A Five, the five wise Virgins who were ordered to trim their lamps there were ten, indeed, but five, your worship may remember, were wise, and five were foolish. A Four calls for remembrance the Four Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

“‘When I see an Ace, may it please your honour, it reminds me that there is only one God and when I look upon a Two or a Three, the former puts me in mind of the Father and Son, and the latter of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. ‘Well soldier!’ (said the Mayor) ‘what excuse have you for this strange scandalous behaviour? If you can make any apology, or assign any reason for it, it’s well if you cannot, assure yourself that I will cause you, without delay, to be severely punished for it.’ ‘Since your honour is so good,’ replied Richard, ‘I will inform you, I have been eight days on march, with a bare allowance of sixpence a day, which your honour will allow is hardly sufficient to maintain a man in meat, drink, washing, and other necessaries that consequently he may want, without a Bible, Prayer Book, or any other good book.’ On saying this, Richard drew out his pack of cards, and presenting one of the aces to the Mayor, continued his address to the magistrate as follows: This singular behaviour did not long pass unnoticed, both by the clergyman and the sarjeant of the company to which he belonged the latter in particular requested him to put up the cards, and on his refusal, conducted him after church before the Mayor, to whom he preferred a formal complaint of Richard’s indecent behaviour during divine service. Richard Middleton, a soldier, attending divine service, with the rest of the regiment at a church in Glasgow, instead of pulling out a Bible, like his brother soldiers, to find the parson’s text, spread a pack of cards before him. No history of card playing would be complete without the well known fragment of popular ingenuity called “Cards Spiritualized or, the Soldier’s Almanac, Bible and Prayer Book,” which, in the form of a half-penny broad-sheet, is still circulated by the poorer classes of our population. , published by John Camden Hotten, London, 1865) gives the history of this “Soldier’s Bible”: The History of Playing Cards with Anecdotes of their use in Conjuring, Fortune-telling and Card-sharping ( edited by the late Rev. Amazingly, the ballad is several centuries old, going back at least to the 1770’s. Tex Ritter and many others over the years have recorded it. In the recent Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, a story made the rounds of the soldiers of “The Soldier’s Bible.” It was also known from the Korean War and World War II days.

College of Education & Behavioral Sciences.

Deck of cards online