WOODEN ARRANGEMENT, NO. 1.—THE PETER.
The peter, simple in its inception, and ineffably stupid in execution, was already on the scene, and though among decent players it soon found its level, and became comparatively inoffensive, was the pioneer of the mass of wood-paving which has since been laid down; echoes, tampering with the discard, penultimates, antepenultimates, developments, extensions of principle, rules for exceptional play, with a few other matters quod nunc perscribere longum est, all equally inelastic, but differing from the signal in this, that while its mission is to supply your partner with brains and to dictate to him, regardless of the state of his hand, to play trumps when you think fit, theirs is to do away with all necessity for any brains whatever.
The call for trumps appeared in this form, and in this form Bumblepuppydom believes in it to this day. “Whenever a player is strong in trumps, whether he has any reason for wanting them out or not, he informs the table of the fact, and it is imperative upon his partner to take the most violent and extraordinary steps to get in and lead him one.” However, the proceeding—when not useless—turned out so injurious to the perpetrator, that it had to be mitigated (for in that benighted day it had not been discovered that it was philosophical to lose on principle), and now reads something like this,—“whenever a player is strong in trumps, and considers from the fall of the cards that it is expedient they should be drawn, he makes those facts public,” and as his partner is usually in possession of the lead at the moment, he is able to play a trump without unduly straining himself.
Compulsory peters, anticipated peters, and peters late in the hand, are matters of common sense and intelligence, and attempts to lay down arbitrary conventions as substitutes for those qualities are the main causes of the present decadence of Whist.