ignorance imparts variety to the game, and variety is charming. You can set all laws at defiance, and if any one objects—after much wrangling—you can refer the matter in dispute to the Westminster Papers,[5] and hang it up for a month certain: (this is a better plan than writing to the Field, for there you only get a week’s respite).
Should you be in any doubt whether Whist or the other game is your vocation, the first half-dozen times you play make it a rule never to look at the last trick—
“Things that are past are done with.”—Shakespeare.
and if at the end of that time you find the difficulty insuperable, give up, as hopeless, all idea of becoming a Whist player.
Notes on some of the Laws.
“Vir bonus est quis?
Qui consulta patrum, qui leges jaraque servat.”—Eton Grammar.
I have mentioned that there are ninety-one laws. The wording of the first is not strictly accurate; it ought to be “The rubber is generally the best of three games,” for though I myself have never seen more than four, it may consist of any number, as the following decisions show:
Decision A.—The rubber is over when one side has won two games and remembers it has done so: this memory must be brought to bear before the other side has won two games and remembers it has done so.