308, 8 October 1932, Page 11

SAFETY VALVE OF MARRIAGE

BRIDGE PLAYER TELLS YOU TO PICK WIFE OVER CARD TABLE.

Bridge is not to be blamed for quarrels between married couples. Bridge, on the contrary, is a safety valve. Bridge is a peg on which husbands 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 bad fortune is accepted.

These statements were made by Mr. Ely Culbertson, the world-famous bridge champion, v/nile 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 the London ‘NewsChronicle’ at a luncheon.

Mr. Culbertson, in replying to the principal toast, confessed that it was his wife—who sometimes had flashes of genius—who made him give up his professorship 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 exbridge 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 have 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 at the head of a diamond suit, and 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 nonchalantmanner so that the ace of hearts is at the head of a diamonds suit, and the ace of diamonds 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 sewn 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.”