Our subject being the Whist or Bumblepuppy of our native land, the invariable lead of the longest suit, fourth-bests, eleven rule, American leads, and all the subsequent proceedings have no more interest for the British school-boy wishing to learn Whist than they had for Abner Dean of Angels on a well-known occasion.
To give the American Whist-players their due, I am bound to admit that, in addition to their having devised a new set of leads, new play of second and third hand, a new mode of scoring, and having done away with the honours—greatly to their credit for common sense and intelligence; their idea of our modern forced discard is: “It is a curious notion that an original discard should always be from the strongest suit” (A Practical Guide to Whist, by Fisher Ames), and also they have compiled a new code of laws which is an enormous improvement upon the singular jumble of laws, definitions, and arbitrary decisions under which we impotently writhe.
“On ashes, husks, and air we feed,
And spend our little all in vain.”—Wesley.
Law 37 of their code runs as follows: “When a trick is turned and quitted it must not be seen again until the hand has been played. A violation of this law subjects the offending side to the same penalty as a lead out of turn.”
They may have been driven to abolish our [Law 91] in order to make the intricacies of their game humanly possible, still, “for this relief much thanks.”
Considering the cheapness of freight, and that there is no import duty, why Law 37 has not been introduced into this country is one of the greatest mysteries of the end of the nineteenth century.
We are flooded with all the other American Whist innovations, and the key of the position is conspicuous by its absence.
“Why should English Whist-men retain an antiquated, ill-constructed and ambiguous code, when they have in the code of the American Whist League laws as free from such defects as human ingenuity can devise?”—Whist. And echo answers, Why?
But to return to our muttons. On one point it is incumbent to make a stand. If the New Man had only been satisfied to concentrate his mischievous attentions on his New Game, we might have agreed to differ and gone our several ways in peace and harmony: dis aliter visum. Unfortunately, “in his craze for uniformity,” he has tampered with the forced discard, which is our common grazing ground, and has deluded himself and the whole of Bumblepuppydom into a wild and erroneous belief that the first discard—when unable to follow suit to an adverse trump lead—is always the suit he wants led.