amusedBACKGAMMON
Backgammon has always been a fire-side, a domestic, a conjugal game; it is not so abstruse as to banish conversation on general topics; it dose not, like chess, or love, or art, or science, require the entire man, whilst the ever-recurring rattle of the dice keeps the ear alert and the attention alive; it has often been found an anodyne to the gout, the rheumatism, the azure devils, or the "yellow spleen."
---George Frederick Pardon, Backgammon, 1844
Clifton Fadiman (1904-1999)
