DOUBLE DUMMY.

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.”

EPILOGUE I.
——

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:—

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.

EPILOGUE II.
——

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.