[44] To the sneer that I lose now because I play worse, I reply it is quite possible I do not play so well as I did five years ago, I make the sneerer a present of the admission, but I play better than I did twenty years ago, when—playing against as good players as I do now—if I did not win every time I sat down I was astonished.
[45] “An experiment that does not go on to millions is very little use in determining such propositions. It can be demonstrated to the satisfaction of everyone that the odds, after having won the first game in a rubber, in favour of winning one of the next two games is three to one. Yet Mr. Clay considered that five to two was a bad bet, and we have lost not only at five to two but at two to one, and on one occasion we actually lost the long odds in two hundred bets, a hundred and three times, so that if we were to take this result as of any value, the odds would be slightly in favour of losing a rubber when you had won the first game, which is absurd.”—Westminster Papers.
[46] Not a fine whist-player, for this is a rare bird, much more rare than a black swan (these can be bought any day at Jamrach’s by the couple, but even in the present hard times when, I am informed, the markets are glutted with everything, he has not one fine whist-player in stock); essential to him, in addition to common sense and attention, are genius and a thorough knowledge of Cavendish.
[47] “Although these maxims may occasionally speak of things never to be done, and others always to be done, you must remember that no rules are without exception, and few more open to exceptional cases than rules for whist.”—Clay.
[48] Just as orthodoxy has been defined to be your own doxy, so “the Game” usually means “your own idea of the game at the time.”
I have called it Protean because it assumes so many different forms (being mainly based on results), and like the nigger’s little pig—runs about to such an extent that it is impossible to get a clear view of it.
[49] Though whist is reported to be an old English word meaning silence, and though it is advisable for many reasons that it should be played with reasonable quiet, it is not at all compulsory to conduct yourself as if in the monastery of La Trappe; you have a perfect right—as far as the laws of whist are concerned—to discuss at any time the price of stocks, the latest scandal, or even the play going on, “provided that no intimation whatever, by word or gesture, be given as to the state of your own hand or the game.”—Etiquette of Whist.
At bumblepuppy you had better waive this right altogether, for if under any circumstances you open your mouth, you will infallibly put your foot into it. Even here, the bumblepuppist is not consistent, for while constantly laying down the extraordinary law—in a very loud voice—that whist is silence, he considers the carrying out of that law much more incumbent on the rest of the table than himself.
[50] “Avoid playing with those who instruct, or rather find fault while the hand is playing. They are generally unqualified by ignorance, and judge from consequences; but if not, advice while playing does more harm than good.”—Mathews.
“The empty vessel makes the greatest sound.”—Shakespeare.