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.
THE ECHO.
The echo is reported to be an extension of the signal, and is the most innocuous of the series; it does very little harm, and always amuses somebody.
When the signal-man holds half the trumps and the echoer the remainder, it amuses them and does not hurt the adversary; for weight will tell, wholly irrespective of conventions.
When there is a possibility of saving the game, and it comes into play before the hand is over, which it seldom does, its usual effect is to induce the signal-man (seeing his partner drop a high card) to endeavour unsuccessfully to force him; then they suffer grief and pain, and the adversary in his turn is amused.
WOODEN ARRANGEMENT, NO. 2.
This resulted from tampering with the discard. Though Mathews (circa A.D. 1800) in two short sentences laid down the true and only principle of discarding: “If weak in trumps, keep guard on your adversaries’ suits; if strong, throw away from them,” fifty years afterwards it was discovered by the “little school” that “the old system of discarding was just this—when not able to follow suit, let your first discard be from your weakest suit.” Rough on poor Mathews! but the absent are always wrong.
However, by a process of evolution, to the first step of which no exception can be taken, we are next told—(a) “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.” “You must play a defensive game.”—Cavendish.