“One man’s meat is another man’s poison,” and what the late Government considered to be extensions of principle, developments and generalizations, their successors stigmatize as—
“Red ruin and the breaking up of laws.”
The present condition of Whist may be briefly and graphically expressed by the well-known epitaph:—
“I was well, I wanted to be better, now I am here.”
Among all the quasi-extensions of spurious principles, one fine old crusted principle is in danger of being lost sight of altogether, and now that attention is called to it, I sincerely hope that no modern pedant will be tempted to extend it. The principle is, TO LEAVE WELL ALONE.
Such are the three remarkably unstable pillars, on which rest the proposals for upsetting the recognized play of the first, second, and third hand; and if they give way, down comes the entire superstructure. Happily, the purely academic discussion on the American leads is not likely to trouble the general public much; its fascinations for them are not great, but if those fascinations should induce the doctrinaire mind to lessen its mischievous activity in other directions, it may yet turn out to be a blessing in disguise. As we are threatened with a book devoted to these leads, I confine myself to mentioning that in answer to eighteen enquiries, “What do you think of the new leads?” sixteen replies were to the effect that a good player, if he took his coat off and went into the matter thoroughly, might master them in six months, and a duffer, under the same circumstances, in half a century, but that in neither case was the game worth the candle; the advice of the other two, to “go to Bath and get my head shaved,” was rude, and the latter half of it quite uncalled for.
WHITTLING AT THE SMALL END OF NOTHING. CONVENTIONS AND ELABORATE RULES FOR EXCEPTIONAL PLAY.
So many articles have we had endeavouring to explain what a convention is, from the Cavendish point of view, that at last the common-sense view, driven from these inhospitable shores by the interminable flux of words, has taken refuge at the Antipodes; it was seen in the office of The Australasian in May, 1884, and I presume it is there yet. If at any time you happen to be passing through Melbourne, and send in your card to the editor, I have no doubt he will show it to you. Item,—two long articles giving minute directions when not to lead trumps from five.
If the basis of play is always to lead the longest suit these directions must be altogether unnecessary; the answer is self-evident. “You should invariably lead the penultimate from a five suit of trumps, save and except when you hold a plain suit of greater length, and then you should lead the highest but three.”