Auction of To-day

E-text prepared by Rick Niles and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
Transcriber's Note: Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note.
BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge
1913
COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY MILTON C. WORK ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published January 1913
THIS BOOK IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED TO THE AUCTION PLAYERS OF THE RACQUET CLUB OF PHILADELPHIA, WHO, WHILE OTHERS DOUBTED AND WAITED, WERE SUFFICIENTLY BROADMINDED AND DISCERNING TO ADOPT THE NEW COUNT AND WHO, THEREFORE, PLAYED AUCTION OF TO-DAY MONTHS BEFORE IT WAS IN VOGUE ELSEWHERE
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
With so many excellent textbooks now in circulation, it seems almost audacious to add another treatise to current card literature. It happens, however, that the game of Auction, or Auction Bridge, as it is generally called ( Auction Whist is perhaps a more appropriate title), has been so completely and so suddenly revolutionized that books written upon the subject a few months ago do not treat of Auction of to-day, but of a game abandoned in the march of progress. Only a small portion of the change has been due to the development of the game, the alteration that has taken place in the count having been the main factor in the transformation. Just as a nation, in the course of a century, changes its habits, customs, and ideas, so Auction in a few months has developed surprising innovations, and evolved theories that only yesterday would have seemed to belong to the heretic or the fanatic. The expert bidder of last Christmas would find himself a veritable Rip Van Winkle, should he awake in the midst of a game of to-day.
The present tourist along the newly macadamized Auction highway has no modern signpost to guide him, no milestone to mark his progress. The old ones, while most excellent when erected, now lead to abandoned and impassable roads, and contain information that of necessity confuses and misleads.