LECTURE XI.——THINKING.——

“A Briton knows, or if he knows it not,He ought.”—Cowper.

“A Briton knows, or if he knows it not,

He ought.”—Cowper.

After the game has begun, the time for thinking has passed: as soon as a card is led it is the time for action, the time to bring to bear your previously acquired knowledge.

“With some unmeaning thing, that they call thought.”—Pope.

“Think, and die.”—Shakespeare.

Neverthink!

Unless you have some remarkably good reason for taking your own course, do as you are told. If your partner leads a small trump, and you win the trick, return it at once:

“Gratia ab officio, quod mora tardat, abest.”

This is a much more simple and satisfactory plan than to proceed to think that he may have no more, or that the fourth player must hold major tenace over him; no one will admit more readily than I do that you are much the better player of the two, still, allow him to have some idea of the state of his own hand.

Don’t think whenever you see a card played that it is necessarily false.—“Nil sapientiæ odiosius acumine nimio.”—Seneca.

As, on the whole, true cards are in the majority, you are more likely to be wrong than right, and the betting must be against you in the long run.

“My business and your own is not to inquireInto such matters, but to mind our cue—Which is to act as we are bid to do.”—Byron.

“My business and your own is not to inquire

Into such matters, but to mind our cue—

Which is to act as we are bid to do.”—Byron.

If you are blest with a sufficiently sharp eye to the left, you may occasionallyknowthat a card is false, but knowledge acquired in that way I should not describe as thinking; I should use a quite different expression.

With the military gentleman who anathematized intellect I deeply sympathize. Profound thought about facts which have just taken place under your own eye is the bane of whist.

Why imitate Mark Twain’s fiery steed? Why, when it is your business to go on, “lean your head against something, and think?”

Whether you have seen a thing or not seen it, there can be no necessity for thought; recondite questions—such as whether the seven is the best of a suit of which all the others but the six are out, or whether a card is the twelfth or thirteenth—can be answered by a rational being in one of two ways, and two only; either he knows, or he does not know, there is notertium quid; the curious practice of gazing intently at the chandelier and looking as intelligent as nature will permit—if not more so—though it is less confusing than going to the last trick forinformation, and imposes upon some people, is no answer at all;[55]this, in whist circles, is called, or miscalled,thinking. It is not a new invention, for it has been known and practised from the earliest times. “There is a generation, O how lofty are their eyes; and their eyelids are lifted up.”—Proverbs, chap.30,verse13,B.C.1,000. Pecksniff, who had an extensive acquaintance with the weaknesses of human nature, knew it; you and all other schoolboys are adepts at it.

In Greek the very name of man—ανθρωπος—was derived from this peculiar method of feigning intelligence, and it was by no means unknown to the Romans.

“Pronaque cum spectent animalia cœtera terram,Os homini sublime dedit cœlumque tueri.”

“Pronaque cum spectent animalia cœtera terram,

Os homini sublime dedit cœlumque tueri.”

But, however ancient and venerable the practice may be, it is one of those numerous practices more honoured in the breach than in the observance; surely, looking on the table is more in accordance with the dictates of common sense than attempting to eliminate unknown quantities from a chandelier. In the one you have gas and probably water; on the other—lying open before you—the data required. I have now endeavoured, not to teach you either whist or bumblepuppy, but to point out a few of the differences between them, and to start you on the rightroad. The first is a game of reason and common sense, played in combination with your partner; the second is a game of inspiration, haphazard, and absurdity, where your partner is your deadliest enemy. I have made a few extracts from Mathews—partly because I do not like novelties merely because they are novelties—partly to convince the bumblepuppist (if anything will convince him) that when he tells me the recognised plan is a new invention, introduced by Cavendish for his especial annoyance, he does not know what he is talking about; and partly to show you that since that book was written—eighty years ago—the main principles of Whist are almost unaltered.

The chapter on etiquette is since his time; but, although the game has been cut down one-half, take away from Mathews his slight partiality for sneakers—to be accounted for by the possibility of his partner at that remote period being even a more dangerous lunatic than yours is at present, and the consequent necessity for playing more on the defensive (for leading singletons, whatever else it may do, and however it may damage the firm, does not injure the leader)[56]take away from the playof to-day its signal, its echo, and its penultimate of a long suit; (all excrescences of doubtful advantage for general purposes, and the last two more adapted to that antediluvian epoch when human life was longer)—and the continuity of the game is clear.[57]Whether Whist would gain anything by their omission I am unable to say; the attention, now always on the strain inlookingfor its accidents, would have a spare moment or two to devote to its essentials; whether it would do anything of the kind is another matter.

Those followers of Darwin and believers in the doctrine of evolution, to whom it is a source of comfort that an ascidian monad and not Eve was their first parent, must find the Whist table rather a stumbling block: they will there see uncommonly few specimens of the survival of the fittest. A cynic with whom I was once conversing on this subject, remarked that they were much more likely to come across the missing link.

The philosopher of Chelsea long since arrived at the unsatisfactory and sweeping conclusion, that thepopulation of these islands are mostly fools, and he has made no exception of the votaries of Whist. Still, it has the reputation of being a very pretty game, though this reputation must be based to a great extent on conjecture; for apart from its other little peculiarities—on some of which I have briefly touched—its features are so fearfully disfigured by bumblepuppy, that it is as difficult to give a positive opinion as to say whether a woman suffering from malignant small-pox might or might not be good looking under happier circumstances. The sublime self-confidence expressed in the distich—

“When I see thee as thou art,I’ll praise thee as I ought,”

“When I see thee as thou art,

I’ll praise thee as I ought,”

has not been vouchsafed to me, but if ever I obtain a clear view of it, I will undertake to report upon it to the best of my ability.

You may have heard that if you are ignorant of Whist you are preparing for yourself a miserable old age: it is by no means certain that a knowledge of it—as practised at this particular period—is to be classed with the beatitudes.

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“O tempora! O mores!”

“To seek to extinguish anger utterly is but a bravery of the Stoics.”—Bacon.

I amafraid that you will hear at the whist table a good deal about temper, unless you are particularly fortunate; that so-and-so is good-tempered, or the reverse; that if we were all better tempered, something or other might be different, and similar platitudes. Now these mostly start on the utterly false assumption that everybody is equally subject to the same annoyances.

“Tender and delicate persons must needs be oft angry; they have so many things to trouble them, which more robust natures have little sense of.”—Ibid.

That the greatest exponent of Bumblepuppy has necessarily the longest temper goes without saying—of course he has! He has nothing to ruffle him, for he has everything his own way; he plays as he thinks fit (supposing him to think at all, or ever to be fit); if his partner makes a mistake it is any odds henever sees it;de non existentibus et non apparentibus eadem est ratio; here is one cause of equanimity.

If it is any amusement to him—and I presume it is, otherwise he would not do it—from his cradle to his grave to play a game of which he knows absolutely nothing, and if in pursuit of that amusement he thinks it worth his while to take a certain amount of his own and his partner’s capital, and to throw it in the street, why should he lose his temper? Although he has paid his money, he has had his choice—another cause of equanimity.

Ah Sin played a game he did not understand, and remained quite calm and unperturbed, though he was a heathen and an Asiatic; while his antagonist disgraced our common Christianity by letting his angry passions rise because things were going against him.

If both partners, then, are of the same mind and the same calibre—either bad or good—to quote an American author, “all is peas,” and like the place

“Where brothers dwell and sisters meetQuarrels should never come.”

“Where brothers dwell and sisters meet

Quarrels should never come.”

The difficulty begins to arise when one of the partners fails to see things altogether in the same light as the other. He may be so unfortunately constituted (cross-grained the other would say) that he is unable to derive any amusement from the game unless it is played with a modicum of intelligence; it is just possible that instead of considering gold as dross, as an accursed thing to be got rid of at the earliestopportunity, he may be actuated by a depraved love of filthy lucre, and a sordid desire for gain; such conditions are to be deplored, but they exist and must be reckoned with.

When his partner proceeds to run amuck, he misses the point of the joke; his perverted moral sense revolts against paying half the money, and the other man having all the choice; probably, for a time, he keeps his mouth tightly shut, but hiscollaborateuris not to be eluded in that way; he demands not merely the passive, but the active assent of his victim, and sooner or later, after the perpetration of some particularly atrociouscoup, inquires with the bland and childlike smile of the heathen already referred to, “Partner, I think we could not have done better there?” What is to be done now? Silence is not an answer; it used to be, but has been disestablished. Are you to agree with him? Are you to state what is false? Are you to dissent and be informed you are always finding fault? (Shakespeare’s retort is neat and worthy of him: “You have always been called a merciful man, partner;” but we are not all Shakespeares.) Or is it the best course at once to resort to active measures, and throw at him the first thing that comes to hand?

The worm must turn some time or other; it may turn the other cheek, but that is only temporising; no worm has more than two cheeks, and when it hashad them both slapped, what is it to do then? We come to animpasse.

The copy-books used to tell us—for anything I know they may do so yet—copy-book aphorisms have a marvellous vitality, and you have seen them since I have—that “patience is a virtue” (I think virtue ought to have a capital V), and, as an abstract proposition, the statement is probably as true and more grammatical than “There’s milestones on the Dover Road”; but what is the use of it? The question is, will it wash? The two best known examples of this virtue are the Patriarch Job and the patient ass. Whether the Patriarch was well advised in enduring his friends so long, and whether he endured them on account of his patience, or whether the bodily affliction from which he was notoriously suffering at the time, incapacitated him from taking energetic steps to expel them from his bed-room, are questions difficult to decide so long after the event. I express no opinion of my own; let the dead past bury its dead:de mortuis nil nisi bonum; but the donkey is a different matter; he lives in our own times, and I know him well; he touches me nearly; and I unhesitatingly affirm that the only benefit—if benefit is the proper term—he has ever derived from his long-suffering, has been to be invariably imposed upon in consequence. Casa Bianca on the burning deck is another case in point; he did score to a certain extent, for owing to hispatience his widowed mother escaped an undertaker’s bill, while he himself is known to this day in the nursery as “the noble boy”; but to the more mature observer, in whom the ambition to be called names is dead, the game is hardly worth the candle; while you yourselves will be called quite enough names at the whist table without being cremated; not to mention that the majority of you probably prefer pudding to praise.

Some irritable people go so far as to apply language of a condemnatory character to the inanimate cards; as it is impossible to arouse any emotion either of pleasure or anger in their breasts, this seems absurd and a waste of energy. It must be bad form to excite yourself without causing annoyance to others, and should certainly be avoided.

Believing luck to be strictly personal, it appears to me that calling for new cards is an unnecessary display of temper and throwing good money after bad.

We may take it, speaking generally—for it is not always the case—that the worse a man plays, the less visible is his bad temper; the converse fortunately does not hold good, for many good players have really wonderful tempers.

One curious circumstance is that want of perception and thickness of mental cuticle are usually looked upon by the unfortunate possessors as proofs of good temper, and boasted of as such. This is not the case in other afflictions. I once knew a man witha Barbadoes leg, and though its circumference much exceeded that of mine, he never made any offensive comparisons.

In Bath I have seen scores of invalids—mostly naval and military men, naturally warlike—they were all seated decorously in the local chairs; and when they dismounted and hobbled into the club, they did not go about brandishing their crutches and bragging that they had refrained from assaulting us innocent civilians; on the contrary, I always found them most courteous and friendly.

To sum up the matter; we are all worms of some kind, and we all turn more or less when we are trodden upon, if we perceive it. The denser the worm, the more slowly he turns. While some ill-conditioned ones turn under all circumstances, some of the most highly-organised are scarcely ever known even to wriggle. Apparently harmless ones sometimes turn most suddenly and ferociously. Those most trodden upon—unless quitehors de combat—turn most.

Finally, many congenitally mal-formed worms, and worms suffering from amaurosis, cerebral ramollissement, myxædema, and other dreadful diseases, are not only unaware of their critical state, but are actually proud of it, and look upon it as a proof of their amiable disposition.

“Past and to come seem best; things present worst.”—Shakespeare.

Inmy time I believe Whist has on the whole deteriorated,[58]it mistakes means for ends, is more tricky, more difficult, more cantankerous; with regard to common mistakes—inability to hold a few cards without dropping them on the table, or to play them one at a time; inability to countthirteen, to recollect the best card, or whether it was your opponents, your partner, or yourself who first led a suit; winning your partner’s trick, or not winning your adversary’s; leading out of turn, revoking, and so on—there is not much difference.

As long as I can recollect, Whist has been gorged with these, and neither the hydraulic ram nor any other of the improved mechanical appliances of the present day can squeeze into a thing more than it will hold. Architects of card-rooms are to blame for a good deal of this bad Whist; it is impossible to play in a badly lighted, or a badly ventilated room. Whist players have often told me exactly what they require, and it is very odd they cannot have it.

With a large fire, the room hermetically sealed, and everybody smoking, the temperature should never exceed sixty-one-and-a-half degrees, nor be below sixty. There must be neither doors (they admit draughts) nor windows: windows are open—allow me to withdraw that offensive word—windows are exposed to two objections, (1) some scoundrel, regardless of consequences, might lower or raise the sash; (2) instead of being placed in the ceiling or the floor—where you would naturally expect to find them—they are always at the side of the room, and no whist player can see a card with the windows in such a position.

Candles do not give sufficient light, and gas is unbearable; a suggestion to try an attic with askylight fell through (not through the skylight—I mean the suggestion failed), because no one was able to go upstairs; a lift would overcome that objection, but the temperature difficulty remained.

This only applies to clubs; curiously enough, in small stuffy back-rooms in private houses, gas never causes head-ache, and neither a mephitic atmosphere nor a temperature of 120° is at all disagreeable.

Joking apart, thefons et origo maliisLaw 91, and not only the head and front of the offending, but its barrel and hind quarters as well.[59]

Since the introduction of signalling, the subsequent petrolatry, and all the elaborate functions of that cultus, an exaggerated importance (increasing in geometric ratio with every additional convention) has been attached to the last trick—the only place where, by universal consent, anything can reasonably be “looked for”—and if you, after seeing the cards played, informing your partner which is yours (of course, in answer to his enquiry), gathering the trick and arranging it neatly, should imagine you have done with it, you will be the victim of a fond delusion—using “fond” in the old acceptation of the word. First, your partner will ask to see it at least twice, then your opponents, one or both, will probably grab at it without asking, and put it backin a dishevelled condition; it is useless to specify what their mental state must be, and unfortunately, by the time all these irritating performances have been gone through and you have again arranged the trick symmetrically, you will find yours is not all you could wish. You can avoid some of these annoyances by allowing your partner to gather the tricks, but from his slovenly mode of doing so, you will never be able to see how many he has; and just as you are endeavouring to concentrate your attention at a critical point, it will be distracted by your having to make an intricate calculation how the game stands, the data being the cards remaining in your hand, and two confused heaps on the table; as long as this is permitted, whist is out of the question, and you feel inclined to say with the Divine Williams,

“Let him have a table by himself.”

One of the principal uses of the new method of suspended animation will turn out to be, that all decent whist players will have to submit themselves to it, and remain, arranged in rows on shelves, until that law is abrogated.

The number of shelves required will not appreciably affect the timber trade.[60]

In the good time coming, promised by the poet to those of you who wait a little longer, when the present inspired, convention-ridden, and last-trick-inspecting generation is in the silent tomb or cremated, as the case may be, and a new school—basing its play on common sense and attention—has arisen, there may be an improvement; but as I am not an optimist I cannot join in the aspiration of the little girl whose world was hollow and whose doll was stuffed with sawdust; therefore, though this improvement, like the millennium, may be looming in the more or less remote future, I see no sign of it at present.

If “to everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under the sun,” also “a time to lose and a time to cast away.”—Ecclesiastes, chap. 1, verse 1-6: it seems clear to me there must be a time for bumblepuppy.

Some people deny this, they say that the argument proves too much; they point out that Shakespeare says there are

“Tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,Sermons in stones, and good in everything.”

“Tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,

Sermons in stones, and good in everything.”

and that as this could not apply to bumblepuppy, these passages only show that it was unknown when they were written.

Another argument of theirs against the antiquity of bumblepuppy, based on the passage “in all labour there is profit,” is altogether fallacious andunworthy of consideration; they admit the labour but deny the profit. This must have had its origin east of Temple Bar, where it is held there is no profit unless it assumes a pecuniary form. But the repressing your innate tendency to profane swearing, curbing your evil passions generally, and the cultivation—under considerable difficulties—of nearly all the cardinal virtues, as inuring to your moral well-being, are a profit of the most positive kind;[61]to be able to give a definite answer to the long-standing conundrum “is life worth living?” is something.

However, you can draw your own conclusion, the extract from Shakespeare is—I confess—difficult to get over, still, when Solomon makes use of these remarkable words “a time to lose and a time to cast away,” I fail to see what he could have had in his mind, unless it was this very game.

At any rate one thing is clear, bumblepuppy exists now, and is not a pretty game (there can be no two opinions about that); neither—judging from the demeanour and language of its exponents—is it a pleasant game. I append a hand, which is, I think, the finest specimen of it I ever saw.Judge for yourself. I had jotted down a few further remarks on this repulsive subject, but on reading them over, they seem to be not only inconsistent with that extreme reverence which is due to the young, but absolutely unfit for publication.

“Quod factu fœdum est, idem est et dictu turpe.”R. I. P.

The two games are now before you, let me conclude the lecture with one more extract from my favourite classic.

Utrum horum mavis accipe.

——

“Here’s a pretty state of things! Here’s a how-de-do!”

Score love all. Trumps diamond 9. Z is a bumblepuppist with the highest opinion of himself.

A.Y.B.Z.1H5H6H2H42D2D5D4DK!3S3SKSAS4!!4S7SJS2SQ5D8D10S10S9!!!6D3D7D6DQ!!!!7C3DJDAD9!!!!!8C4H8S8C29C6C8S6C910C7HQS5CJ11H10HAH3H912H8CAC5CK13HJCQC10HK

This is the worst hand ever played, without exception; it is a microcosm, complete in itself, and contains examples of stupidity, selfishness, duplicity, defiance of all recognized principles, and every conceivable villainy.

Trick 2.—The misplaced ingenuity in deceiving Y as to the position of the Qn is worth notice.

Trick 3.—The lead of the only weak suit, in preference to the strong suit of clubs, playing up to declared weakness in hearts, or returning the trump is very neat.

Trick 5.—The force here of the trump leader, inducing him to believe that Z at any rate holds the remaining spades, an illusion carefully fostered by B, is especially good.

Trick 7.—The return of the trump at this point with the best trump (probably) and three long spades (certainly) declared against him in one hand, is a real gem.

————

“Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool nowhere but in his own house.”—Shakespeare.

A third variety of whist, the domestic rubber, I have passed over in silence; what takes place in the sanctity of private life it would be as unbecoming for me to divulge as for you to seek to know;

“O’er all its faults we draw a tender veil,So great its sorrows and so sad its tale.”

“O’er all its faults we draw a tender veil,

So great its sorrows and so sad its tale.”

At the same time I don’t think I am violating any confidence in stating that you will find there neither signalling, nor the penultimate of five and its developments: yet, though free from these annoyances, the game, even when mitigated by muffins, music, and the humanizing influence of woman is inexpressibly dreary, and you had better keep out of it if you can; but should this not be practicable,—for some relative from whom you have a reasonable expectation of a tip may be staying in the house, and you may be compelled to sacrifice yourself either on the altar of duty or of self-interest—then never forget that sweetness of temper is much more important here than knowledge of Whist, and consoling yourself with the following two reflections:

(1) That (according to Epicurus) prolonged pain is pleasant rather than otherwise, extreme pain always short;[62]

(2) That those whom the gods love die young; when your hour arrives, bare your throat to the knife with a smile.

So shall your memory smell sweet and blossom in domestic circles.

———

Double dummy is not Whist, nor anything like it, it much more closely resembles chess; one is a game of inference, the other is an exact science, where the position of every card is known.

Often, in the course of a controversy on Whist, you will hear one of the disputants challenging the other to play double dummy, imagining that he has clenched the matter; it would be quite as germane to suggest trial by battle, or to move an adjournment to a good dry skittle alley.

“The bearings of these observations lays in the application of them. That an’t no part of my duty. Avast then, keep a bright look out for’ard, and good luck to you.”

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Asmy present aim is confined to purveying food for babes in an elementary and easily assimilable form, and to calling your attention toLaw 91, any lengthened disquisition on the more recent conventions would be out of place.

More competent critics than myself flatly deny that they are food for anybody, and have denounced them, lock, stock, and barrel, inThe Field,Longman’s,Cornhill,Knowledge,Whist, and numerous daily and weekly papers.

Having given my opinion elsewhere, I would merely remark that though, in your allotted span of three-score years and ten—after deducting a reasonable time for rest and refreshment, say eight hours a day—you may possibly master such an intricate absurdity as the plain suit echo, that result is highly improbable, and most assuredly not worth the trouble.

Still, though the thanes have revolted, they are not immortal, and must shortly join the great men who have gone before; the future is in your hands, and if you wish Whist to endure you must bestir yourselves at once; there is no time to lose. “Thetimes have been, that when the brains were out, the man would die;” those times may return at any moment and where will the modern game be then?

Already its authors have provided you with the following dogmata:—

all three of them rooted in error—a melancholy tripod to hang the fine old game upon, with a strong family likeness to the Manx emblem, three legs all abroad and no head-piece—if you give these iconoclasts a little more rope, they have only to formulatethe hand of uniformity, and thecorpusor rather thecadaverof Whist will be complete.

flowers

Somereaders of these lectures have complained that it is often difficult to discriminate when they are serious and when they “attempt to be funny,” and have suggested that the attempts should be indicated clearly by a note, thushand“this is a goak”!—and the remainder printed in red ink. While fully recognizing their difficulty and sympathizing with them, I am unable to entertain either proposal; the first is an American innovation utterly at variance with the conservative character of the work; and it is a fatal objection to the other that if whatever is important were picked out in red, many well-disposed children would at once rush to the natural—but highly erroneous—conclusion, that they had got hold of a Prayer Book. Another complaint, that my advice to Bumblepuppists is likely to lead them further astray is beside the question, even assuming—for the sake of this argument—such a thing to be possible; the point is whether I have described “the game” correctly, and I am prepared to stake my reputation as an experienced Bumblepuppy player, that I have done so without manifesting fear, favour, or affection.

FOOTNOTES:[1]“That there are a large number of players who think they play Whist, and yet do not reason, is too true, but such play may be Bumblepuppy, or some other game; it certainly is not Whist.”—Westminster Papers.Definitions of Bumblepuppy.Bumblepuppy is persisting to play Whist, either in utter ignorance of all its known principles, or in defiance of them, or both.Hudibras has given another definition—“A lib’ral art that costs no painsOf study, industry, or brains.”“Bumblepuppy was played in low public houses.”“Here and there were Bumblepuppy grounds, a game in which the players rolled iron balls into holes marked with numbers.”—Chronicles of Newgate.From which I infer that in the good old times this game first drove its votaries to drinking, and then landed them in a felon’s cell.[2]In all well regulated society, your aim should be the greatest happiness of the greatest number, and that number is notoriously number one.[3]“Do not attempt to practise until you have acquired a competent knowledge of the theory.”—Mathews,A.D.1800.[4]“The first Whist lesson should be to keep your eye on the table and not on your own cards.”“We cannot all have genius, but we can all have attention; the absence of intelligence we cannot help, inattention is unpardonable.”—Westminster Papers.[5]Since these words were written the “Westminster Papers” is no more.“Sit tibi terra levis!”[6]“It is highly necessary to be correct in leads.” “Never lead a card without a reason, though a wrong one.” “Be particularly cautious not to deceive your partner in his or your own leads.”—Mathews.[7]“According to the play that we see, with great weakness the rule is rather to lead strengthening cards. For our own part we should be inclined to say, “Lead from your long suit only when you are sufficiently strong to bring in that suit with the aid of reasonable strength on the part of your partner.”—Westminster Papers.“When you have a moderate hand yourself sacrifice it to your partner.”—Mathews.“With a bad hand lead that suit which is least likely to injure your partner. Do not, therefore, lead from four or five small cards.”—Major A.“A lead from a queen or knave and one small card is not objectionable if you have a miserably weak hand; your queen or knave may be valuable to your partner.”—Clay.“The rule of always leading from the longest, as distinct from the strongest suit, is a rule which, more frequently than any other, sacrifices a partner’s cards without any benefit to the leader, and is in direct opposition to the true principles of combination.”—Mogul.Even Cavendish, unless “generally” is synonymous with “always,” admits the expediency of occasionally leading a short suit; “the hand, however weak, must hold one suit of four cards, and this shouldgenerallybe chosen.”[8]“The lead is quite exceptional, and many good judges have doubted whether a small one should not be led.”—The Field.[9]As intelligent children you will, perhaps, be tempted to observe that all this is so self-evident it is scarcely worth mentioning: at your immature time of life such a mistake is pardonable, but as you grow older you will find that a determination to open ragged suits in season and out of season—especially out—is one of the strongest impulses of our imperfect nature.[10]As defined by Captain Corcoran, R.N. In all treatises on Whist “never” is invariably used in this sense. Perhaps in presence of the New Whist which is now raging violently in America, it would be more correct here to substitute “was” for “is.”[11]Peccavi! the lead is given inWhat to Lead, by Cam.[12]Never give “the general” an opportunity for thinking if you can avoid it; this is a rule ofuniversal application. “How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done!”[13]It was introduced as “a proposed extension of principle,” but you had better stick to the old adage, “first catch your principle,” and leave the extension of it to some future time. Theoretical advantages of this lead, and also the echo of the signal, you will find fully set forth in “Cavendish.” In a letter to theField, September 27th, 1879, he appears to advocate varying its monotony by occasionally leading the lowest buttwo. Cam, the original patentee of this invention, and one of the finest players of his day, directs you to lead the lowest but one only when you hold no honour in the suit. By this plan you can not only count your partner’s hand—the apparent end of most modern Whist—but after you have made the queen and lost your king on the return, you have the additional gratification of knowing to a certainty that he does not even hold the knave.With regard to the echo, I have no head for intricate mathematical calculations, and therefore am unable to tell you at about what trick everything would be ready, but speaking roughly, I should be afraid that for all practical purposes the hand would occasionally be over before the signaller and the echoer had completed their operations. In the “Art of Practical Whist” you are recommended to lead the lowest but two of six. (The advice ofPunchto those about to marry is applicable here.)Mr. F. H. Lewis, in theField, January, 1880, has propounded a scheme for sub-dividing the echo into categories, and it has recently been pointed out to me that by leading trumps in some irregular way—understood, I presume, by the inventor of the process—you can explain to your partner that you originally held four. “Is there anything whereof it may be said, see, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.” When all these improvements are in use, this is clear, the elect will return to that fine old practice known as “piping at whisk”; the rest of us to primæval chaos.[14]“These refinements of artifice are utterly opposed to the essence of scientific Whist.”—Westminster Papers.[15]“What with the if’s and the mystification that would occur from playing the cards in this erratic manner, we should do more to injure than improve the playin the present state of Whist science.”—Westminster Papers.[The italics are mine.][16]“It puzzleth and perplexeth the conceits of many that perhaps would otherwise co-operate with him, and makes a man walk almost alone to his own ends.”—Bacon.[17]I have worked it out myself in more than four thousand cases by rule of thumb (Field, October 1882), and obtained the same result; if in the teeth of this,early in the hand, a decent Whist-player plays the king second on a small card led, it is an unnecessarily high card; and as unnecessarily high cards are not played without an object, that object is presumably a call for trumps.[18]“With ace, queen, etc., of a suit of which your right hand adversary leads the knave, put on the ace invariably. No good player, with king, knave, ten, will begin with the knave: of course, it is finessing against yourself to put on the queen, and, as the king is certainly behind you, you give away at least the lead, without any possible advantage.”—Mathews.This advice as a rule is sound, but you must bear in mind that towards the end of a hand the knave is often led from king, knave, ten, or king, knave alone, and if you, holding ace, queen, are obliged to make two tricks in the suit, in order to win, or save the game, you will have to play the queen. If the king is held by your left-hand adversary, you will lose the game whatever you play. When you play the queen under these circumstances, and it comes off, don’t imagine that you are inspired, or præternaturally intelligent; you are only playing to the score; and you will find that most instances of irregular play, which at first sight suggest inspiration, resolve themselves into this.[19]In ordinary discarding, your strong suit is your long suit: except to deceive your partner, and get your king prematurely cut off, it can be no use to discard from four or five small cards in one suit, in order to keep king to three in another.[20]If there are a “few words” going about, and you are not concerned, don’t put your oar in—“They who in quarrels interpose,Must often wipe a bloody nose.”[21]Genius has been defined to be “an unlimited capacity for taking pains,” and the pains they will take to circumvent you are assuredly unlimited, but their capacity for anything is so doubtful, that their claim to genius on this score must be left in abeyance.[22]The excitement of the moment has led me into exaggeration here; let me give the bumblepuppist his due, the exact number is ten, as you will find later on.[23]“The strong hand is leading trumps, and he gets them all out, and has the lead; nine times out of ten he will have forgotten his partner’s first discard, and play on the assumption his last discard is his first, and so certain is this to come about that, we believe, with some players, it is best to endeavour to calculate how many discards we shall get, and let the last discard be our weakest suit.”—Westminster Papers.[24]If they were slightly to vary this statement, and say, “They pitched thirteen cards about only for their own amusement,” the position would be much more inexpugnable.Unless my memory deceives me, in “The Whist Player,” by Col. Blyth, they are recommended to confine themselves to playing “Beggar my Neighbour” with their grandmothers;—as most of those ladies must in the ordinary course of nature have gone over to the majority, this would be hard on them—but they might adopt a middle course, and play that fascinating game with each other; they could pitch the cards about equally well, and would have more cards to pitch. I shall resume this topic at the close of this lecture.[25]Will he?“Hope springs eternal in the human breast.”And you can hope anything you like, if you don’t mind the subsequent disappointment: First, he has to see it, and after you have got over that difficulty, if he only holds two small cards in that suit, and has a tenace in the other—according to my experience—he will lead his own. With king singly guarded in your suit, instead of being delighted to play it, wild horses are powerless to drag it from him.[26]Absorbed in their discoveries, they appear to have forgotten that, “Vixerunt fortes ante Agamemnona.”“If weak in trumps, keep guard on your adversary’s suits. If strong, throw away from them.”—Mathews.[27]That young and curly period when I was influenced by the fashions has passed away.Eheu fugaces, etc. It may be easier to remember “strong” than “best protected”; one epithet is certainly three syllables shorter than the other, but it seems a pity, for the sake of those three syllables, to use an expression which is utterly misleading.In “The Art of Practical Whist” also “strongest” is used without any qualification whatever, and here you only save two syllables; although the Commination Service is seldom read now—even if, like Royal Oak Day and Herr Von Joel, it should cease altogether to be retained by the Establishment—to make the blind man go out of his way would still be inexpedient, unless you make him go out of your own way as well, for you may cut him for a partner; if you have no respect for the blind, surely you have some regard for your pocket-money.[28]This is one of the numerous points where the new man and the man of the stone age—now politely termed “fossil”—come into collision. “We do not think that ahard and fast rule, (the italics are mine) such as you propose, can be laid down.” Even if it were a hard and fast rule—which it is pre-eminently not—his objecting to it on that ground would be most inconsistent—“And yet he thinks what’s pious inThe one, in th’ other is a sin.”[29]“About as remarkable as the rule that if you want to ascertain how much you have spent out of a shilling, you must subtract the number of pence left from twelve.“If the court cards and the ace of a suit are pipped according to their values, the knave would be eleven, the queen twelve, the king thirteen, and the ace fourteen; and everybody would see that the difference between the pips on any card and fourteen would show the number of cards in the suit of higher value than the card in question.“Thus, there are nine higher than the five, and seven higher than the seven.“They would see, also, that if they could place three, and three only, of those cards in any one player’s hand—as can be done when the fourth best is led—the number of higher cards not in his hand would be fourteen, less three, that is eleven less the pips.”—Mogul.“The mountain groaned in pangs of birth,Great expectation filled the earth,And lo, a mouse was born!”[30]The origin of the signal is as clear as mud, and the very name of the inventor of the well-known dodge of playing an unnecessarily high card to induce the opponents to lead him a trump, is lost in the mists of antiquity.[31]People do not seem at all agreed what a convention is. I used to be under the impression myself that it was an assembly of notables—a sort of liberal four hundred, or what is called in America a caucus. It is described by Childe Harold as a dwarfish demon that foiled the knights in Marialva’s dome, while I find in theFortnightly Review, April, 1879, “Conventions are certain modes of play established by preconcerted arrangement;” by whom established, preconcerted, or arranged is not mentioned; and I am very much afraid that this definition leaves a loop-hole for winking at your partner when you want trumps led—of course “by preconcerted arrangement”—otherwise it would be unfair and (as he might mistake it for a nervous affection of the eyelid) absurd. At Whist you can call anybody or anything whatever you please; I have been told, but I scarcely believe it, that you can call the knave of hearts “Jakovarts.” Poets (also an irritable race) have the same licence, and for general purposes, according to Mr. Squeers, there is no Act of Parliament against your calling a house an island; but when you come to definitions, you must be more particular, or you will land in a hole.[32]It is only right that I should state here that these are not modern opinions, they are the opinions of Clay, and I am informed he is rapidly becoming obsolete. This may be the case. I know the practice of numbers who call themselves Whist-players is entirely opposed to his theory; still, though I don’t like to prophesy (having a high respect for the proverb that it is dangerous to do so, unless you know), I am open to make a small bet that the Peter will be obsolete first.[33]I have seen aplayersignal twice consecutively, and lose a treble each hand.With the score three all, I have seen the original leader, holding ace, knave, nine, to five trumps, and the ten turned up—play a singleton, knock his partner’s king on the head, and then begin to signal, while the adversaries were making the next two tricks in that very suit: his partner ruffed the fourth, and with king and queen of the two unopened suits, led the queen of trumps, killed the king in the second hand, and the signaller then proceeded to wait about, and with all the remaining trumps on his right, eventually lost three by cards.I have seen anotherplayerof many years’ standing first lead a plain suit and then call; his partner echoed it, and they lost four by cards, and Ihave been toldthat some time after a table had broken up, and three of the party had left the house, one of the club servants, entering the card-room, found the fourth still sitting at the table, and continuing to signal.[34]“Signalling has placed a dangerous weapon in the hands of an injudicious player. Weak players avoid leading a trump, watching for some invitation from their partner. Weaker players still are constantly examining the tricks; and finding in the position of the cards, accidentally disarranged in turning, an indication of a call, lead trumps, perhaps to the ruin of the game.”—Mr. F. H. Lewis.“We do not know whether anyone has ever kept a record of the number of tricks lost by Petering. During the past year in the Whist we have witnessed we feel confident that more tricks have been lost than won by this practice.”—Westminster Papers.After many years’ further experience I am quite of the same opinion.[35]“They are looking for Peters and the lowest but one, but they never think of the real points of the game.”“They are always on the look out for it, and they spend more time and trouble about the signal than about all the rest of the play.”—Westminster Papers.[36]Even in board schools forcing the strong hand is a part of the ordinary curriculum.“Always force the strong.”—Mathews.There used to be some difficulty in ascertaining which was the strong trump hand, but the signal has done away with that.[37]“Many times this kind of signal comes after the player has had the lead, and when nothing of importance, speaking from our own knowledge, has taken place to justify a signal. We are very careless about leading trumps when our partner has had the chance and did not lead them.”“It is a sign of weak play if you first lead out your winning cards, and then lead trumps; it shows ignorance of the principles of the game. If it was advisable to lead trumps at all, it should be done before you led out your winning cards.”—Westminster Papers.These are noble sentiments! how any sane human being can imagine he has the right to tell me to destroy my hand and do for him—after he has drawn his own teeth—what he was afraid—before that operation—to do for himself, I have never been able to understand.[38]“When it is evident the winning cards are betwixt you and your adversaries, play an obscure game; but as clear a one as possible if your partner has a good hand.”—Mathews.[39]The defence is quite as singular as the attack; for instance, if you should be taken to task for any alleged criminality arising from defective vision; instead of making either of the obvious answers that it never took place at all, or that you regret it escaped your notice and will endeavour to keep a better look out in future, the ordinary plea in extenuation is “the noise in the room,” also “because your cards are so bad,” is often assigned as a satisfactory reason.[40]Even a few days of this discipline at the beginning of Lent would be better than nothing.[41]Evasive answers are of two kinds; those(1) For the ordinary platitude, for which you will find good examples inCard Table Talk.(2) For the blatant absurdity; these are more difficult, for while modestly asserting your own individuality, you must at the same time guard against“Heating a furnace for your foe so hot,That you do singe yourself.”The following remark admirably fulfils both these conditions:—“For the matter of that,” said Colonel Quagg, “Rot!”—Sala.It should be addressed, kindly but firmly, to a point about eighteen inches above your partner’s head.[42]A well-known whist-player who is really deaf is reported to aver that he never knew what comfort was till that misfortune befell him.[43]Bad play is any kind of solecism perpetrated by somebody else; if by yourself, it may be either just your luck,pardonableinattention, playing too quickly, drawing the wrong card, or—in a very extreme case—carelessness, but it is never bad play; sometimes the difference is even greater than this, and what would be bad play in another, in yourself may be the acme of skill.[44]To the sneer that I lose now because I play worse, I reply it is quite possible I do not play so well as I did five years ago, I make the sneerer a present of the admission, but I play better than I did twenty years ago, when—playing against as good players as I do now—if I did not win every time I sat down I was astonished.[45]“An experiment that does not go on to millions is very little use in determining such propositions. It can be demonstrated to the satisfaction of everyone that the odds, after having won the first game in a rubber, in favour of winning one of the next two games is three to one. Yet Mr. Clay considered that five to two was a bad bet, and we have lost not only at five to two but at two to one, and on one occasion we actually lost the long odds in two hundred bets, a hundred and three times, so that if we were to take this result as of any value, the odds would be slightly in favour of losing a rubber when you had won the first game, which is absurd.”—Westminster Papers.[46]Not a fine whist-player, for this is a rare bird, much more rare than a black swan (these can be bought any day at Jamrach’s by the couple, but even in the present hard times when, I am informed, the markets are glutted with everything, he has not one fine whist-player in stock); essential to him, in addition to common sense and attention, are genius and a thorough knowledge of Cavendish.[47]“Although these maxims may occasionally speak of things never to be done, and others always to be done, you must remember that no rules are without exception, and few more open to exceptional cases than rules for whist.”—Clay.[48]Just as orthodoxy has been defined to be your own doxy, so “the Game” usually means “your own idea of the game at the time.”I have called it Protean because it assumes so many different forms (being mainly based on results), and like the nigger’s little pig—runs about to such an extent that it is impossible to get a clear view of it.[49]Though whist is reported to be an old English word meaning silence, and though it is advisable for many reasons that it should be played with reasonable quiet, it is not at all compulsory to conduct yourself as if in the monastery of La Trappe; you have a perfect right—as far as the laws of whist are concerned—to discuss at any time the price of stocks, the latest scandal, or even the play going on, “provided that no intimation whatever, by word or gesture, be given as to the state of your own hand or the game.”—Etiquette of Whist.At bumblepuppy you had better waive this right altogether, for if under any circumstances you open your mouth, you will infallibly put your foot into it. Even here, the bumblepuppist is not consistent, for while constantly laying down the extraordinary law—in a very loud voice—that whist is silence, he considers the carrying out of that law much more incumbent on the rest of the table than himself.[50]“Avoid playing with those who instruct, or rather find fault while the hand is playing. They are generally unqualified by ignorance, and judge from consequences; but if not, advice while playing does more harm than good.”—Mathews.“The empty vessel makes the greatest sound.”—Shakespeare.“Talking over the handafterit has been played is not uncommonly called a bad habit and an annoyance, I am firmly persuaded it is one of the readiest ways of learning whist.”—Clay.[51]“O dreary life!” we cry, “O dreary life!”And still the generation of the birdsSing through our sighing, and the flocks and herdsSerenely live while we are keeping strife.“The education of the whist-player is peculiar. How he becomes a whist-player nobody knows. He never learns his alphabet or the catechism or anything that he ought to do. He appears full-grown, mushroom-like. He remembers someone blowing him up for doing something he ought not to have done, and somebody else blowing him up for doing something else, and he is blown up to the end of the chapter. This phase of being blown up is varied by grumbling sometimes aloud, sometimessotto voce; so that the whist-player is reared on scolding and grumbling as other youngsters are reared on pap. Truly this is a happy life. Some men grumble on principle because it is a national privilege, and they avail themselves of the Englishman’s birthright.”“A sect whose chief devotion liesIn odd perverse antipathies:In falling out with that or this,And finding somewhat still amiss,More peevish, cross, and spleneticThan dog distract, or monkey sick.”—Hudibras.“Some do it because they believe that if they grumble enough, it will bring them luck. Some do it in the hope that they will excite sympathy, and that their friends will feel for their ill-fortune, which, by-the-bye, whist-players never do. Some grumble to annoy their friends, and we are bound to say these succeed.”—Westminster Papers.“The croaking nuisance lurked in every nook;And the land stank—so numerous was the fry.”—Cowper.[52]“They are intent on some wretched crotchet like the lowest but one.”“Every time he can lead a lowest but one, no matter what the state of the game or the score, that lead he is sure to make, and we believe there are some neophytes who would lose their money with pleasure if they could only tell their partners afterwards that they had led the lowest but one.”—Westminster Papers.[53]“Common sense (which in truth is very uncommon) is the best sense I know of. Abide by it; it will counsel you best.”—Chesterfield Letters.[54]This is at first sight a rather appalling proposition, but the advice I give you I have always endeavoured to follow myself, and I am not a solitary case, for in theNineteenth Century Reviewfor May, 1879, I find the writer of one of the articles is in the same boat; this thoughtful writer—he must have been thoughtful, otherwise his lucubration would not have been accepted—says: “I have given up the practice of thinking, or it may be I never had it.”[55]Making passes in the air with your hand, as if you were about to mesmerise the table, is another favourite stratagem.[56]The difference here is more apparent than real; Mathews, with considerable limitations, advocates leading singletons; now-a-days the practice is decried, but I regret to say that as far as my experience goes, the principal obstacle to leading a singleton is not having a singleton to lead.[57]“We expect that Cavendish very often must have objected to that ancient plagiarist Mathews for stealing his ideas.”“If their ideas are not identical, it is rather difficult to find where one begins and the other ends.”—Westminster Papers.“I contend that there is no essential difference between modern and old-fashioned whist,i.e., between Hoyle and Cavendish, Mathews and J. C.”—Mogul.[58]“The game is not the simple straightforward game it was, it is more erratic and more difficult.”“Whist is more and more, and year by year, a game of brag, a game for gambling, a game in which we have to study the idiosyncrasies of the players as well as the cards themselves. We have to deduce from imperfect data, and when our inference is wrong we have a great chance of a scolding from an infuriated partner.”“Modern whist in a nutshell—signs and signals and a short supply of brains.”—Westminster Papers.“We are by no means peculiar in the opinion that signals and the so-called developments are destroying whist.”—Cornhill Magazine.“Whist, as a game, is in a fair way of being ruined.”—Knowledge.[59]“Let players, if they wish to play a decent game, and avoid a mischievous and annoying practice, give up the privilege accorded byLaw 91.”—Home Whist.[60]“This refuge against boredom has fallen through. Seeing an article on suspended animation in theContemporary Reviewfor November 1879, I pounced upon it, thinking it might contain the recipe, and found to my disgust that the process, so circumstantially narrated, was a hoax.”[61]“While practising these virtues you are not obliged to look pleasant unless you feel so—this would be dissimulation. Heine’s plan fulfils all reasonable requirements.Once I said in my despairing,This must break my spirit now,But I bore it and am bearing,Only do not ask me how.”[62]He is right to some extent; the domestic rubber always closes early.

[1]“That there are a large number of players who think they play Whist, and yet do not reason, is too true, but such play may be Bumblepuppy, or some other game; it certainly is not Whist.”—Westminster Papers.Definitions of Bumblepuppy.Bumblepuppy is persisting to play Whist, either in utter ignorance of all its known principles, or in defiance of them, or both.Hudibras has given another definition—“A lib’ral art that costs no painsOf study, industry, or brains.”“Bumblepuppy was played in low public houses.”“Here and there were Bumblepuppy grounds, a game in which the players rolled iron balls into holes marked with numbers.”—Chronicles of Newgate.From which I infer that in the good old times this game first drove its votaries to drinking, and then landed them in a felon’s cell.

Definitions of Bumblepuppy.

Bumblepuppy is persisting to play Whist, either in utter ignorance of all its known principles, or in defiance of them, or both.

Hudibras has given another definition—

“A lib’ral art that costs no painsOf study, industry, or brains.”

“A lib’ral art that costs no pains

Of study, industry, or brains.”

“Bumblepuppy was played in low public houses.”

“Here and there were Bumblepuppy grounds, a game in which the players rolled iron balls into holes marked with numbers.”—Chronicles of Newgate.

From which I infer that in the good old times this game first drove its votaries to drinking, and then landed them in a felon’s cell.

[2]In all well regulated society, your aim should be the greatest happiness of the greatest number, and that number is notoriously number one.

[3]“Do not attempt to practise until you have acquired a competent knowledge of the theory.”—Mathews,A.D.1800.

[4]“The first Whist lesson should be to keep your eye on the table and not on your own cards.”“We cannot all have genius, but we can all have attention; the absence of intelligence we cannot help, inattention is unpardonable.”—Westminster Papers.

[4]“The first Whist lesson should be to keep your eye on the table and not on your own cards.”

“We cannot all have genius, but we can all have attention; the absence of intelligence we cannot help, inattention is unpardonable.”—Westminster Papers.

[5]Since these words were written the “Westminster Papers” is no more.“Sit tibi terra levis!”

[5]Since these words were written the “Westminster Papers” is no more.

“Sit tibi terra levis!”

[6]“It is highly necessary to be correct in leads.” “Never lead a card without a reason, though a wrong one.” “Be particularly cautious not to deceive your partner in his or your own leads.”—Mathews.

[7]“According to the play that we see, with great weakness the rule is rather to lead strengthening cards. For our own part we should be inclined to say, “Lead from your long suit only when you are sufficiently strong to bring in that suit with the aid of reasonable strength on the part of your partner.”—Westminster Papers.“When you have a moderate hand yourself sacrifice it to your partner.”—Mathews.“With a bad hand lead that suit which is least likely to injure your partner. Do not, therefore, lead from four or five small cards.”—Major A.“A lead from a queen or knave and one small card is not objectionable if you have a miserably weak hand; your queen or knave may be valuable to your partner.”—Clay.“The rule of always leading from the longest, as distinct from the strongest suit, is a rule which, more frequently than any other, sacrifices a partner’s cards without any benefit to the leader, and is in direct opposition to the true principles of combination.”—Mogul.Even Cavendish, unless “generally” is synonymous with “always,” admits the expediency of occasionally leading a short suit; “the hand, however weak, must hold one suit of four cards, and this shouldgenerallybe chosen.”

“When you have a moderate hand yourself sacrifice it to your partner.”—Mathews.

“With a bad hand lead that suit which is least likely to injure your partner. Do not, therefore, lead from four or five small cards.”—Major A.

“A lead from a queen or knave and one small card is not objectionable if you have a miserably weak hand; your queen or knave may be valuable to your partner.”—Clay.

“The rule of always leading from the longest, as distinct from the strongest suit, is a rule which, more frequently than any other, sacrifices a partner’s cards without any benefit to the leader, and is in direct opposition to the true principles of combination.”—Mogul.

Even Cavendish, unless “generally” is synonymous with “always,” admits the expediency of occasionally leading a short suit; “the hand, however weak, must hold one suit of four cards, and this shouldgenerallybe chosen.”

[8]“The lead is quite exceptional, and many good judges have doubted whether a small one should not be led.”—The Field.

[9]As intelligent children you will, perhaps, be tempted to observe that all this is so self-evident it is scarcely worth mentioning: at your immature time of life such a mistake is pardonable, but as you grow older you will find that a determination to open ragged suits in season and out of season—especially out—is one of the strongest impulses of our imperfect nature.

[10]As defined by Captain Corcoran, R.N. In all treatises on Whist “never” is invariably used in this sense. Perhaps in presence of the New Whist which is now raging violently in America, it would be more correct here to substitute “was” for “is.”

[11]Peccavi! the lead is given inWhat to Lead, by Cam.

[12]Never give “the general” an opportunity for thinking if you can avoid it; this is a rule ofuniversal application. “How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done!”

[13]It was introduced as “a proposed extension of principle,” but you had better stick to the old adage, “first catch your principle,” and leave the extension of it to some future time. Theoretical advantages of this lead, and also the echo of the signal, you will find fully set forth in “Cavendish.” In a letter to theField, September 27th, 1879, he appears to advocate varying its monotony by occasionally leading the lowest buttwo. Cam, the original patentee of this invention, and one of the finest players of his day, directs you to lead the lowest but one only when you hold no honour in the suit. By this plan you can not only count your partner’s hand—the apparent end of most modern Whist—but after you have made the queen and lost your king on the return, you have the additional gratification of knowing to a certainty that he does not even hold the knave.With regard to the echo, I have no head for intricate mathematical calculations, and therefore am unable to tell you at about what trick everything would be ready, but speaking roughly, I should be afraid that for all practical purposes the hand would occasionally be over before the signaller and the echoer had completed their operations. In the “Art of Practical Whist” you are recommended to lead the lowest but two of six. (The advice ofPunchto those about to marry is applicable here.)Mr. F. H. Lewis, in theField, January, 1880, has propounded a scheme for sub-dividing the echo into categories, and it has recently been pointed out to me that by leading trumps in some irregular way—understood, I presume, by the inventor of the process—you can explain to your partner that you originally held four. “Is there anything whereof it may be said, see, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.” When all these improvements are in use, this is clear, the elect will return to that fine old practice known as “piping at whisk”; the rest of us to primæval chaos.

With regard to the echo, I have no head for intricate mathematical calculations, and therefore am unable to tell you at about what trick everything would be ready, but speaking roughly, I should be afraid that for all practical purposes the hand would occasionally be over before the signaller and the echoer had completed their operations. In the “Art of Practical Whist” you are recommended to lead the lowest but two of six. (The advice ofPunchto those about to marry is applicable here.)

Mr. F. H. Lewis, in theField, January, 1880, has propounded a scheme for sub-dividing the echo into categories, and it has recently been pointed out to me that by leading trumps in some irregular way—understood, I presume, by the inventor of the process—you can explain to your partner that you originally held four. “Is there anything whereof it may be said, see, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.” When all these improvements are in use, this is clear, the elect will return to that fine old practice known as “piping at whisk”; the rest of us to primæval chaos.

[14]“These refinements of artifice are utterly opposed to the essence of scientific Whist.”—Westminster Papers.

[15]“What with the if’s and the mystification that would occur from playing the cards in this erratic manner, we should do more to injure than improve the playin the present state of Whist science.”—Westminster Papers.[The italics are mine.]

[16]“It puzzleth and perplexeth the conceits of many that perhaps would otherwise co-operate with him, and makes a man walk almost alone to his own ends.”—Bacon.

[17]I have worked it out myself in more than four thousand cases by rule of thumb (Field, October 1882), and obtained the same result; if in the teeth of this,early in the hand, a decent Whist-player plays the king second on a small card led, it is an unnecessarily high card; and as unnecessarily high cards are not played without an object, that object is presumably a call for trumps.

[18]“With ace, queen, etc., of a suit of which your right hand adversary leads the knave, put on the ace invariably. No good player, with king, knave, ten, will begin with the knave: of course, it is finessing against yourself to put on the queen, and, as the king is certainly behind you, you give away at least the lead, without any possible advantage.”—Mathews.This advice as a rule is sound, but you must bear in mind that towards the end of a hand the knave is often led from king, knave, ten, or king, knave alone, and if you, holding ace, queen, are obliged to make two tricks in the suit, in order to win, or save the game, you will have to play the queen. If the king is held by your left-hand adversary, you will lose the game whatever you play. When you play the queen under these circumstances, and it comes off, don’t imagine that you are inspired, or præternaturally intelligent; you are only playing to the score; and you will find that most instances of irregular play, which at first sight suggest inspiration, resolve themselves into this.

[19]In ordinary discarding, your strong suit is your long suit: except to deceive your partner, and get your king prematurely cut off, it can be no use to discard from four or five small cards in one suit, in order to keep king to three in another.

[20]If there are a “few words” going about, and you are not concerned, don’t put your oar in—“They who in quarrels interpose,Must often wipe a bloody nose.”

[20]If there are a “few words” going about, and you are not concerned, don’t put your oar in—

“They who in quarrels interpose,Must often wipe a bloody nose.”

“They who in quarrels interpose,

Must often wipe a bloody nose.”

[21]Genius has been defined to be “an unlimited capacity for taking pains,” and the pains they will take to circumvent you are assuredly unlimited, but their capacity for anything is so doubtful, that their claim to genius on this score must be left in abeyance.

[22]The excitement of the moment has led me into exaggeration here; let me give the bumblepuppist his due, the exact number is ten, as you will find later on.

[23]“The strong hand is leading trumps, and he gets them all out, and has the lead; nine times out of ten he will have forgotten his partner’s first discard, and play on the assumption his last discard is his first, and so certain is this to come about that, we believe, with some players, it is best to endeavour to calculate how many discards we shall get, and let the last discard be our weakest suit.”—Westminster Papers.

[24]If they were slightly to vary this statement, and say, “They pitched thirteen cards about only for their own amusement,” the position would be much more inexpugnable.Unless my memory deceives me, in “The Whist Player,” by Col. Blyth, they are recommended to confine themselves to playing “Beggar my Neighbour” with their grandmothers;—as most of those ladies must in the ordinary course of nature have gone over to the majority, this would be hard on them—but they might adopt a middle course, and play that fascinating game with each other; they could pitch the cards about equally well, and would have more cards to pitch. I shall resume this topic at the close of this lecture.

[24]If they were slightly to vary this statement, and say, “They pitched thirteen cards about only for their own amusement,” the position would be much more inexpugnable.

Unless my memory deceives me, in “The Whist Player,” by Col. Blyth, they are recommended to confine themselves to playing “Beggar my Neighbour” with their grandmothers;—as most of those ladies must in the ordinary course of nature have gone over to the majority, this would be hard on them—but they might adopt a middle course, and play that fascinating game with each other; they could pitch the cards about equally well, and would have more cards to pitch. I shall resume this topic at the close of this lecture.

[25]Will he?“Hope springs eternal in the human breast.”And you can hope anything you like, if you don’t mind the subsequent disappointment: First, he has to see it, and after you have got over that difficulty, if he only holds two small cards in that suit, and has a tenace in the other—according to my experience—he will lead his own. With king singly guarded in your suit, instead of being delighted to play it, wild horses are powerless to drag it from him.

[25]Will he?

“Hope springs eternal in the human breast.”

And you can hope anything you like, if you don’t mind the subsequent disappointment: First, he has to see it, and after you have got over that difficulty, if he only holds two small cards in that suit, and has a tenace in the other—according to my experience—he will lead his own. With king singly guarded in your suit, instead of being delighted to play it, wild horses are powerless to drag it from him.

[26]Absorbed in their discoveries, they appear to have forgotten that, “Vixerunt fortes ante Agamemnona.”“If weak in trumps, keep guard on your adversary’s suits. If strong, throw away from them.”—Mathews.

[26]Absorbed in their discoveries, they appear to have forgotten that, “Vixerunt fortes ante Agamemnona.”

“If weak in trumps, keep guard on your adversary’s suits. If strong, throw away from them.”—Mathews.

[27]That young and curly period when I was influenced by the fashions has passed away.Eheu fugaces, etc. It may be easier to remember “strong” than “best protected”; one epithet is certainly three syllables shorter than the other, but it seems a pity, for the sake of those three syllables, to use an expression which is utterly misleading.In “The Art of Practical Whist” also “strongest” is used without any qualification whatever, and here you only save two syllables; although the Commination Service is seldom read now—even if, like Royal Oak Day and Herr Von Joel, it should cease altogether to be retained by the Establishment—to make the blind man go out of his way would still be inexpedient, unless you make him go out of your own way as well, for you may cut him for a partner; if you have no respect for the blind, surely you have some regard for your pocket-money.

In “The Art of Practical Whist” also “strongest” is used without any qualification whatever, and here you only save two syllables; although the Commination Service is seldom read now—even if, like Royal Oak Day and Herr Von Joel, it should cease altogether to be retained by the Establishment—to make the blind man go out of his way would still be inexpedient, unless you make him go out of your own way as well, for you may cut him for a partner; if you have no respect for the blind, surely you have some regard for your pocket-money.

[28]This is one of the numerous points where the new man and the man of the stone age—now politely termed “fossil”—come into collision. “We do not think that ahard and fast rule, (the italics are mine) such as you propose, can be laid down.” Even if it were a hard and fast rule—which it is pre-eminently not—his objecting to it on that ground would be most inconsistent—“And yet he thinks what’s pious inThe one, in th’ other is a sin.”

“And yet he thinks what’s pious inThe one, in th’ other is a sin.”

“And yet he thinks what’s pious in

The one, in th’ other is a sin.”

[29]“About as remarkable as the rule that if you want to ascertain how much you have spent out of a shilling, you must subtract the number of pence left from twelve.“If the court cards and the ace of a suit are pipped according to their values, the knave would be eleven, the queen twelve, the king thirteen, and the ace fourteen; and everybody would see that the difference between the pips on any card and fourteen would show the number of cards in the suit of higher value than the card in question.“Thus, there are nine higher than the five, and seven higher than the seven.“They would see, also, that if they could place three, and three only, of those cards in any one player’s hand—as can be done when the fourth best is led—the number of higher cards not in his hand would be fourteen, less three, that is eleven less the pips.”—Mogul.“The mountain groaned in pangs of birth,Great expectation filled the earth,And lo, a mouse was born!”

[29]“About as remarkable as the rule that if you want to ascertain how much you have spent out of a shilling, you must subtract the number of pence left from twelve.

“If the court cards and the ace of a suit are pipped according to their values, the knave would be eleven, the queen twelve, the king thirteen, and the ace fourteen; and everybody would see that the difference between the pips on any card and fourteen would show the number of cards in the suit of higher value than the card in question.

“Thus, there are nine higher than the five, and seven higher than the seven.

“They would see, also, that if they could place three, and three only, of those cards in any one player’s hand—as can be done when the fourth best is led—the number of higher cards not in his hand would be fourteen, less three, that is eleven less the pips.”—Mogul.

“The mountain groaned in pangs of birth,Great expectation filled the earth,And lo, a mouse was born!”

“The mountain groaned in pangs of birth,

Great expectation filled the earth,

And lo, a mouse was born!”

[30]The origin of the signal is as clear as mud, and the very name of the inventor of the well-known dodge of playing an unnecessarily high card to induce the opponents to lead him a trump, is lost in the mists of antiquity.

[31]People do not seem at all agreed what a convention is. I used to be under the impression myself that it was an assembly of notables—a sort of liberal four hundred, or what is called in America a caucus. It is described by Childe Harold as a dwarfish demon that foiled the knights in Marialva’s dome, while I find in theFortnightly Review, April, 1879, “Conventions are certain modes of play established by preconcerted arrangement;” by whom established, preconcerted, or arranged is not mentioned; and I am very much afraid that this definition leaves a loop-hole for winking at your partner when you want trumps led—of course “by preconcerted arrangement”—otherwise it would be unfair and (as he might mistake it for a nervous affection of the eyelid) absurd. At Whist you can call anybody or anything whatever you please; I have been told, but I scarcely believe it, that you can call the knave of hearts “Jakovarts.” Poets (also an irritable race) have the same licence, and for general purposes, according to Mr. Squeers, there is no Act of Parliament against your calling a house an island; but when you come to definitions, you must be more particular, or you will land in a hole.

[32]It is only right that I should state here that these are not modern opinions, they are the opinions of Clay, and I am informed he is rapidly becoming obsolete. This may be the case. I know the practice of numbers who call themselves Whist-players is entirely opposed to his theory; still, though I don’t like to prophesy (having a high respect for the proverb that it is dangerous to do so, unless you know), I am open to make a small bet that the Peter will be obsolete first.

[33]I have seen aplayersignal twice consecutively, and lose a treble each hand.With the score three all, I have seen the original leader, holding ace, knave, nine, to five trumps, and the ten turned up—play a singleton, knock his partner’s king on the head, and then begin to signal, while the adversaries were making the next two tricks in that very suit: his partner ruffed the fourth, and with king and queen of the two unopened suits, led the queen of trumps, killed the king in the second hand, and the signaller then proceeded to wait about, and with all the remaining trumps on his right, eventually lost three by cards.I have seen anotherplayerof many years’ standing first lead a plain suit and then call; his partner echoed it, and they lost four by cards, and Ihave been toldthat some time after a table had broken up, and three of the party had left the house, one of the club servants, entering the card-room, found the fourth still sitting at the table, and continuing to signal.

[33]I have seen aplayersignal twice consecutively, and lose a treble each hand.

With the score three all, I have seen the original leader, holding ace, knave, nine, to five trumps, and the ten turned up—play a singleton, knock his partner’s king on the head, and then begin to signal, while the adversaries were making the next two tricks in that very suit: his partner ruffed the fourth, and with king and queen of the two unopened suits, led the queen of trumps, killed the king in the second hand, and the signaller then proceeded to wait about, and with all the remaining trumps on his right, eventually lost three by cards.

I have seen anotherplayerof many years’ standing first lead a plain suit and then call; his partner echoed it, and they lost four by cards, and Ihave been toldthat some time after a table had broken up, and three of the party had left the house, one of the club servants, entering the card-room, found the fourth still sitting at the table, and continuing to signal.

[34]“Signalling has placed a dangerous weapon in the hands of an injudicious player. Weak players avoid leading a trump, watching for some invitation from their partner. Weaker players still are constantly examining the tricks; and finding in the position of the cards, accidentally disarranged in turning, an indication of a call, lead trumps, perhaps to the ruin of the game.”—Mr. F. H. Lewis.“We do not know whether anyone has ever kept a record of the number of tricks lost by Petering. During the past year in the Whist we have witnessed we feel confident that more tricks have been lost than won by this practice.”—Westminster Papers.After many years’ further experience I am quite of the same opinion.

“We do not know whether anyone has ever kept a record of the number of tricks lost by Petering. During the past year in the Whist we have witnessed we feel confident that more tricks have been lost than won by this practice.”—Westminster Papers.

After many years’ further experience I am quite of the same opinion.

[35]“They are looking for Peters and the lowest but one, but they never think of the real points of the game.”“They are always on the look out for it, and they spend more time and trouble about the signal than about all the rest of the play.”—Westminster Papers.

[35]“They are looking for Peters and the lowest but one, but they never think of the real points of the game.”

“They are always on the look out for it, and they spend more time and trouble about the signal than about all the rest of the play.”—Westminster Papers.

[36]Even in board schools forcing the strong hand is a part of the ordinary curriculum.“Always force the strong.”—Mathews.There used to be some difficulty in ascertaining which was the strong trump hand, but the signal has done away with that.

[36]Even in board schools forcing the strong hand is a part of the ordinary curriculum.

“Always force the strong.”—Mathews.

There used to be some difficulty in ascertaining which was the strong trump hand, but the signal has done away with that.

[37]“Many times this kind of signal comes after the player has had the lead, and when nothing of importance, speaking from our own knowledge, has taken place to justify a signal. We are very careless about leading trumps when our partner has had the chance and did not lead them.”“It is a sign of weak play if you first lead out your winning cards, and then lead trumps; it shows ignorance of the principles of the game. If it was advisable to lead trumps at all, it should be done before you led out your winning cards.”—Westminster Papers.These are noble sentiments! how any sane human being can imagine he has the right to tell me to destroy my hand and do for him—after he has drawn his own teeth—what he was afraid—before that operation—to do for himself, I have never been able to understand.

“It is a sign of weak play if you first lead out your winning cards, and then lead trumps; it shows ignorance of the principles of the game. If it was advisable to lead trumps at all, it should be done before you led out your winning cards.”—Westminster Papers.

These are noble sentiments! how any sane human being can imagine he has the right to tell me to destroy my hand and do for him—after he has drawn his own teeth—what he was afraid—before that operation—to do for himself, I have never been able to understand.

[38]“When it is evident the winning cards are betwixt you and your adversaries, play an obscure game; but as clear a one as possible if your partner has a good hand.”—Mathews.

[39]The defence is quite as singular as the attack; for instance, if you should be taken to task for any alleged criminality arising from defective vision; instead of making either of the obvious answers that it never took place at all, or that you regret it escaped your notice and will endeavour to keep a better look out in future, the ordinary plea in extenuation is “the noise in the room,” also “because your cards are so bad,” is often assigned as a satisfactory reason.

[40]Even a few days of this discipline at the beginning of Lent would be better than nothing.

[41]Evasive answers are of two kinds; those(1) For the ordinary platitude, for which you will find good examples inCard Table Talk.(2) For the blatant absurdity; these are more difficult, for while modestly asserting your own individuality, you must at the same time guard against“Heating a furnace for your foe so hot,That you do singe yourself.”The following remark admirably fulfils both these conditions:—“For the matter of that,” said Colonel Quagg, “Rot!”—Sala.It should be addressed, kindly but firmly, to a point about eighteen inches above your partner’s head.

[41]Evasive answers are of two kinds; those

(1) For the ordinary platitude, for which you will find good examples inCard Table Talk.

(2) For the blatant absurdity; these are more difficult, for while modestly asserting your own individuality, you must at the same time guard against

“Heating a furnace for your foe so hot,That you do singe yourself.”

“Heating a furnace for your foe so hot,

That you do singe yourself.”

The following remark admirably fulfils both these conditions:—

“For the matter of that,” said Colonel Quagg, “Rot!”—Sala.

It should be addressed, kindly but firmly, to a point about eighteen inches above your partner’s head.

[42]A well-known whist-player who is really deaf is reported to aver that he never knew what comfort was till that misfortune befell him.

[43]Bad play is any kind of solecism perpetrated by somebody else; if by yourself, it may be either just your luck,pardonableinattention, playing too quickly, drawing the wrong card, or—in a very extreme case—carelessness, but it is never bad play; sometimes the difference is even greater than this, and what would be bad play in another, in yourself may be the acme of skill.

[44]To the sneer that I lose now because I play worse, I reply it is quite possible I do not play so well as I did five years ago, I make the sneerer a present of the admission, but I play better than I did twenty years ago, when—playing against as good players as I do now—if I did not win every time I sat down I was astonished.

[45]“An experiment that does not go on to millions is very little use in determining such propositions. It can be demonstrated to the satisfaction of everyone that the odds, after having won the first game in a rubber, in favour of winning one of the next two games is three to one. Yet Mr. Clay considered that five to two was a bad bet, and we have lost not only at five to two but at two to one, and on one occasion we actually lost the long odds in two hundred bets, a hundred and three times, so that if we were to take this result as of any value, the odds would be slightly in favour of losing a rubber when you had won the first game, which is absurd.”—Westminster Papers.

[46]Not a fine whist-player, for this is a rare bird, much more rare than a black swan (these can be bought any day at Jamrach’s by the couple, but even in the present hard times when, I am informed, the markets are glutted with everything, he has not one fine whist-player in stock); essential to him, in addition to common sense and attention, are genius and a thorough knowledge of Cavendish.

[47]“Although these maxims may occasionally speak of things never to be done, and others always to be done, you must remember that no rules are without exception, and few more open to exceptional cases than rules for whist.”—Clay.

[48]Just as orthodoxy has been defined to be your own doxy, so “the Game” usually means “your own idea of the game at the time.”I have called it Protean because it assumes so many different forms (being mainly based on results), and like the nigger’s little pig—runs about to such an extent that it is impossible to get a clear view of it.

[48]Just as orthodoxy has been defined to be your own doxy, so “the Game” usually means “your own idea of the game at the time.”

I have called it Protean because it assumes so many different forms (being mainly based on results), and like the nigger’s little pig—runs about to such an extent that it is impossible to get a clear view of it.

[49]Though whist is reported to be an old English word meaning silence, and though it is advisable for many reasons that it should be played with reasonable quiet, it is not at all compulsory to conduct yourself as if in the monastery of La Trappe; you have a perfect right—as far as the laws of whist are concerned—to discuss at any time the price of stocks, the latest scandal, or even the play going on, “provided that no intimation whatever, by word or gesture, be given as to the state of your own hand or the game.”—Etiquette of Whist.At bumblepuppy you had better waive this right altogether, for if under any circumstances you open your mouth, you will infallibly put your foot into it. Even here, the bumblepuppist is not consistent, for while constantly laying down the extraordinary law—in a very loud voice—that whist is silence, he considers the carrying out of that law much more incumbent on the rest of the table than himself.

At bumblepuppy you had better waive this right altogether, for if under any circumstances you open your mouth, you will infallibly put your foot into it. Even here, the bumblepuppist is not consistent, for while constantly laying down the extraordinary law—in a very loud voice—that whist is silence, he considers the carrying out of that law much more incumbent on the rest of the table than himself.

[50]“Avoid playing with those who instruct, or rather find fault while the hand is playing. They are generally unqualified by ignorance, and judge from consequences; but if not, advice while playing does more harm than good.”—Mathews.“The empty vessel makes the greatest sound.”—Shakespeare.“Talking over the handafterit has been played is not uncommonly called a bad habit and an annoyance, I am firmly persuaded it is one of the readiest ways of learning whist.”—Clay.

“The empty vessel makes the greatest sound.”—Shakespeare.

“Talking over the handafterit has been played is not uncommonly called a bad habit and an annoyance, I am firmly persuaded it is one of the readiest ways of learning whist.”—Clay.

[51]“O dreary life!” we cry, “O dreary life!”And still the generation of the birdsSing through our sighing, and the flocks and herdsSerenely live while we are keeping strife.“The education of the whist-player is peculiar. How he becomes a whist-player nobody knows. He never learns his alphabet or the catechism or anything that he ought to do. He appears full-grown, mushroom-like. He remembers someone blowing him up for doing something he ought not to have done, and somebody else blowing him up for doing something else, and he is blown up to the end of the chapter. This phase of being blown up is varied by grumbling sometimes aloud, sometimessotto voce; so that the whist-player is reared on scolding and grumbling as other youngsters are reared on pap. Truly this is a happy life. Some men grumble on principle because it is a national privilege, and they avail themselves of the Englishman’s birthright.”“A sect whose chief devotion liesIn odd perverse antipathies:In falling out with that or this,And finding somewhat still amiss,More peevish, cross, and spleneticThan dog distract, or monkey sick.”—Hudibras.“Some do it because they believe that if they grumble enough, it will bring them luck. Some do it in the hope that they will excite sympathy, and that their friends will feel for their ill-fortune, which, by-the-bye, whist-players never do. Some grumble to annoy their friends, and we are bound to say these succeed.”—Westminster Papers.“The croaking nuisance lurked in every nook;And the land stank—so numerous was the fry.”—Cowper.

[51]

“O dreary life!” we cry, “O dreary life!”And still the generation of the birdsSing through our sighing, and the flocks and herdsSerenely live while we are keeping strife.

“O dreary life!” we cry, “O dreary life!”

And still the generation of the birds

Sing through our sighing, and the flocks and herds

Serenely live while we are keeping strife.

“The education of the whist-player is peculiar. How he becomes a whist-player nobody knows. He never learns his alphabet or the catechism or anything that he ought to do. He appears full-grown, mushroom-like. He remembers someone blowing him up for doing something he ought not to have done, and somebody else blowing him up for doing something else, and he is blown up to the end of the chapter. This phase of being blown up is varied by grumbling sometimes aloud, sometimessotto voce; so that the whist-player is reared on scolding and grumbling as other youngsters are reared on pap. Truly this is a happy life. Some men grumble on principle because it is a national privilege, and they avail themselves of the Englishman’s birthright.”

“A sect whose chief devotion liesIn odd perverse antipathies:In falling out with that or this,And finding somewhat still amiss,More peevish, cross, and spleneticThan dog distract, or monkey sick.”—Hudibras.

“A sect whose chief devotion lies

In odd perverse antipathies:

In falling out with that or this,

And finding somewhat still amiss,

More peevish, cross, and splenetic

Than dog distract, or monkey sick.”—Hudibras.

“Some do it because they believe that if they grumble enough, it will bring them luck. Some do it in the hope that they will excite sympathy, and that their friends will feel for their ill-fortune, which, by-the-bye, whist-players never do. Some grumble to annoy their friends, and we are bound to say these succeed.”—Westminster Papers.

“The croaking nuisance lurked in every nook;And the land stank—so numerous was the fry.”—Cowper.

“The croaking nuisance lurked in every nook;

And the land stank—so numerous was the fry.”—Cowper.

[52]“They are intent on some wretched crotchet like the lowest but one.”“Every time he can lead a lowest but one, no matter what the state of the game or the score, that lead he is sure to make, and we believe there are some neophytes who would lose their money with pleasure if they could only tell their partners afterwards that they had led the lowest but one.”—Westminster Papers.

[52]“They are intent on some wretched crotchet like the lowest but one.”

“Every time he can lead a lowest but one, no matter what the state of the game or the score, that lead he is sure to make, and we believe there are some neophytes who would lose their money with pleasure if they could only tell their partners afterwards that they had led the lowest but one.”—Westminster Papers.

[53]“Common sense (which in truth is very uncommon) is the best sense I know of. Abide by it; it will counsel you best.”—Chesterfield Letters.

[54]This is at first sight a rather appalling proposition, but the advice I give you I have always endeavoured to follow myself, and I am not a solitary case, for in theNineteenth Century Reviewfor May, 1879, I find the writer of one of the articles is in the same boat; this thoughtful writer—he must have been thoughtful, otherwise his lucubration would not have been accepted—says: “I have given up the practice of thinking, or it may be I never had it.”

[55]Making passes in the air with your hand, as if you were about to mesmerise the table, is another favourite stratagem.

[56]The difference here is more apparent than real; Mathews, with considerable limitations, advocates leading singletons; now-a-days the practice is decried, but I regret to say that as far as my experience goes, the principal obstacle to leading a singleton is not having a singleton to lead.

[57]“We expect that Cavendish very often must have objected to that ancient plagiarist Mathews for stealing his ideas.”“If their ideas are not identical, it is rather difficult to find where one begins and the other ends.”—Westminster Papers.“I contend that there is no essential difference between modern and old-fashioned whist,i.e., between Hoyle and Cavendish, Mathews and J. C.”—Mogul.

[57]“We expect that Cavendish very often must have objected to that ancient plagiarist Mathews for stealing his ideas.”

“If their ideas are not identical, it is rather difficult to find where one begins and the other ends.”—Westminster Papers.

“I contend that there is no essential difference between modern and old-fashioned whist,i.e., between Hoyle and Cavendish, Mathews and J. C.”—Mogul.

[58]“The game is not the simple straightforward game it was, it is more erratic and more difficult.”“Whist is more and more, and year by year, a game of brag, a game for gambling, a game in which we have to study the idiosyncrasies of the players as well as the cards themselves. We have to deduce from imperfect data, and when our inference is wrong we have a great chance of a scolding from an infuriated partner.”“Modern whist in a nutshell—signs and signals and a short supply of brains.”—Westminster Papers.“We are by no means peculiar in the opinion that signals and the so-called developments are destroying whist.”—Cornhill Magazine.“Whist, as a game, is in a fair way of being ruined.”—Knowledge.

[58]“The game is not the simple straightforward game it was, it is more erratic and more difficult.”

“Whist is more and more, and year by year, a game of brag, a game for gambling, a game in which we have to study the idiosyncrasies of the players as well as the cards themselves. We have to deduce from imperfect data, and when our inference is wrong we have a great chance of a scolding from an infuriated partner.”

“Modern whist in a nutshell—signs and signals and a short supply of brains.”—Westminster Papers.

“We are by no means peculiar in the opinion that signals and the so-called developments are destroying whist.”—Cornhill Magazine.

“Whist, as a game, is in a fair way of being ruined.”—Knowledge.

[59]“Let players, if they wish to play a decent game, and avoid a mischievous and annoying practice, give up the privilege accorded byLaw 91.”—Home Whist.

[60]“This refuge against boredom has fallen through. Seeing an article on suspended animation in theContemporary Reviewfor November 1879, I pounced upon it, thinking it might contain the recipe, and found to my disgust that the process, so circumstantially narrated, was a hoax.”

[61]“While practising these virtues you are not obliged to look pleasant unless you feel so—this would be dissimulation. Heine’s plan fulfils all reasonable requirements.Once I said in my despairing,This must break my spirit now,But I bore it and am bearing,Only do not ask me how.”

[61]“While practising these virtues you are not obliged to look pleasant unless you feel so—this would be dissimulation. Heine’s plan fulfils all reasonable requirements.

Once I said in my despairing,This must break my spirit now,But I bore it and am bearing,Only do not ask me how.”

Once I said in my despairing,

This must break my spirit now,

But I bore it and am bearing,

Only do not ask me how.”

[62]He is right to some extent; the domestic rubber always closes early.

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