Whist or Bumblepuppy

These remarks are addressed to the young, in the hope that when they arrive at man’s estate they will use their best endeavours to do away with Law 91.

To the present generation, already acquainted with “the Game,” I should no more presume to offer advice than I should presume to teach my lamented Grandmother to suck eggs, if she were still alive.

As, humanly speaking, you will probably play something for the next fifty years, should you select either Whist or Bumblepuppy,[1] it will be as well for your own comfort—the comfort of others is a minor consideration[2]—to have some idea of their general principles; but first you must decide which of these two games you intend to play, for though they are often confounded together, and are both supposed to be governed by the same ninety-one laws and a chapter on etiquette, they differ much more distinctly than the chalk and cheese of the present day. Professor Pole in his “Theory of Whist,” Appendix B, has made a very skilful attempt (by modifying the maxims of Whist) to make the two games into a kind of emulsion. I was rather taken with this, and having been informed that the most incongruous materials will mix, if you only shake them together long enough, I have given this plan a fair trial, and failed.

It may be that I had not sufficient patience and perseverance, but the principal cause of failure I found to be this: the Bumblepuppist, like Artemus Ward’s bear, “can be taught many interesting things but is unreliable;” he only admires his own eccentricities, and if a person of respectable antecedents gets up a little pyrotechnic display of false cards for his own private delectation, the Bumblepuppist utterly misses the point of the joke, he fails even to see that it is clever: if such a comparison may be drawn without offence, he doesn’t consider that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

In the face of this difficulty, I should recommend you to treat them as separate games: as you go down in one scale and up in the other they closely approximate; that extremes meet is a law of nature, and between the worst Whist and the best Bumblepuppy it is almost impossible to draw the line.

Other elementary forms, protozoa for instance, are often so much alike that it is difficult to decide whether they are plants or animals; but representative specimens of each game, beyond being found at the same table, (in scientific slang, having the same habitat,) have scarcely one point in common, you might just as reasonably mistake horse-radish for beef.

If you elect Whist (I shall refer to the laws later on) begin by learning the leads, and the ordinary play of the second, third and fourth hand, which you will find in any Whist Book;[3] this can be done in a few days; then after cutting for partners (see note to Law 14) as soon as the cards are dealt, not before (see note to Law 45),

N.B.—Knowing is always better than the very best thinking, and generally much more easy: by these simple means you get rid at once and for ever of all such childish interruptions as “draw your card!” “who led?” “what are trumps?” “show me the last trick!” and so ad infinitum, which, by their constant repetition, not merely worry and annoy the rest of the table, but tend to destroy any clue to the game that you yourself might otherwise possess.

It is a good plan to sit clear of the table, and then if you are constrained to drop a few cards, they at any rate fall on the floor, where they cannot be called.

So far, I have assumed your object to be Whist; if your end and aim is Bumblepuppy, you need do none of these things; you can learn the leads and the recognised play—more or less imperfectly—in a few years by practice, or you can leave them unlearned;

ignorance imparts variety to the game, and variety is charming. You can set all laws at defiance, and if any one objects—after much wrangling—you can refer the matter in dispute to the Westminster Papers,[5] and hang it up for a month certain: (this is a better plan than writing to the Field, for there you only get a week’s respite).

Should you be in any doubt whether Whist or the other game is your vocation, the first half-dozen times you play make it a rule never to look at the last trick—

and if at the end of that time you find the difficulty insuperable, give up, as hopeless, all idea of becoming a Whist player.

I have mentioned that there are ninety-one laws. The wording of the first is not strictly accurate; it ought to be “The rubber is generally the best of three games,” for though I myself have never seen more than four, it may consist of any number, as the following decisions show:

Decision A.—The rubber is over when one side has won two games and remembers it has done so: this memory must be brought to bear before the other side has won two games and remembers it has done so.

Decision B.—If a game is forgotten, it is no part of the losers’ duty to remind the winners of the fact.

Law 5.—This law is clear enough; still the first time you revoke and are found out, if your opponents hold honours and you have nothing scored—however many you have made by cards—they will claim a treble: you should be prepared for this. The claim is wrong, but in spite of that—possibly because of it—“they all do it.”

Law 7.—Decision.—You must call your honours audibly, but you are not obliged to yell because your adversaries are quarrelling.

Law 14.—Always get hold of the cards before cutting, and place a high card at one end of the pack and a low one at the other, then cut last and take either card you prefer: by this means you select your partner, this is an admirable coup and tends to the greatest happiness of the greatest number (Note A, page 2) but it must be executed with judgment, for if you are detected your happiness will not be increased, rather the reverse. Some purists, anxious to be on the safe side, only keep an eye on the bottom card, and take it when it suits them.

Law 34.—Until the last few years, after you had cut the cards into two distinct packets, if the dealer thought fit to knock one of them over, leave a card on the table, or drop half-a-dozen or so about, it was a mis-deal on the ground that these proceedings were opposed to one or other of the next two laws, 35 and 36, but the latest decision is that the dealer can maltreat the pack in any way he likes and as often as he likes, and compel you to keep on cutting de die in diem.

Old Decision.—“You cannot make your adversary cut a second time; when you left a card on the table it could not be said that there was a confusion in the cutting, it is a mis-deal.”

New Decision.—“There is nothing in the laws to make this a mis-deal. The play comes under the term ‘Confusion of the cards,’ and there must be a fresh deal.”

If you see a potent, grave, and reverend seignior carefully lubricating his thumb with saliva, don’t imagine he is preparing it for deglutition, he is only about to deal. Even if he should swallow it, why interfere? he will not hurt you; it is not your thumb. Should you suffer from acute hyperæsthesis you can follow the example of an old friend of mine, who once rose from the table in his terror, and returned armed with a large pair of black kid gloves which he wore during the remainder of the seance: though the effect was funereal—not to say ghastly—it was attended with the best results in this case, but it is just as likely to lead to ill-feeling, and therefore to be deprecated. Leave the matter to time! Apart from the cards being glazed with lead, a single pack has been found to contain a fifth of an ounce of arsenic, and there is no known antidote. Even if not immediately fatal, the practice must be very deleterious. A whist enthusiast with a greater turn for mathematics than I can lay claim to, has counted from six to seven thousand bacteria on each square centimetre of a playing card, and makes this ghastly deduction: “it is really dreadful to reflect upon the colony of microbes which a person who moistens his thumb before dealing may convey into his mouth, and thence into his system.”—Standard, Nov. 2nd, 1893. “Everything comes to the man who can wait,” and while you are waiting always sit on the dealer’s right.

Law 37.—An incorrect or imperfect pack is a pack containing duplicates or more or less than fifty-two cards, but it is neither incorrect nor imperfect because you think fit to place any number of your own cards in the other pack, or to supplement them with one from it. Vide Laws 42, 46.

Law 42.—If you take one card from the other pack, it is clear that you subject yourself to a penalty; if you take more than one the matter is not so clear; possibly you may gain by it; should you wish to have the point settled, any time you have a bad hand add the other pack to it; then complain that you have sixty-five cards, throw them up, claim a new deal under Rule 37, and see what comes of it.

Law 45.—Taking up your cards during the deal has one advantage, that if you can get your hand sorted and begin to play without waiting for the dealer, you save time, and time is reported to be money. To counter-balance this there are two attendant disadvantages, you prevent the possibility of a mis-deal, and any card exposed by your officiousness gives the dealer the option of a new deal.

Law 46.—Under this law it is manifest that—the other hands being correct—your hand may consist of any number of cards from one to thirteen, and if you once play to a trick—however many you may be short—you will have to find them or be responsible for them. See Law 70.

Law 91.—If this law, which is the main cause of inattention and innumerable improper intimations, were abolished, Whist would be greatly improved; and I have never met with a good Whist player who was not of the same opinion.

The chapter on etiquette is good sense and good English, and is worthy of much more attention than is usually given to it.

In addition to their ambiguity and sins of commission, there is also a sin of omission; there is no limit as to time, and it seems desirable there should be; I would suggest—as allowing the hesitating player reasonable latitude—one of those sand glasses, supposed to be useful for boiling an egg; there is no sense in giving him time enough to addle his egg.

Though these laws appear more difficult of access than I had imagined, they are not the laws of which the only copy was destroyed by Moses; I have seen them myself in Clay, Cavendish, and the “Art of Practical Whist,” and if you are unable to get any of these works from Mudie’s, there are copies of each in the British Museum, Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury.

Before or immediately after breakfast is the best time to play; then, if ever, the intellect is clear, the attention undistracted; in the afternoon you are exhausted by the labours of the day, and your evenings should be devoted to the morrow’s lessons or a quiet nap (not the round game of that ilk).

The play of the entire hand often depends upon the very first card led, and the confidence your partner has that your lead is correct; whatever then your original lead may be, let it be a true and—as far as you can make it so—a simple lead: never lead an equivocal card—that is one which may denote either strength or weakness—if you can, lead a card about which no mistake is possible.[6] With the original lead, follow the books and lead your strongest suit; if you have nothing at all, do as little mischief as you can; in this pitiable condition the head of a short suit—as a knave or a ten—is better than the lowest or lowest but one of five to the nine; your partner, when he sees the high card led, knows at once (assuming he knows anything) that he will have to save the game himself if it can be saved, and will take the necessary steps to that end. Though there is ancient and modern authority for this,[7] I am perfectly aware that (according to the latest theory) it is heresy; I am also aware, and the reflection gives me quite as much pain as the heresy does, that leading a long weak suit with a bad hand and no cards of re-entry is a losing game:

to lead your longest suit when you are neither likely to get the lead again, nor to make a trick in it if you do, is a “short and easily remembered rule,” but is apt to bring its followers to grief; if I do so, I know perfectly well that after the game is over I shall probably be left with the two long cards of that suit, or I may have an opportunity of discarding one or both of them before that crisis arrives, but this is not the slightest consolation to me.

While on the subject of heresy, I may as well refer to another lead which has a special orthodoxy of its own. In all suits of four or more, containing no sequence, unless headed by the ace, you either lead the lowest, or, if you wish particularly to exhibit your knowledge of the game, the lowest but one; but from king, knave, ten, &c., you lead the ten, and if your object is a quiet life, you will continue to do so; if you want to make tricks the advantage of the lead is not so clear: if the second player holds ace, queen, &c., or queen and another, you drive him into playing the queen, and so lose a trick, which if you had led your lowest in the usual way, you might not have done.[8]

Against this you have the set off that by leading the ten you insure having the king-card of the suit in the third round, but it is scarcely worth your while to go through so much to get so little; for such a lead pre-supposes your partner to have neither ace, queen, nor nine, and it is two to one that he holds one of them; if your partner’s best card is below the nine, the tricks you will make will be like angels’ visits, few and far between, whatever you lead; and why you should take such a desponding view of an unplayed suit I am not aware. The advantage of opening a suit in which you hold tenace is not so great as to oblige you to handicap it by sending the town-crier round with a bell to proclaim what that tenace is; late in the hand it is often advisable to lead the knave.

With ace and four small cards and a bad hand, when weak in trumps, I have found, from long experience, the ace to be a losing lead, and being distinctly of the impression that for the ordinary purposes of life, 13/4 = 2, as I am not always anxious to proclaim the exact number of my suit, I generally lead a small one.

I am aware that the suit does not always go twice, or even once; but that is the fault of the cards, not of the equation.

Of course, if, for any wise purpose, you feel you must have one trick, take it at the first opportunity, irrespective of Cocker or any other authority.

N.B.—When you, second, third, or fourth player have won the first trick, whatever you may think, you are not the original leader, and your lead then should be guided by your own hand; if it is a bad one you are under no compulsion to open a suit at all, one suit is already open, go on with that; if it also is a bad one, one bad suit is a less evil than two bad suits, or opening a doubtful one in the dark; return through strength up to declared weakness, or if it was your partner who led, why should you show a suit unless you hold a good sequence or strong trumps? Return his suit, yours will be led sometime; whatever you won the trick with, he is in a better position to defend himself as third player than if he had to lead it again himself.

In returning your partner’s lead, if you had originally three, you return the higher of the two remaining cards; in returning through your adversary’s lead, if you hold the third best and another, play the small one, for your partner may hold the second best single and they would fall together.

Whenever you hold a suit with one honour in it, to lead that suit, if you can avoid it, is about the worst use you can make of it. Should you fail to see this, devote ten minutes—not when you are playing whist, but on some wet half-holiday or quiet Sunday afternoon—to thinking the matter over; even if you have a suit of king, queen to three, why not be quiet? If anybody else opens the suit you will probably make two tricks, if you open it yourself, probably one; there is no hurry about it, you can always do that, but why you should go out of your way to lead a suit in which you hold four to the knave or five to the ten is incomprehensible.

It is not generally known (or if it is, it is never acted on, which comes to the same thing) that neither in the ninety-one laws of whist, nor in any of its numerous maxims, are you forbidden to play the third round of a suit, even though the best card is notoriously held by your opponent. It is a common delusion to fancy that when a suit is declared against you, you can prevent it making by leading something else, whereas you merely postpone the evil day, and do mischief in the interval. Many feeble whist-players are unwilling ever to let their opponents make a single trick; now this is unnecessarily greedy; under no circumstances, at short whist, is it imperative to make more than eleven. Allow your adversary to have two, it amuses him and does not hurt you.

With trumps declared against you be particularly careful how you open new suits; surely when you have just succeeded in knocking your partner on the head in one suit, you might give him till the next hand to recover himself, instead of trying to assault him again the very next time you get the lead.[9]

Changing suits is one of the most constant annoyances you will have to contend against; queer temper, grumbling, logic, and so on, if sometimes a nuisance, are sometimes altogether absent, but the determination to open new suits for no apparent reason—unless a feeble desire on the part of the leader to see how far the proceeding will injure his partner can be called a reason—is chronic.

Never[10] lead a singleton unless you are strong enough in trumps to defeat any attempt either of your adversaries or your partner to get them out, in which case it might be as well to lead them yourself; whether you lead a sneaker or wait for others to play the suit, the chance of ruffing is much the same, and the certainty of making a false lead, and the nearly equal certainty of deceiving your partner are avoided.

When a singleton comes off it may be nice, it is certainly naughty; when on the other hand you have killed your partner’s king, and he has afterwards got the lead, drawn the trumps, and returned your suit, should the adversaries make four or five suits in it, you must not be surprised if he gives vent to a few cursory remarks. To succeed with a singleton, (1) your partner must win the first trick in the suit, (2) he must return it at once, (3) on your next opening another unknown suit, he must again win the trick, and the odds against these combined events coming off are something considerable. Per contra, he will probably be beaten on the very first round, and even if he is not, it is extremely likely that he will either lead trumps—unless he is aware of your idiosyncracy, when he will never know what to do—for what he naturally imagines is your strong suit, or open his own; at the same time, just as there are fagots and fagots, so there are singletons and singletons, and a queen or knave is by no means such a villainous card as anything below a seven. “The very worst singleton is the king.”—Cam.

With five trumps and no cards, lead a trump: you have made a true lead, you have led not merely your strongest suit, but a very strong suit, and if your partner has nothing, you will lose the game whatever you play, but you will lose it on that account, and not because you led a trump; if you open any of the plain suits you will make a false lead, and it is two to one that the adversaries hold any of them against your partner. You will often be told by the very people who will tell you to lead from five small cards in a plain suit, that to lead a trump from five is too dangerous, but if you inquire in what way it is too dangerous, and receive any satisfactory reply, you will succeed in doing what I have never done.

With five trumps and other cards, a fortiori lead a trump.

Towards the end of the game, you will find it laid down by some authorities that if you hold nothing and have an original lead, you should lead your best trump; now if that trump is of sufficient size to warn your partner that it is your best, this lead may not, under the circumstances, be much more injurious than any other; but an original trump lead is usually supposed to indicate great strength either in trumps, or in plain suits, and if your partner infers from the size of your trump that your lead is from strength, and acting on that inference returns it, it is about the most murderous lead that can be made; having been two or three times the victim of such a lead is almost as good a reason for not returning trumps as sudden illness or not having one.

If he holds seven tricks in his own hand he can make them at any time, and any attempt of yours, however able, to deceive him at the outset will (to say the least of it) not assist him in doing so.

Why add an additional element of confusion to the game? Why should your partner have to say to himself as well as “Strong cards or strong trumps?” “Perhaps nothing at all.” He is compelled to wait about to see what is the meaning of this lead, time is lost, and an opportunity let slip which may never recur. The Bumblepuppist will here observe that time was made for slaves; but the apophthegms on this subject are more numerous and contradictory than he is aware of.

As a general principle, with the original lead and a very bad hand, it is advisable to efface yourself as much as possible. In such a case, I always have a strong desire to get under the table—I don’t know that it is contrary to either the laws or the etiquette of whist to do so—and I firmly believe it is a better course than leading the trey of trumps; at any rate it is not for the weak hand to dictate how the game should be played; and to step boldly to the front and lead a small trump from two, without a trick behind it, is in my opinion the height of impertinence.

At certain states of the score it may be imperative, in order to save the game, that you should place all the remaining cards, but that is another matter altogether, and if you want to go into it, read Clay on the subject (page 85), though he nowhere suggests that you should commence operations by placing thirty-eight unknown cards.

If your partner has led you a trump, and you—holding ace, queen, to four or more—have made the queen, return the ace; if you are playing Bumblepuppy return a small one, your partner thinking the ace is against him, is almost certain to finesse and lose a trick—then call him names. The reason assigned by the perpetrator of this return is that as he originally held four he is compelled to play the lowest, and it curiously exemplifies his inability to apply even the little knowledge he is possessed of.

With ace, king only, it is customary to lead first the ace and then the king; there is no authority for such a lead,[11] and nothing to be gained by it, except that by leading in this way you probably prevent your partner from signalling in the suit, but if you like to burden yourself with a useless anomaly, you can make a note of it. We started with the hypothesis, that, in the ordinary course of nature, you have fifty years before you, and if you wish to embitter and shorten those years, you will invariably lead the lowest but one of five—it may be, and I am informed is, useful among a few assorted players, “chock-full of science,” but it is caviare to the general[12] and (unlike Wordsworth’s Creature)—

For my part I only think it expedient to show five when, with reasonable strength on the part of my partner, I have a fair prospect of bringing in the suit.[14]

It is often better to keep the knowledge of mere length of suit religiously to yourself. Length and strength are not always the same thing; why are giants generally so weak about the knees? Length is often only one element of strength and a very poor one at that, though it may be of use indirectly. With four or five low cards and an observant opponent, it is occasionally a good plan to bottle up the smallest. I have known this missing link so to prey upon that opponent’s mind as to cause him to forget matters of much greater importance.

In bumblepuppy all this is entirely different, you can lead anything you like, in any way you like; here the safest lead is a long weak suit, the longer and weaker it is, the less is your partner able to do you a mischief. With a weak partner, strengthening cards are either futile or dangerous: as he will in all probability at once disembowel himself, the result of leading them is on all fours with the Japanese Hari Kari; whereas if you lead him a small card he will finesse into his boots.

You should also be very particular to lead the lowest but one of five,[15] it creates confusion, and under cover of that confusion you may make a trick or two. From this point of view you will often find the lead of the middle card of your suit extremely effective.

As to play false cards for the purpose of deceiving your partner is considered clever, a very little practice will enable you to play them with facility. With all deference to Bret Harte, for ways that are dark, the Heathen Chinee is not particular, and for tricks that are vain, the Caucasian can give him points.

The ability to play false cards is not a proof of intelligence. (“Cunning is often associated with a low type of intellect.”—Report of Inspector-General of Military Prisons.)[16]

If you read your Natural History, you will find it is the weaker animals which betake themselves to anomalous modes of defence; though the cuttle-fish and the skunk may be much looked up to in their respective domestic circles, they are quite out of place at the whist-table.

It is also usual with ace to five or more trumps to lead the ace, and if you see—by killing your partner’s king, or by his failing to play one—that he has no more, to try something else, for you can change the suit as often as you please. It is a fine mental exercise for your partner to recollect the remaining cards of four unfinished suits, all going simultaneously.

I often think, when I see this game in full blast, that whist-players are not sufficiently grateful to Charles the Sixth, or whatever other lunatic invented playing cards, for having limited himself to four suits; he might have devised six—but the idea is too horrible. “In the time of Charles the Sixth there were five suits.”—Field. This not only proves my ignorance but my position, for if five suits have been tried and found too much for human endurance, then six would manifestly have been quite too awful! Q.E.D.

Second hand with king and another, or queen and another, never play the honour either in trumps or plain suits, unless you particularly want the lead, and then you will probably not get it, and throw away a trick.

By not playing the honour,

If, holding knave, ten, and another, you are afraid of trumps being led, and your partner is devoid of common sense, don’t play the ten, or it will be taken for a signal (that it neither is one, nor at all like one, does not affect the petrolater in the least); it is almost equally dangerous with queen, knave, and another to play the knave. A high card second hand has exactly the same effect on many players as a red rag has on a bull; and if you have an objection to being gored, you should keep it out of their sight as long as possible—subject to this important qualification—“Put an honour on an honour, with only three of a suit; with four or more you should not do it.”—Mathews.

Except to save or win the game, whether you are weak in trumps, or strong, don’t ruff a doubtful card unless you have a distinct idea what to do next; if you are only going to open a weak suit, let it go.

Don’t ruff a suit of which your partner clearly holds the best, in order to announce, urbi et orbi, that you are weak in trumps; depend upon it urbis and orbis will take advantage of this, not to mention that you take the lead out of your partner’s hand at a critical moment, and prevent him from developing any game that he may have.

In bumblepuppy, with ace, king, and others, or king, queen, and others, the trick is often passed, and with knave led, if the second player holds ace, queen, etc., he usually plays the queen;[18] holding the same cards, if instead of the knave a small card is led, he occasionally produces the ace. These proceedings may be the eccentricities of genius; if they are not, the only other explanation I can suggest for them, is a desire to lose a trick.

Third hand.—Don’t finesse against your partner, unless you have reason to believe you are stronger in his own suit than he is, or that he has led from weakness.

Don’t finesse against yourself. If you have led from ace, knave, etc., and your partner has made the queen, the king is certainly not on your right. If, on the other hand, you have led from king, and your partner again has made the queen, it can be of no use to put on the king, the ace must be over you. Though Clay described the finesse obligatory before you were thought of, I am afraid that after you are forgotten, these two simple cases will continue to be reversed—that people will finesse against, and not for, themselves. In bumblepuppy this is de rigueur; also at this game, with king, queen, and another in your partner’s lead, it is customary to play the king, and, if it wins, to open a new suit.

Ruff a winning card of the adversaries! What possible benefit can you derive from allowing your opponent to discard, and by that discard show his partner the suit he wishes led? If you are too stingy to use a high trump, surely you might play a little one just to keep the trick going. “It is much better to play a small trump with the certainty it will be overtrumped than to let the trick go.”—Westminster Papers.

When your partner has opened a suit with the ace, and on the third round eleven are out, he holds the other two, and whenever he leads one of them—whether it is the queen or the four—it is a winning card; but if you fail to grasp this, and feel disposed to play the thirteenth trump on it, don’t waste time either in invoking the immortal gods, inspecting the last trick, or looking præternaturally intelligent—trump it at once, and put him out of his misery. The idea is not new, for it occurred to Macbeth when about to perpetrate the very same coup:

My only claim is to have expressed myself without such an involved use of auxiliary verbs.

If you have more than two of the suit, don’t play the ace on your partner’s knave; it may be a short suit, or the head of a sequence, and you throw away the power of passing the ten second round, even if it is from king, queen, knave to five, there is nothing to be gained by covering; with ace and another win the trick and return it at once, unless you lead trumps.

Though frequently done, it is not good whist to decline to win a trick, either on the ground that you want a guard for your king of trumps, or because you hold six. In the other game both these proceedings would be correct.

Fourth hand.—Win the trick, and endeavour, if possible, to do so without playing a false card. Like all things that are difficult at first, you will find it become comparatively easy by practice. You might suppose that the exponent of bumblepuppy—who always considers a trick of his own making worth at least two made by his partner—would get into no difficulty here; but he does. He has a firmly-rooted belief that his strong suits are under the protection of a special Providence which will never allow them to be ruffed, and uttering his wretched shibboleth, “Part with my ace, sir? never!” he contrives to lose any number of tricks by keeping up his winning cards to the last possible moment and a shade longer. I imagine he is under the erroneous impression that this in some way compensates for cutting in with a small trump when he is not wanted.

“It is a good plan when you have the thirteenth trump to pass winning cards. The reason of this is not apparent, but in practice I know several players who do so, and in the multitude of counsellors there is wisdom.”—Westminster Papers.

Discards are of two distinct kinds:—

• (1) Ordinary.
• (2) Forced.

(1) When your partner; (2) When your adversary shows strength.

In the first case, you naturally point out to your partner which is your strong suit by discarding from your weak suits, your object being to win the game, and there is an end of that matter.[19] In the second case it is just the reverse. You have to save the game, and you discard from your best guarded suit, by no means necessarily your strongest, with a view, as far as you can, of blocking every suit, and so preventing the adversary from establishing his long cards.

These two kinds of discards are, or ought to be, of importance to three very different classes of players:—

(1) The Scientific.

(2) The Commonly Decent.

(3) The Exponents of Bumblepuppy.

(1) The Scientific.—Here, with trumps declared against you, you discard, as already said, from your best guarded suit. Your partner knows this is probable, but he does not know how strong you are in that suit; he also knows it may very possibly be a suit in which you hold three small cards, and a second discard of it only gives him the further information that you had either three or five—he must infer which from his own hand—he assumes you did not originally hold two, for you would not have left yourself entirely bare of the suit. It is not everybody who is in the proud position which I once occupied, when a trump being led by the adversary, I found myself with no trump, the best nine cards of one suit, and two other aces.

Among good players, then, the forced discard amounts to this: that though you are aware your partner is discarding with the best possible motives, and he is aware that you are doing the same, neither can depend upon the other’s discard as showing anything for certain. With trumps declared against you, you must place unknown cards to the best of your ability, and in such an unpleasant conjuncture, if you are exceptionally fortunate, you may sometimes save the game, and the skill displayed in doing so may be a joy for ever:—

Observe the discretion of the poet in his choice of the word “forsan.”

But when, on the other hand, you look at the improbability of this coming off, when you reflect that your partner has occasionally given you two discards, and that you, in the exercise of that right of private judgment inherent in every Protestant, led one of those very suits, and by so doing lost the game; when you recall what then took place, the epea pteroenta, the mutual—but the subject is too painful; let us leave it, and pass on to Class 2.[20] This class has two divisions, they both see your discards, but—without any reference to their own hands or anything that has been played—one division assumes your discard is invariably from weakness, and at once knocks on the head the very suit you have sedulously been attempting to guard; the other has got hold of the pernicious axiom that the original discard is necessarily your strongest suit, and always leads that.

Here we have again a pretty considerable element of confusion.

Class 3.—These, with an unerring instinct that might almost be mistaken for genius,[21] will put you in a hole, whatever you do. The safest plan is, under all circumstances, to discard from your weakest suit; you cannot be cut to pieces there, and, whatever happens, you have the letter of the law on your side. When you have not followed suit to the second round of the opponent’s trumps, when, as a rule, your discard (being forced) is not to be depended on and is of no importance to them, this is the only time they ever see it; for having no winning cards in their own hands to attract their attention, they are able to devote a little more time to seeing the cards on the table. The number of times they will have that wretched trick turned, and their anxiety to be quite sure of the suit, are painful to the sensitive mind (especially if that sensitive mind is sitting opposite to them and happens to belong to yourself). Well might Sophocles observe, “Many things are dreadful, but nothing is more dreadful than man.”

That the first discard is from the weakest suit is one of those half-dozen cast-iron rules—three of them wrong, and the remainder invariably misapplied—which make up their stock-in-trade;[22] but if they hold ace, king, queen to five trumps—say clubs—you see them come well up to the table with an air of triumph, and begin to lead. Again you don’t follow suit; what do they care? they drive gaily on, but, as they finish the third round, the idea just begins to dawn upon them—perhaps you have discarded something.[23] A careful inspection of the last trick affords them the pleasing intelligence that somebody has discarded a diamond and somebody else a spade; the light fades from their eye, their jaw drops, and they are such a picture of hopeless misery, that if they were not in the habit of informing you—scores of times a day—that they play whist only for amusement, you might almost doubt the fact.[24]

After prolonged contemplation of the chandelier and a farewell look at the spade and diamond, they eventually produce a heart—your original discard!—have their remaining trumps drawn, and lose the game.

Ordinary discards are simple in the extreme, and might be very useful; unfortunately (as the general public will persist in confining its attention to its own hand, as long as there is anything in it), the only discard usually seen is the last, and this detracts from their utility. Forced discards are always difficult (not to the discarder, but to his partner), and to a duffer, unintelligible, for this reason, they require common-sense—far be it from me to teach it—it is like poetry, “nascitur non fit,” and these remarks have not been made with any such intention, but to endeavour to accentuate that Cavendish in his treatise on Whist, and a letter which I append, has said everything on the subject likely to be of use.

“The old system of discarding, though unscientific, had at least the merit of extreme simplicity. It was just this: when not able to follow suit, let your first discard be from your weakest suit. Your partner in his subsequent leads is thus directed to your strong suit, and will refrain from leading the suit in which, by your original discard, you have told him you are weak.[25]

Several years ago some whist enthusiasts, amongst whom were Mogul and myself, played a number of experimental rubbers, the cards of each hand being recorded as they were played, and the play being fully discussed afterwards.

In the course of the discussion it was observed first, I think, by Mogul, that in several hands the discard from a weak suit, when the adversaries evidently had in their hands the command of trumps, had resulted very disastrously.[26] This caused us to consider whether the weak suit should not be protected under these circumstances, and we finally came to the conclusion that discards should be divided into two classes, viz., ordinary discards and forced discards. These I proceed to distinguish.

The reason a weak suit is chosen for the discard is, that when a strong suit is broken into, the number of long cards which might be brought in, if the suit is ever established, are lessened, and so many potential tricks are thus consequently lost.

But little harm, certainly none of this kind of harm, is done by throwing away from a weak suit, in other words, from a suit that can never be brought in. But when the adversaries have declared great strength in trumps, the chance of bringing in a suit is reduced to a minimum. On the assumption that you can never bring it in, the small cards of your long suit are valueless to you. That suit will protect itself so far as its high cards are concerned, but the weak suits require protection.

Thus, by guarding honours, or by keeping four cards to a ten or nine, a trick is often won, or the establishment of an adverse suit prevented. It was this point, indeed, which first led us to condemn the invariable discard of the weak suit; the remark was frequently made, “I was obliged to deceive you then, partner, and to throw my long suit in order to keep my king guarded in another suit.” This, of course, when the game was in danger.

Honours in weak suits may be freely unguarded by the players who have strong trump hands, but the guards should be religiously preserved by those who are weak. Our discussions resulted in our laying down the following rules for our own guidance, viz., when you see from the fall of the cards that there is no probability of bringing in your own or your partner’s long suit, discard originally from your best protected suit. This I may call the foundation of the modern system of discarding; it has been adopted by all the best players with whom I am acquainted.

For the sake of having a short and easily remembered rule, however, it is the fashion to say, “Discard originally from your strong suit when the adversaries lead trumps.”[27] “No doubt you will be right in your discard in most cases, but this aphorism does not truly express the conditions.” (Query, then why use it?).... “The conclusion I have arrived at is that the modern system of discarding requires so much judgment in its application as to be rather a stumbling-block than an assistance to the ordinary run of players,”—rough on the neophyte!—“This is a pity, as there can be no doubt but that the classing of discards into ordinary and forced is sound in principle, and adds beauty to the game. I have been prompted to write this letter in the hopes of seeing this classification more generally adopted, and its limitations more distinctly observed and acted on.”—Cavendish.

I have met with the same conclusion and the same regret in a metrical form: it is short, and may be useful to any of you troubled with bad memories:

If this principle were carried out to its logical result, and everybody played for amusement in the ludicrous sense in which this word is generally understood, it is manifest that—as no one would ever see either a card led or played, or know what suit was trumps—it would be useless continuing to ask each other for information on those abstruse points; and unless, by some alteration in the laws of whist, an intelligence department outside the table were provided to supplement the precarious knowledge acquired by looking at the last trick, the game would shortly collapse from its innate absurdity; unfortunately we seldom arrive at this point; what usually takes place is this:

Four people sit down nominally to play whist, when suddenly one of them announces, to the consternation of his partner, that he is not there with any such intention, but solely for his own amusement; he altogether ignores the possibility of the others wishing to play whist for their amusement, and lays down his stale proposition with such an air of originality that he often deludes the unwary bystander into the belief that he is somehow superhuman, and much superior to the other three, who are consequently looked down upon as mean and sordid individuals; this is not the case. If yelling when he is trodden upon, and crying if he loses, are proofs of humanity, he is essentially human.

Now, no one has the slightest objection to your amusing yourself as long as you do not annoy anybody else. I go further than this, and admit your abstract right to amuse yourself at your partner’s expense, but I protest against your expecting him to rejoice with you in his own discomfiture.

Because eels are accustomed to being skinned, it does not at all follow that they should like it—at any rate, whether they do so or not, it is not expected of them.

Again, the practice of vivisection may be both amusing and instructive to the vivisector, while it may be neither the one nor the other to his victim. Though I have no practical acquaintance with this pursuit, I have often seen large portraits of the vivisectee pasted on hoardings, and judging from the expression of his countenance, and the uncomfortable position in which he is always depicted, I should imagine that the entire proceedings were supremely distasteful to him.

From the time when Cain was short-coated, and tipcats, pea-shooters, catapults, and other instruments of torture appeared on the scene, there have been peculiar ideas of amusement. Fortunately—with the exception of your doting mammas—public opinion has been against you. A gentleman found in the street with a tipcat embedded in his eye is usually conducted to the nearest chemist, and the malefactor given in charge. (The crafty Ulysses, before he performed a very similar operation on Polyphemus, made every preparation to escape from the room as soon as it was over, and took uncommonly good care not to originate the now trite witticism, “there you go with your eye out,” till he was well beyond his reach. He was far too intelligent a man to expect the Cyclops to take it pleasantly.) But if this occurs at Whist, and the victim even hints an objection, he is looked upon as a bear, and sometimes the verdict is “served him right,” while at other times he seems to be expected to “rub it in.” There I draw the line; annoy your partner as much as you like, but don’t expect that! It is contrary to nature; still, while fully and freely admitting your right of annoying, and also your right to throw away your own property if you please, you are not privileged to treat your partner’s in the same way. This borders closely on theft, and before taking such a liberty, in order to be on the safe side, I think you ought first to obtain his consent in writing. It is all very well for Shakespeare to call his purse trash (he knew the contents of it, and his description may have been most accurate), but whether things are trash or not, if they don’t belong to you, you must not make away with them (as the poet himself experienced when he took to deer-stealing), and unless you wish, like him, to fall into the clutches of the criminal law, you had better take Captain Cuttle’s advice, and overhaul your catechism, with special reference to your duty to your neighbour. You will find it a safer guide.

I ought to apologise for the length of this note, but I have suffered myself, and although I never killed an albatross, and am by nature most inoffensive,

The last lecture went thoroughly into the forced discard and, after looking at it in every possible light, left it exactly at the point where it was left by Mathews nearly a hundred years ago: “If weak in trumps, keep guard on your adversary’s suits. If strong, throw away from them and discard as much as possible from your partner’s strong suits in either case.”

Here I should gladly have let the matter rest—as the boy said when he saw the wild cat. It is a thorny subject; but the New Man will not permit it.

“The Decline and Fall of Whist” contains a view of him and his game, which is very widely entertained in this country, and though it may or may not be a better game, it is not Whist in the English sense of the word.

Our subject being the Whist or Bumblepuppy of our native land, the invariable lead of the longest suit, fourth-bests, eleven rule, American leads, and all the subsequent proceedings have no more interest for the British school-boy wishing to learn Whist than they had for Abner Dean of Angels on a well-known occasion.

To give the American Whist-players their due, I am bound to admit that, in addition to their having devised a new set of leads, new play of second and third hand, a new mode of scoring, and having done away with the honours—greatly to their credit for common sense and intelligence; their idea of our modern forced discard is: “It is a curious notion that an original discard should always be from the strongest suit” (A Practical Guide to Whist, by Fisher Ames), and also they have compiled a new code of laws which is an enormous improvement upon the singular jumble of laws, definitions, and arbitrary decisions under which we impotently writhe.

Law 37 of their code runs as follows: “When a trick is turned and quitted it must not be seen again until the hand has been played. A violation of this law subjects the offending side to the same penalty as a lead out of turn.”

They may have been driven to abolish our Law 91 in order to make the intricacies of their game humanly possible, still, “for this relief much thanks.”

Considering the cheapness of freight, and that there is no import duty, why Law 37 has not been introduced into this country is one of the greatest mysteries of the end of the nineteenth century.

We are flooded with all the other American Whist innovations, and the key of the position is conspicuous by its absence.

“Why should English Whist-men retain an antiquated, ill-constructed and ambiguous code, when they have in the code of the American Whist League laws as free from such defects as human ingenuity can devise?”—Whist. And echo answers, Why?

But to return to our muttons. On one point it is incumbent to make a stand. If the New Man had only been satisfied to concentrate his mischievous attentions on his New Game, we might have agreed to differ and gone our several ways in peace and harmony: dis aliter visum. Unfortunately, “in his craze for uniformity,” he has tampered with the forced discard, which is our common grazing ground, and has deluded himself and the whole of Bumblepuppydom into a wild and erroneous belief that the first discard—when unable to follow suit to an adverse trump lead—is always the suit he wants led.

Now, I have dealt myself innumerable hands—it is a favourite amusement of mine when I have a little spare time—and taking the shortest and weakest suit for trumps, have carefully calculated how often I could discard a suit I wanted led; how often I should feel justified in dictating to my partner to make me third player in it. It comes out well under fifty per cent.

Hands of this kind are constantly turning up.

Diamonds (trumps)—9, 7.

Hearts—Kg., Qn., 3.

Spades—Qn., Kn., 9.

Clubs—10, 8, 6, 3, 2.

Here I must discard a club, but I don’t necessarily want it led.

Diamonds (trumps)—Qn. and another.

Hearts—Kn. and three small ones.

Spades—Kn. and three small ones.

Clubs—Three small ones.

As I am not going to unguard either of these knaves, again I discard a club, and again I don’t want to dictate to my partner to lead it, and so ad infinitum.

The simple faith that, whenever the adversary leads trumps, you are bound to hold a strong suit, may be better than Norman blood. If it is, it only tends to prove of how singularly little value that fluid may be.

Therefore, in my own case, this is the way the rule works out: “When we are in a very tight place, and trumps are declared against us, my first discard always shows clearly the suit I want led;” only, in more than half the instances, it does nothing of the kind.

This is a pretty sort of universal rule. Whatever view you may take of it, it scarcely comes up to my idea of a sheet anchor.

But if I prefer to wallow there, don’t let me thrust my opinions on you—you may object to mud; your cards may be better than mine; judge for yourselves! Deal a few hands, and if you find once in five times, or once in ten times, that the rule won’t work, then you have this formula for your guidance: “We always discard from the suit we want led, except when we have no such suit,” and mind this, the first time you fail, all the fat is in the fire; there is no retreat. When once you cast judgment and common-sense to the four winds of heaven, and submit yourselves body and soul to the rule of thumb—and such a thumb!—you cannot play fast and loose with it; you must take it for “all in all, or not at all.” Like a wife, which you may have some day, you take it for better or worse, till death do you part; and this is all worse; it is an utterly unworkable arrangement,

If you are to have an always in this most intricate and difficult affair (which I strongly deprecate), and are unable to sit comfortably at a whist-table without a crutch of some kind to lean upon—and this in such a position seems uncalled for—you will find discarding from your longest suit a safer plan, though this is not always available. Why cannot you leave good old best-guarded alone?

After all I have said, should you still persist in running your heads against “strongest” and “the suit I want led,” these lines of Moore undoubtedly “touch the spot”—

There is one method of forced discarding which is often extremely useful; it is simple to a degree and always practicable; it has been in use for some years, and is approved of by all the good whist-players I have ever come across.

If you have a really strong suit to discard from—a suit that you can order your partner to lead you—signal in it, and throw away the highest card you safely dare.

This was first brought to my notice by Mr. Proctor, and—like Newton’s apple, Columbus’s egg, and many other great discoveries—is almost obtrusively obvious when it is once pointed out.

It is no new invention, for it has been the well-known practice of whist from primæval times.

Possibly known in the cave of Neanderthal.

Its inhabitants, when they had a really powerful suit, discarded an unnecessarily high card. With a quint major, they discarded the ace; with a quart to a king, they discarded the king, and so forth.

Here is a declaration of absolute strength at the very moment it is required; no uncertainty as to whether it is a protective discard, or mere length; it is also flexible,[28] for you can use your own judgment; give the information; conceal it for a time if you think fit, or withhold it altogether.

Minor details—such as that when only one discard is available, a high card would in all probability indicate strength, while a low one (though it might indicate length) would do nothing of the kind, but rather the opposite; and its use under many circumstances, even when your partner is leading trumps—if not at once obvious to your own unassisted intelligence, are better left to the professional development-mongers.

Having a rooted antipathy to formulating an interminable series of minute regulations for exceptional cases, a practice which has done irreparable injury to whist, far be it from me to trench upon their preserve.

The convention I have shown to be venerable, and I believe it to be perfectly legitimate.

Here I begin to tread upon delicate ground, for though whist is entirely made up of conventions, many different views are held as to what a convention is (see note page 60), and when it is and is not legitimate.

Between the Albert Club and the Bloomsbury back parlour there is a great gulf fixed—

and it would be a life-long regret to me if I seduced them from the paths of rectitude.

Still, for practical purposes, I should imagine that a mode of play which is known, or open to be known by all players, and which contravenes neither the laws nor the etiquette of whist, fulfils all the necessary conditions; at all events, it satisfies my moral sense.

If, in addition, it is conducive to trick making,—as it undoubtedly is—I hail it with effusion.

With innumerable treatises; treatises on developments, on counting number, on exceptional play; treatises philosophical and treatises mathematical; with exercises in simple addition; with arrangements for exorcising superfluous winning cards as elaborate as if winning cards were enemies of the human race, and a direct emanation from the evil one, the time has arrived, if possible, to import a little common-sense into the game, and to make an effort to win an occasional trick.

This lecture, though quite irrelevant, is given to gratify the curiosity of many youthful enquirers.

The eleven rule (which only applies to American leads) is simply this: that, if under favourable circumstances, you add certain integers together and the result should be eleven, then you shall see what you shall see. (It can scarcely be called a novelty, for it seems to have been well known to Virgil,

Bearing this cardinal fact firmly in mind, supposing a deuce is led—and it is ex rei necessitate a fourth best; this is the favourable circumstance just referred to—then, if you hold nine higher cards of the suit, you add nine to the pips on the deuce, and if you add it correctly and it comes to eleven, you play the lowest of your superior cards, and (with the proviso the suit is trumps) win the trick.

Though it is scarcely an epoch-making discovery,[29] still it is true, and that in these days of the new journalism is something to be thankful for.

There is one example of this rule in the “Field” which is to me a source of perennial joy.

The second player who holds the ace, the king, the queen, the knave, and the eight of hearts, to his own enquiry which card he ought to play on the six led, replies, “I say the eight!”

Now, though certainly 6 + 5 = 11, and the rule—as I have already admitted—is true, this play does not commend itself to my intelligence, and I should advise you not to trouble your youthful brains about the later rounds of a plain suit—when the leader, to your own certain knowledge, has from four to eight, and you yourself follow holding five, including a quart major. If you win the first four tricks in it, you will do as much as you can reasonably expect, and will have done enough for glory.

O sancta simplicitas! That eight, so innocently stepping to the front, has done more to reconcile me to human nature than anything that was ever done by Jonas Chuzzlewit.

May it continue to retain its evergreen faith unspotted of the world!

and that it may never be rudely awakened to find a serpent in its Eden, and the harmless looking six a singleton, is my fervent prayer.

I have mentioned that this kind of thing is not whist as played in this country, and it is by no means certain it will long be the whist of any country; for I hear that in the American Whist Club of Boston, “they have now quite chucked the American leads,” and one of the later Cavendishes has propounded this singular view; “I have the craze for giving information in such an acute form that I should like to be allowed to show my whole hand to the whole table before the first lead, on the condition that my cards are not to be called.” I presume all the hands must be exposed, otherwise this is merely an offer to back his partner against his two opponents at single dummy, and there is nothing particularly sporting in that.

If, then, this doctrine and position is a rule of faith and not merely a pious opinion—and pious opinions have a nasty knack of becoming extended into principles—the devotees of the new game will, it is to be hoped, at once relegate its uninviting literature to the nearest dust-bin, and all with one accord, in pairs (like the wooden animals in your Noah’s ark), betake themselves to double-dummy; where, happily, elaborate schedules of leads are not required; where extensions of principle are unknown, and where “faith is lost in sight.”

Some years ago a simple piece of mechanism, to which somehow or other very undue importance has been attached, was introduced to the Whist world; you play a higher card before a lower one—unnecessarily—to indicate that you hold good trumps, and want them out.[30]

You can want this for two reasons:

(1) Because you have the seven best trumps. There is no objection to your signalling here, though it is quite uncalled for; if you have the game in your own hand, you can either lead the lowest but two of six, stand on your head, or execute any other—what it is the odd fashion to call—convention the authority of the day may think fit to invent, as long as you do not come into collision with law 5.[31]

(2) Because you have a good trump hand, and the fall of the cards shows that unless you get them out, your winning cards or your partner’s will be ruffed. Here is a good legitimate reason, but when everything is going nicely, and your partner making the tricks, that you should interfere with this merely because you have five trumps—or nine for the matter of that—is the height of absurdity. It may be an interesting fact for him to know, on the second round of a plain suit, that you hold five trumps, just as there are numerous other interesting facts which he may also ascertain at the same time, e.g., that you have led a singleton, that you hold no honour in your own suit, and so on, but none of them justifies him in ruining his own hand and devoting his best trump to destruction.

You ought to understand the signaller to say, “Get the lead at any cost the first moment you can, play your highest trump, and you shall see something remarkable.”[32]

This is rather a large order, and when you find as the result of your best attempts to execute it, that that promised something is not uncommonly the loss of the rubber, though it will be a shock to you at first, you will soon get accustomed to it.

It is even a dangerous practice to signal when the adversaries will most likely have the lead on its completion; they at once adapt their play to the circumstances. I have seen innumerable games of whist not won, and many a game lost, by absurd signalling; still Whist players suffering from Peter on the brain constantly refuse to ruff a winning card in order to disclose a signal in the discard. If they wanted trumps led, it occurs to the ordinary mind that the simplest plan would be to win the trick and lead them, and as they decline to do so, the only conclusion is that they regard signalling for the mere sake of signalling to be in itself so noble an end that, to attain it, it is worth while to announce to their opponents that they had better save the game at once, and at the same time to present them with at least one trick towards it.[33]

If you only want the odd trick, signalling is about the safest way to miss it. Any two decent players would, in a vast majority of cases, get on exactly as well if the Peter had never been invented, while two bad players—assuming they can possibly miss the game with all the trumps—generally do so by its assistance.[34] Where it would be useful is when, with moderate strength in trumps, and the cards declared in your favour, you want trumps led at all hazards. Unfortunately, if at such a crisis as this, your partner is not equal to leading them without a call, he is certain not to see it, although he is missing all the other points of the game in what he calls looking for it. This looking for a Peter is an oddly-named and peculiar form of amusement appertaining not only to Bumblepuppy, but also to Whist. Among all those people who have attended the University Boat Race during the last half-century, I apprehend not one went to look for it, they went to see it, and just as you would see that race, so you should see the signal. Never look for it! look at it! It is just as obvious as any other circumstance that occurs in the play; instead of this, after much looking, it is generally overlooked altogether.

They come to look, and end by making spectacles of themselves.[35]

If you must look for it, at any rate don’t look for it in the last trick; you would scarcely look for the Boat Race as you were going to church the next day. Still, Cowper—though he clearly disapproves of the signal and calls it senseless—seems, if he is to be annoyed with it, to advocate this—

What the signal for trumps ought to be, and what strength in trumps justifies a signal are clearly laid down by Clay.

If you see a call and hold the ace and any number of trumps, play the ace—there can be no danger of dropping your partner’s king—and if you had originally more than three, continue with the lowest; but if you are quite sure that leading trumps is the only way to miss or lose the game, don’t lead them at all. Often as, in obedience to my partner’s call, I slam in an ace and play my best trump, Elaine’s despairing cry rises to my lips,—

This important fact is too much lost sight of: that the object of Whist is not so much to lead the lowest but one of five, or to signal, as to win the game; these and other fads may or may not be means to that end, but the end itself they emphatically are not; in their inception, at any rate, they were intended to be your instruments. Don’t let this position be reversed; whether, like fire, they are always good servants may be open to argument, but their resemblance in the other respect is perfect.

One aspect of signalling has been overlooked in all the treatises on Whist. I have seen a player of great common-sense and acute observation signal having three small trumps and a short suit, and by this means induce his watchful opponents to force him to make them all. I do not recommend such devious courses to you, even if they are lawful in a Christian country (of which I have doubts); they are only practicable when you are playing very good Whist, and this, as Clay says, can only be the case when you thoroughly know your men.

Hair-splitting about the legitimacy of the Peter is beyond the scope of these remarks; what is lawful is not necessarily expedient: this the Apostle Paul pointed out, long before either the foundations of New Orleans were laid, or Columbus discovered America; but when Professor Pole—who appears to have been acquainted with the present mode of signalling for forty years (Fortnightly Review, April, 1879), and for nine has advised learners with five trumps always to ask for them (Theory of Whist, page 65)—begins at this eleventh hour to find fault with the practice, and to have his suspicions that it is immoral; this is the Gracchi complaining of sedition with a vengeance.

In this year of grace, good players have long known that signalling is by no means an unmixed benefit, but rather an edge-tool dangerous to play with,[36] while it has been so long rampant that it has permeated the very lowest strata. If at such a time as this—when all the tenth-rate Whist players in Christendom and Jewry not only think they know all about it, and consider it in itself the quintessence of science, when many of them by constant practice have actually acquired such skill that their hesitation in playing first a ten and then a deuce is sometimes scarcely perceptible—the professor imagines that any words of his can put a stop to it, his courage is only equalled by that of the well-known Mrs. Partington with her mop. A child may start an avalanche; but once started it runs its appointed course, and in one respect it is preferable—it is sooner over—for there is no instance recorded in history of an avalanche keeping on for forty years.

In bumblepuppy the proceedings are so complicated and peculiar, they must be seen to be appreciated; but there are five common forms you should be acquainted with.

(1) After you have had a lead or two and got rid of your winning cards, you can begin signalling for somebody to lead a trump;[37] if somebody obliges you, and you win the trick, lead another suit, and wait till somebody else leads trumps again—continuing to signal in the intervals.

(2) You can signal in your own lead, and I don’t know that there is any objection to your expecting that your partner will attend to it—assuming he ever comprehends what you are driving at.

(3) You can signal without any trump at all.

(4) You can signal without intending to do so.

(5) If by any odd chance there should be no signal about, you can imagine there is and act accordingly.

To obviate the evident disadvantages and mutual recrimination which might ensue from such vagaries, if you really intend to signal, it is usual to take the following precautions:

(1) Always signal with your highest card.

(2) Pause before you play it.

(3) Put it down not only with emphasis, but in a special corner of the table mutually agreed upon beforehand. (Note,[30] page 59.)

(4) As soon as the trick is turned, ask to see it. (See note to Law 91).

There are three kinds of false cards—

(1) Those that deceive everybody;

(2) Those that deceive your opponents only;

(3) Those that deceive your partner only; and a sparing use of the two first—especially towards the end of a hand—is often advantageous;[38] but in playing cards that deceive everybody, you must be prepared to take entire charge of the game yourself, or you will probably have your conduct referred to afterwards. The third is sacred to bumblepuppy.

One thing is very certain, that the original leader is never justified in playing a false card.

Clay’s conclusion does not altogether harmonize with his premises—a very unusual circumstance with him—for after objecting strongly to false cards on high moral grounds, and prefacing his remarks by the expression of a touching belief that in no other position of life would anybody tell him what is untrue, he ultimately arrives at the delicious non sequitur, that if your partner is very bad, or holds miserably weak cards, or towards the end of a hand, you may often play a false card with advantage: why you should do what you know to be wrong, because another person is bad, or weak, or because you hold four cards and not thirteen, or even because such nefarious conduct may benefit yourself, he does not explain, and in default of that explanation he appears stronger as a whist player than a moralist. But the logic of whist is a thing per se, utterly dissimilar to any known form of argument;[39] it finds vent in such syllogisms as “You ought to have known I had all the spades, I led a diamond,” or, “I must have the entire suit of clubs, I discarded the deuce;” though the usual reply is “the deuce you did,” this is merely paltering with a serious subject; the only effective argument is to throw something at the speaker’s head—the argumentum ad hominem—(of course this would create more or less unpleasantness at first, but the speaker would soon find his level, if you hit him hard enough) “unfortunately this discipline by which such persons were put to open penance and punished in this world—that others admonished by their example might be afraid to offend”—has fallen into desuetude; until the said discipline be restored again, which—although it is much to be wished[40]—can never be until the present reprehensible practice of screwing candle-sticks, match-boxes, and all reasonable missiles into the table be done away with, you have two courses open to you:

(1) You can give an evasive answer;[41]

(2) You can pretend to be deaf; this is a capital plan, as it gives you the option either of being unaware anybody spoke, or of totally misunderstanding him.[42] There is an utter inability to see that any question can possibly have two sides, evidenced by such remarks as “My finesse was justifiable, yours was bad play.”[43] The two prepositions, post and propter, are constantly mistaken for one another—it seems to be thought that because they both govern the accusative case, their meaning is identical, or, to speak more correctly, convertible.

But you must be prepared to contend against other things besides false cards and curious logic; there is a fiend often reported to be present in the card-room, known by the name of “Luck,” and you ought to be acquainted with two of the common stratagems for circumventing him; it is by no means unusual to see two obese elderly persons—who have just lost a rubber by revoking, ruffing each other’s winning cards with the thirteenth trumps, forgetting to score honours et id genus omne—after first roundly anathematizing this malefic spirit, taking precautions against such things happening again by slowly and painfully rising from their respective chairs, and at great personal inconvenience, changing places with each other; this is one way; another is to throw away several additional shillings in the purchase of new cards; turning your chair round and sitting down again is also supposed to have an emollient tendency.

That there is such a thing—though stupidity is often mistaken for it—is, to my mind, as undoubted as that there are birds; but whether one or the other is to be caught by putting salt on its tail—without taking other precautions—must be left to that right of private judgment already mentioned. (Page 34.)

It is true the Swan of Avon sings—

but he was only a literary person, not a whist player; and if a careful exercise of your judgment satisfies you that either calling (and paying) for new cards, or wearing out the seats of your knickerbockers by dodging from chair to chair, is a specific for want of memory and attention, so let it be: whatever conclusion you arrive at, it is your duty to respect your seniors.

In “the Art of practical Whist” you will see capital invested in Whist compared to consols; don’t run away with the idea that there is any such resemblance; those numerous foreign securities or limited companies nearer home where you receive no interest and lose your principal—or those public conveyances suggested by the elder Mr. Weller—would be much closer analogues.

Whist is not a certainty; neither is it true that you will every year find your account exactly square on the thirty-first of December—it is a popular fallacy devised by those who win, to keep the losers in good spirits.

An old friend of mine—veracious as men go, and always considered of fairly sound mind and free from delusions, though a very inferior whist-player—has often assured me that he won over three thousand points for three years running (close on ten thousand in the aggregate); if this statement is correct, and I have no reason to doubt it—I often played with him, and he almost invariably won—it is manifest that, after paying for the cards, some of us when we called at the bank for our dividends, must have had to go empty away.

I have played whist—club, domestic, or bumblepuppy—pretty regularly for a quarter of a century, and the only conclusion I have arrived at so far, is the very vague one that I shall either win or lose—I don’t know at all which—for five years in succession, or multiples of five.

For the first ten years I won considerably, for the next five I lost considerably, then for another five I won slightly, and the last five (I am thankful to say I am now getting well into the fifth) I have lost again.[44]

I have no doubt things equalise themselves in the long run, the difficulty is that I am unable to give you any idea, even approximately, what the duration of a long run is.[45]

During a part of that first period, extending over a year and a quarter, I played long whist—five points to the bumper—more than fifty times, and never but once won less than twelve points. If we may believe Herodotus, in his day the end was not always visible from the beginning, and so it is now. I have won rubbers against all the cards, and with all the cards I have lost them.

Sometimes I cannot lose a rubber, sometimes I cannot win one; at one time cards will beat their makers, at another the makers will beat the cards, and these results occur without rhyme or reason, in defiance of any system of play. Don’t imagine for a moment that I suggest play is of no consequence, I merely say that you will frequently see the cards or the players run wild, and that the actual result—winning or losing—is beyond your own control.

I have known twenty-four successive rubbers lost, and I have won seventeen more than once. I have lost nine hundred and thirty points in two months, and a hundred and fifty-four in two days. I have lost a bumper in two deals, holding one trump each hand and with the same partner, the same seats, and the same cards won the next rubber but one in two deals, again holding one trump in each hand.

I have seen a player with no trump and no winning card lose a treble, and the very next hand, again with no trump and no winning card—assisted to some extent by his partner—score nine, and on one melancholy occasion my partner and myself were unable to raise a trump between us; as a set-off to this, I ought to admit that we once held them all.

Though I have never seen it myself, that the dealer should give each member of the parti an entire suit is becoming as common an object of the sea-shore as our old friend the sea-serpent. Fortunately, overpowering cards do not always win. A hand of thirteen trumps has been known to make only one trick; it occurred in this wise.

A, B, Y, and Z were playing in a train, and A dealt himself the whole suit of hearts: Y led the king of spades; B played the ace; Z followed suit, and A ruffed.

B, “an arbitrary gent,” ejaculated “Trump my ace!” at once took up the trick and, with his own twelve cards, threw the lot out of the window.

“The rest is silence.”

I have held three Yarboroughs in two hours (a Yarborough is a hand containing no card above a nine), and a hand with no card above a seven at least twice. There was a hand recently at Surbiton with no card above a six. With ace, knave, to five trumps, two kings, and trumps led up to me, I have lost by five cards, and with queen, knave, 10, 8, 3, 2, diamonds (trumps), spade king, ace and king of hearts, ace, king, queen and another club, and the original lead, I lost the odd trick; and, most incredible of all, I know a very good player who, on three consecutive Saturdays, lost an aggregate of over three hundred points.

I have played a set match, and, although I never bet, as I fancied we had a shade the best of the play, and the other side made the liberal offer of six to four, it tempted me, I took it and won five rubbers running. I once cut about the best player I know six times consecutively. My partner laid six to five to commence with, and as we won the first game—a single—he gave five to two, and that was the only game we won in those six rubbers.

One of the two finest players I ever met lost twenty-eight consecutive rubbers; feeling aggrieved at this ill-treatment he swore off for a fortnight, and then lost twelve more.

Busses—not Funds—is much nearer the mark. Irrespective of the time of day, you can either go to bed when you have won two rubbers, or when you have lost them; you can persevere to the bitter end either when you are winning or when you are losing; you can take any of the measures mentioned in the last lecture, or adopt any other system you please; but there is one rule with no exception: though no earthly power can prevent your winning or losing, the actual amount of that gain or loss always depends upon yourself and your partner; if you should ever lose eighty or a hundred points at one sitting, that deplorable result will never take place without your active connivance; a trick lost here and a trick lost there, an exposed card or something of that kind—the consequence is always intensified when you are losing—will just make the difference every now and then between winning and losing a rubber.

During the bad forty-eight hours I had when I lost a hundred and fifty-four points, I was attending carefully to the play, the cards were abominable, and, making no allowances for what might have happened if my partner and I had only been omniscient, simple little mistakes of the kind just mentioned accounted for thirty-two of those points.

If there is such a thing as luck—and I believe there is—don’t lie down and let it kick you.

Always play with reasonable care and attention:—if a thing is worth doing at all, it is worth doing well—and when you hold cards which you do not consider quite equal to your deserts, instead of playing worse on that account—as most people do—take a little extra care.

If your pocket money gives out, or you feel that your cards are too bad for endurance, give up playing altogether; but if you continue to play don’t exacerbate your misfortunes by your own shortcomings; it is bad enough to retire to your crib with empty pockets, without a guilty conscience in addition.

To become a fair whist-player[46] no wonderful attributes are required; common sense, a small amount of knowledge—easily acquired—ordinary observation of facts as they occur, and experience, the result of that observation—not the experience obtained by repeating the same idiotic mistakes year after year—are about all. To save you trouble, the experience of all the best players for the last hundred years has been collected into a series of maxims, which you will find in any whist book. These maxims you should know,[47] but though you know every maxim that ever was written, and are “bland, passionate, deeply religious, and also paint beautifully in water-colours,” if among your other virtues the power of assimilating facts as they occur is not included, this will not avail you in the least.

Bumblepuppy—according to its own account—demands much more superfine qualities, e.g., inspiration, second-sight, instinct, an intuitive perception of false cards and singletons, and an intimate acquaintance with a mysterious and Protean Bogey called “the Game”—in short everything but reason[48]—(all these fine words, when boiled and peeled, turn out sometimes to mean ordinary observation, but more usually gross ignorance). So much for its theory; its practice is this—

(1) Lead a singleton whenever you have one.

(2) With two small trumps and no winning card lead a trump.

(3) Ruff a suit of which your partner clearly holds best, if you are weak in trumps.

(4) Never ruff anything if you are strong.

(5) Never return your partner’s trump if you can possibly avoid it, unless he manifestly led it to bring in a suit of which you led a singleton.

(6) Deceive him whenever you get a chance.

(7) Open a new suit every time you have the lead.

(8) Never pay any attention to your partner’s first discard, unless it is a forced discard (page 32); lead your own suit.

(9) Never force him under any circumstances unless you hold at least five trumps with two honours; even if you lose the rubber by it, play “the Game!”

(10) Devote all your remaining energies to looking for a signal in the last trick. If you are unable to discover which was your partner’s card—after keeping the table waiting for two minutes—enquire what trumps are, and lead him one on suspicion.

Play all your cards alike without emphasis or hesitation; how can you expect your partner to have any confidence in your play when it is evident to him from your hesitation that you have no confidence in it yourself?

If your partner renounces, and you think fit to enquire whether he is void of the suit, do so quietly; don’t offer a hint for his future guidance by glaring or yelling at him.

Don’t ask idiotic questions; if you led an ace, and the two, three, and four are played to the trick, what is the use of asking your partner to draw his card? If you hold all the remaining cards of a suit, why enquire whether he has any?

Don’t talk in the middle of the hand.[49] However you may be tempted to use bad language—and I must admit the temptation is often very great—always recollect that though your Latin grammar says “humanum est irasci,” the antidote grows near the bane, for—at the bottom of the very preceding page—it also says “pi orant taciti.”

According to the wisest man who ever lived, “he that holdeth his peace is counted wise, and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding.” Such a reputation appears cheap at the price; but—if you are of the opinion of J. P. Robinson that “they didn’t know everything down in Judee”—you can call your partner any names you like as soon as the hand is over.[50] You need not be at all particular what for, any crime of omission or commission, real or fancied, will do; if, after the game is ended, you discover that it might have been saved or won by doing something different, however idiotic, grumble at him.[51]

It is quite legitimate to revile him for not playing cards he never held; if he should have the temerity to point out that the facts are against you, revile the facts.

If there is a really diabolical mistake in the case, and you happen to have made it yourself, revile him with additional ferocity.

But never forget this! Before you proceed to give your partner a piece of your mind, always call your honours! for by neglecting this simple precaution, you will often lay yourself open to a crushing rejoinder; experto crede!

Failing any other grievance, you can always prove to demonstration—and at interminable length—that if his cards, or your cards, or both your cards, had been just the reverse of what they were, the result would have been different; this certainly opens a wide field for speculation, but it is neither an instructive nor entertaining amusement, though it kills time. “Oh, take one consideration with another, the whist-player’s lot is not a happy one.”

There is a theory which, according to some evil-disposed persons, may easily be made too much of—the injury to yourself being remote and doubtful, while the gratification of annoying him is certain and immediate—that abusing your partner, as having a tendency to make him play worse, is a mistake from a pecuniary point of view; of course it is a mistake, but not for such a paltry reason as that; take a higher stand-point! Whether you are winning or losing

Don’t cry!

And you will have a beard yourself some time, if you don’t lead the penultimate of five. (See page 21.) Without exciting the slightest sympathy on the part of an unfeeling public, crying deranges the other secretions; the Laureate says tears are idle, and professes ignorance of their meaning; if he played whist he would know that they injure the cards and make them sticky.

Don’t play out of your turn, nor draw your card before that turn comes.

Don’t ride a hobby to death! In ordinary whist three prevailing hobbies are so cruelly over-ridden that I am surprised the active and energetic Mr. Colam has never interfered: these are—

(1) The penultimate of a long suit.

(2) The signal for trumps.

(3) Not forcing your partner unless you are strong in trumps—under any circumstances.

The first is, in the majority of cases, a nuisance;[52] the second is stated to simplify the game and to cause greater attention to be paid to it—practically the entire time of the players is taken up, either in devising absurd signals or in looking for and failing to see them: the third is responsible for losing about as many games as anything I am acquainted with, though the constant and aimless changing of suits runs it close.

Is it any reason—because you have no trumps—that you should announce that circumstance early in the hand to the general public and prevent your partner making one? If he has them all, you cannot injure him; if he has not, the adversaries will play through him and strangle him: why is it that you are afraid to let your partner make a certain trick, though you are never afraid to open a new suit?

An impression is abroad that there is somewhere a law of whist to this effect: “Never force your partner at any stage of the game unless you yourself are strong in trumps.” Now there is no such thing.

Let us see what the authorities say on the point. “Keep in mind that general maxims pre-suppose the game and hand at their commencement, and that material changes in them frequently require that a different mode of play should be adopted.” “It is a general maxim not to force your partner unless strong in trumps yourself. There are, however, many exceptions to this rule, as

(1) If your partner has led a single card.

(2) If it saves or wins a particular point.

(3) If great strength in trumps is declared against you.

(4) If you have a probability of a saw.

(5) If your partner has been forced and did not lead trumps.

(6) It is often right in playing for an odd trick.

If your partner shows a weak game force him whether or not you are otherwise entitled to do it.”—Mathews.

With a weak trump hand force your partner:

“(1) When he has already shown a desire to be forced, or weakness in trumps.

“(2) When you have a cross ruff.

“(3) When you are playing a close game as for the odd trick, and often when one trick saves or wins the game or a point.

“(4) When great strength in trumps has been declared against you.”—Cavendish.

“Do not force your partner unless to make sure of the tricks required to save or win the game;

“Or, unless he has been already forced, and has not led a trump;

“Or, unless he has asked to be forced by leading from a single card, or two weak cards;

“Or, unless the adversary has led, or asked for trumps.”—Clay.

“Unless your partner has shown great strength in trumps, or a wish to get them drawn, or has refused to ruff a doubtful card, give him the option of making a small trump, unless you have some good reason for not doing so, other than a weak suit of trumps in your own hand.”—Art of Practical Whist.

With these extracts before you, perhaps you will dismiss from your mind the popular fallacy, that you are under any compulsion to lose the game, because your trumps are not quite so strong as you could wish.

Make a note of this.

Maxims were not invented for the purpose of preventing you from either saving or winning the game, though it is their unfortunate fate to be epitomized and perverted out of all reasonable shape: the ill-advised dictum, “Suppose the adversaries are four, and you, with the lead, have a bad hand. The best play is, in defiance of all system, to lead out your best trump;” was comparatively innocuous till some ingenious person, with a turn for abbreviation, altered it into “Whenever you hold nothing, lead a trump!” Use your common sense.[53]

I have gone into this matter at considerable length, because I am convinced that however many people, once affluent, are now in misery and want, owing to their not having led trumps with five—Clay gave the number as eleven thousand—a far larger number have been reduced to this deplorable condition, by changing suits and refusing on principle to save the game by forcing their partner.

Before quitting the subject, there is another branch of it worthy of a little consideration: when your partner by his discard has shown which is his suit, and you hold two or three small cards in it, however strong you may be in trumps—unless everything depends on one trick—do you expect to gain much by forcing him and making yourself third player? though it is usual to play in this absurd way, is there any objection to first playing his suit and—as, ex hypothesi, you are strong in trumps—forcing him afterwards?

Play always as simply and intelligibly as you can!

In addition to your partner not being able to see your cards—in itself a disadvantage—he is by an immutable law of nature, much inferior in perception to yourself; you should bear this in mind and not be too hard on the poor fellow.

Never think![54] Know! Leave thinking to the Teuton:

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.

Never think!

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:

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.

If you are blest with a sufficiently sharp eye to the left, you may occasionally know that 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 no tertium 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 for information, 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, verse 13, 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.

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 right road. 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 play of 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 in looking for 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 the population 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—

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.

I am afraid 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.

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 he never 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

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 earliest opportunity, 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 his collaborateur is 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 atrocious coup, 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 has had them both slapped, what is it to do then? We come to an impasse.

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 his patience 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 with a 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 quite hors 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.

In my 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 count thirteen, 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 a skylight 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, the fons et origo mali is Law 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 back in 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,

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

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 and unworthy 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.

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

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

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.

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;

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.”

As my present aim is confined to purveying food for babes in an elementary and easily assimilable form, and to calling your attention to Law 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, in The 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. “The times 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:—

• the lead of uniformity;
• the discard of uniformity;
• the suit of uniformity;

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 formulate the hand of uniformity, and the corpus or rather the cadaver of Whist will be complete.

Some readers 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, thus “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.

This Magazine, which was founded in June, 1891, has already attained an established reputation, and a world-wide circulation.

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Correspondence Columns are open for the discussion of any interesting point.

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This most simple and effective apparatus does away with the need for any sorting of the hands afterwards. It permits a record of the play if required for analysis, and provides the means of testing different methods of strategy. The hands played by A-B and Y-Z during a series of twelve games are afterwards transposed for the after-play, so that each side should be able to win an equal number of tricks. For the after-playing, the games may or may not be taken in consecutive order; each side has the same number of deals and original leads, and therefore any advantage in the score must be the result of superior play.

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It is generally admitted that the most popular and useful book on Whist ever written is “Foster’s Whist Manual.” Another work, by the same author, entitled “Whist Tactics” is intended to carry players a step farther, and should enable them to become past-masters of whist strategy.

The methods which ensured the success of the “Manual” are followed in the present work, the author first giving the examples to be practised with the actual cards, and then explaining the principles underlying their proper management. In the “Manual” only the simple elements of the game are treated of, such as the leads 2nd and 3rd hand play, etc.; but in “Whist Tactics” the general management of the entire hand is examined; the relations of the plain suits to each other and to the trumps are shown; and certain simple, clear, and well-defined rules are given, which will enable any player immediately to judge which course it is best to pursue when he finds the plain suits and the trumps in certain proportions to each other.

It is also shown that after one or more tricks have been played the hand must no longer be treated on its own merits, but must be considered in its relation to the known or inferred peculiarities of those of the three other players.

The examples which the author uses throughout the work consist of 112 hands at Duplicate Whist, which were played by correspondence between sixteen of the finest players in America. For every card played in this match, each of the players had a week in which to think over the situation; and the result has provided 112 examples of the very best and most carefully studied whist ever played.

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