January 2011

During the age of fighting sail, artists painted ships and seamen in highly realistic fashion, and most such paintings date from their own day. That was a long era, but square-rigged wooden-hulled warships were a stable technology, and taste in depicting them was stable, too.

The best-known artist working this honorable vein today is probably Geoff Hunt, whose paintings grace the covers of Patrick O’Brian’s great series of historical novels, and Hunt is very much a realist. Like his predecessors, he focuses almost entirely on the ships themselves. Sheer accuracy counts for a lot in Hunt’s paintings, and there is much to be said for all that detail and precision: Square-rigged warships were the most elaborate, expensive, and impressive machines built across several centuries. They went a long way toward securing for Europeans the mastery of the world, and it is interesting to get a sense of their beauty and intricacy.

You can buy a handsome vintage Lionel car for less than $100 today, but many desirable engines and sets sell for four-figure prices. Occasionally something soars much higher. This past autumn Stout Auctions, which specializes in toy and model trains, sold a superb example of the Lionel 20th Century Limited set characterized by cream trim around the windows of its four green cars, a great rarity. The buyer paid $253,000, in part because the set included not only the box for each piece but also the carton in which they were originally packed. Pristine boxes can easily double the value of a set. This is just one of the many intricacies aspiring Lionel collectors should learn before venturing out on the acquisition track. Here are some resources for other essential information:

All Aboard! , by Ron Hollander, vividly depicts the Lionel saga. Two other good histories are Classic Lionel Trains and Lionel: America’s Favorite Toy Trains , both by Gerry and Janet Souter.

One prominent Lionel enthusiast and collector, Michael Shames, thinks these are the company’s greatest classics.

1. 20th Century Limited set: This set first appeared in the 1931 catalogue with a 400E steam locomotive, tender, and three passenger cars, each of which carried the name of a state.

2. Blue Comet set: Produced for several years beginning in 1930, this coveted standard-gauge passenger train must have been the set that brightened the boyhood Christmases of Owen Mackenzie, hero of John Updike’s 2004 novel Villages : “Around the oval three-rail track ran his little blue Lionel train with its obedient speed shifts and translucent smell of lubricating oil.”

3. 400E engine: This standard-gauge steam locomotive came in various colors. The one Shames considers outstanding is the rarely seen 1935 crackle-black 400E.

As an American president presides over a divisive war without an apparent end, for the second time in my life, my thoughts have been drawn back nearly four decades to another president, Lyndon Baines Johnson, and his war in Vietnam. In 1969, a strange twist of history—his and mine—made me, by then an antiwar activist, the publisher of a retired president whom I both respected and hated.

Poker (or its equivalent) has been popular among the political classes right from the beginning of American history. George Washington furnished Mount Vernon with a card table, multiple decks of playing cards, and two sets of “counters.” With military precision, he also kept careful track of his successes and failures, noting that he won slightly more than £72 during the years 1772–74, while losing about £78 during the same period, for a net loss of £6.

Many modern Presidents have been regular poker players, with table styles that seem to match their personalities. Richard Nixon financed his first congressional campaign with his relentlessly acquired winnings, while Dwight Eisenhower quit playing when he realized that he was taking in too much money from junior officers who could ill afford to lose it.

Part of the game’s attraction for politicians must surely be the permissibility of deception, as important in politics, alas, as it is in poker. Another part of it has to be the opportunity to practice bluffing, also a crucial political skill.

The H. T. Webster cartoon comes from Webster’s Poker Book, published in 1925, when the game was enjoying one of its more vigorous revivals. In his text, which is nearly as amusing as Webster’s cartoons, the writer George F. Worts gives advice on everything from how to keep one’s wife from interrupting a poker party to when to draw four cards to an ace or king high (never) and goes on to spell out the order in which cards and hands take precedence.

Rank of Cards

The cards in each suit rank as follows: Ace, King, Queen, Jack, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2. In straight flushes or straights, the Ace may be considered either highest or lowest. It can be held with 10, Jack, Queen, King, or with 2, 3, 4, 5, to complete a sequence; but it cannot be used as an intermediate card to complete the hand Queen, King, 2, 3.

Rank of Hands

The value of poker hands is, in their order, as follows:

Royal Flush : 10, Jack, Queen, King, Ace, of one suit.

Straight Flush: Any five cards of one suit in sequence.

Four of a Kind: Any four cards of the same denomination.

Cardsharping, said the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences in 1950, “carries a greater stigma than the seduction of a friend’s wife.” Nevertheless, it has enjoyed a long, vigorous life. Here are two tools of the cheater’s trade.

Jacob’s Ladder Holdout

The hand below is equipped with an 1890s device that could produce a good card or remove a poor one, unbelievably without the other players noticing.

Marked Cards

These “readers” revealed their secrets though subtle differences of detail and shading in the cherubs.