Tamawaca Folks by L. Frank Baum — Read

Mrs. Still, who lived but a few doors from the Jarrods, called upon Mrs. Jarrod the next afternoon, and after welcoming her cordially to Tamawaca and congratulating her upon acquiring pretty Lake View, invited her and Mr. Jarrod to attend a card party at the yacht club that evening.

Jarrod didn't play "five hundred," but when the good-natured Stills called for them soon after dinner he complacently accompanied his wife to the club, which was located half way around the bay and was reached by one of Wilder's ferry-boats after a five minutes' ride from the Tamawaca dock. It was a pretty building, gay with electric lights. On the ground floor was a reception room filled with sailing trophies, and a big room reached through swinging doors which was devoted to the needs of thirsty men. The upper floor was one large room set with card tables, and here Mrs. Still introduced Mrs. Jarrod to a numerous concourse of merry folks who were all impatient to get at the cards and gamble fiercely for two hours or so to win a set of prizes that represented an outlay of about seventy-five cents in the aggregate. When the "prizes" were won they were usually either dropped quietly into the lake on the way home or reserved to be gambled for at some other social gathering. I knew one lady who won the same prize seven times in the same season, and likewise gave it away seven times. The only reason that she kept it then was that her guests flatly refused to accept it as a trophy, it having become sadly shop-worn.