[55] Making passes in the air with your hand, as if you were about to mesmerise the table, is another favourite stratagem.
[56] The difference here is more apparent than real; Mathews, with considerable limitations, advocates leading singletons; now-a-days the practice is decried, but I regret to say that as far as my experience goes, the principal obstacle to leading a singleton is not having a singleton to lead.
[57] “We expect that Cavendish very often must have objected to that ancient plagiarist Mathews for stealing his ideas.”
“If their ideas are not identical, it is rather difficult to find where one begins and the other ends.”—Westminster Papers.
“I contend that there is no essential difference between modern and old-fashioned whist, i.e., between Hoyle and Cavendish, Mathews and J. C.”—Mogul.
[58] “The game is not the simple straightforward game it was, it is more erratic and more difficult.”
“Whist is more and more, and year by year, a game of brag, a game for gambling, a game in which we have to study the idiosyncrasies of the players as well as the cards themselves. We have to deduce from imperfect data, and when our inference is wrong we have a great chance of a scolding from an infuriated partner.”
“Modern whist in a nutshell—signs and signals and a short supply of brains.”—Westminster Papers.
“We are by no means peculiar in the opinion that signals and the so-called developments are destroying whist.”—Cornhill Magazine.
“Whist, as a game, is in a fair way of being ruined.”—Knowledge.