Second hand with king and another, or queen and another, never play the honour either in trumps or plain suits, unless you particularly want the lead, and then you will probably not get it, and throw away a trick.
By not playing the honour,
(1) The chance of trick-making in the suit is greater (this has been proved to demonstration by Mogul).[17]
(2) The possible weakness of the third hand is exposed—a very important point.
(3) Your own weakness is concealed from the leader, and he is able to finesse against your partner; these three reasons ought to be tolerably conclusive, but if a high card is led, head it!
If, holding knave, ten, and another, you are afraid of trumps being led, and your partner is devoid of common sense, don’t play the ten, or it will be taken for a signal (that it neither is one, nor at all like one, does not affect the petrolater in the least); it is almost equally dangerous with queen, knave, and another to play the knave. A high card second hand has exactly the same effect on many players as a red rag has on a bull; and if you have an objection to being gored, you should keep it out of their sight as long as possible—subject to this important qualification—“Put an honour on an honour, with only three of a suit; with four or more you should not do it.”—Mathews.
Except to save or win the game, whether you are weak in trumps, or strong, don’t ruff a doubtful card unless you have a distinct idea what to do next; if you are only going to open a weak suit, let it go.
Don’t ruff a suit of which your partner clearly holds the best, in order to announce, urbi et orbi, that you are weak in trumps; depend upon it urbis and orbis will take advantage of this, not to mention that you take the lead out of your partner’s hand at a critical moment, and prevent him from developing any game that he may have.
In bumblepuppy, with ace, king, and others, or king, queen, and others, the trick is often passed, and with knave led, if the second player holds ace, queen, etc., he usually plays the queen;[18] holding the same cards, if instead of the knave a small card is led, he occasionally produces the ace. These proceedings may be the eccentricities of genius; if they are not, the only other explanation I can suggest for them, is a desire to lose a trick.
Third hand.—Don’t finesse against your partner, unless you have reason to believe you are stronger in his own suit than he is, or that he has led from weakness.
Don’t finesse against yourself. If you have led from ace, knave, etc., and your partner has made the queen, the king is certainly not on your right. If, on the other hand, you have led from king, and your partner again has made the queen, it can be of no use to put on the king, the ace must be over you. Though Clay described the finesse obligatory before you were thought of, I am afraid that after you are forgotten, these two simple cases will continue to be reversed—that people will finesse against, and not for, themselves. In bumblepuppy this is de rigueur; also at this game, with king, queen, and another in your partner’s lead, it is customary to play the king, and, if it wins, to open a new suit.
Ruff a winning card of the adversaries! What possible benefit can you derive from allowing your opponent to discard, and by that discard show his partner the suit he wishes led? If you are too stingy to use a high trump, surely you might play a little one just to keep the trick going. “It is much better to play a small trump with the certainty it will be overtrumped than to let the trick go.”—Westminster Papers.
When your partner has opened a suit with the ace, and on the third round eleven are out, he holds the other two, and whenever he leads one of them—whether it is the queen or the four—it is a winning card; but if you fail to grasp this, and feel disposed to play the thirteenth trump on it, don’t waste time either in invoking the immortal gods, inspecting the last trick, or looking præternaturally intelligent—trump it at once, and put him out of his misery. The idea is not new, for it occurred to Macbeth when about to perpetrate the very same coup:
My only claim is to have expressed myself without such an involved use of auxiliary verbs.
If you have more than two of the suit, don’t play the ace on your partner’s knave; it may be a short suit, or the head of a sequence, and you throw away the power of passing the ten second round, even if it is from king, queen, knave to five, there is nothing to be gained by covering; with ace and another win the trick and return it at once, unless you lead trumps.
Though frequently done, it is not good whist to decline to win a trick, either on the ground that you want a guard for your king of trumps, or because you hold six. In the other game both these proceedings would be correct.
Fourth hand.—Win the trick, and endeavour, if possible, to do so without playing a false card. Like all things that are difficult at first, you will find it become comparatively easy by practice. You might suppose that the exponent of bumblepuppy—who always considers a trick of his own making worth at least two made by his partner—would get into no difficulty here; but he does. He has a firmly-rooted belief that his strong suits are under the protection of a special Providence which will never allow them to be ruffed, and uttering his wretched shibboleth, “Part with my ace, sir? never!” he contrives to lose any number of tricks by keeping up his winning cards to the last possible moment and a shade longer. I imagine he is under the erroneous impression that this in some way compensates for cutting in with a small trump when he is not wanted.
“It is a good plan when you have the thirteenth trump to pass winning cards. The reason of this is not apparent, but in practice I know several players who do so, and in the multitude of counsellors there is wisdom.”—Westminster Papers.
Discards are of two distinct kinds:—
(1) When your partner; (2) When your adversary shows strength.
In the first case, you naturally point out to your partner which is your strong suit by discarding from your weak suits, your object being to win the game, and there is an end of that matter.[19] In the second case it is just the reverse. You have to save the game, and you discard from your best guarded suit, by no means necessarily your strongest, with a view, as far as you can, of blocking every suit, and so preventing the adversary from establishing his long cards.
These two kinds of discards are, or ought to be, of importance to three very different classes of players:—
(1) The Scientific.
(2) The Commonly Decent.
(3) The Exponents of Bumblepuppy.
(1) The Scientific.—Here, with trumps declared against you, you discard, as already said, from your best guarded suit. Your partner knows this is probable, but he does not know how strong you are in that suit; he also knows it may very possibly be a suit in which you hold three small cards, and a second discard of it only gives him the further information that you had either three or five—he must infer which from his own hand—he assumes you did not originally hold two, for you would not have left yourself entirely bare of the suit. It is not everybody who is in the proud position which I once occupied, when a trump being led by the adversary, I found myself with no trump, the best nine cards of one suit, and two other aces.
Among good players, then, the forced discard amounts to this: that though you are aware your partner is discarding with the best possible motives, and he is aware that you are doing the same, neither can depend upon the other’s discard as showing anything for certain. With trumps declared against you, you must place unknown cards to the best of your ability, and in such an unpleasant conjuncture, if you are exceptionally fortunate, you may sometimes save the game, and the skill displayed in doing so may be a joy for ever:—
Observe the discretion of the poet in his choice of the word “forsan.”
But when, on the other hand, you look at the improbability of this coming off, when you reflect that your partner has occasionally given you two discards, and that you, in the exercise of that right of private judgment inherent in every Protestant, led one of those very suits, and by so doing lost the game; when you recall what then took place, the epea pteroenta, the mutual—but the subject is too painful; let us leave it, and pass on to Class 2.[20] This class has two divisions, they both see your discards, but—without any reference to their own hands or anything that has been played—one division assumes your discard is invariably from weakness, and at once knocks on the head the very suit you have sedulously been attempting to guard; the other has got hold of the pernicious axiom that the original discard is necessarily your strongest suit, and always leads that.
Here we have again a pretty considerable element of confusion.
Class 3.—These, with an unerring instinct that might almost be mistaken for genius,[21] will put you in a hole, whatever you do. The safest plan is, under all circumstances, to discard from your weakest suit; you cannot be cut to pieces there, and, whatever happens, you have the letter of the law on your side. When you have not followed suit to the second round of the opponent’s trumps, when, as a rule, your discard (being forced) is not to be depended on and is of no importance to them, this is the only time they ever see it; for having no winning cards in their own hands to attract their attention, they are able to devote a little more time to seeing the cards on the table. The number of times they will have that wretched trick turned, and their anxiety to be quite sure of the suit, are painful to the sensitive mind (especially if that sensitive mind is sitting opposite to them and happens to belong to yourself). Well might Sophocles observe, “Many things are dreadful, but nothing is more dreadful than man.”
That the first discard is from the weakest suit is one of those half-dozen cast-iron rules—three of them wrong, and the remainder invariably misapplied—which make up their stock-in-trade;[22] but if they hold ace, king, queen to five trumps—say clubs—you see them come well up to the table with an air of triumph, and begin to lead. Again you don’t follow suit; what do they care? they drive gaily on, but, as they finish the third round, the idea just begins to dawn upon them—perhaps you have discarded something.[23] A careful inspection of the last trick affords them the pleasing intelligence that somebody has discarded a diamond and somebody else a spade; the light fades from their eye, their jaw drops, and they are such a picture of hopeless misery, that if they were not in the habit of informing you—scores of times a day—that they play whist only for amusement, you might almost doubt the fact.[24]
After prolonged contemplation of the chandelier and a farewell look at the spade and diamond, they eventually produce a heart—your original discard!—have their remaining trumps drawn, and lose the game.
Ordinary discards are simple in the extreme, and might be very useful; unfortunately (as the general public will persist in confining its attention to its own hand, as long as there is anything in it), the only discard usually seen is the last, and this detracts from their utility. Forced discards are always difficult (not to the discarder, but to his partner), and to a duffer, unintelligible, for this reason, they require common-sense—far be it from me to teach it—it is like poetry, “nascitur non fit,” and these remarks have not been made with any such intention, but to endeavour to accentuate that Cavendish in his treatise on Whist, and a letter which I append, has said everything on the subject likely to be of use.
“The old system of discarding, though unscientific, had at least the merit of extreme simplicity. It was just this: when not able to follow suit, let your first discard be from your weakest suit. Your partner in his subsequent leads is thus directed to your strong suit, and will refrain from leading the suit in which, by your original discard, you have told him you are weak.[25]
Several years ago some whist enthusiasts, amongst whom were Mogul and myself, played a number of experimental rubbers, the cards of each hand being recorded as they were played, and the play being fully discussed afterwards.
In the course of the discussion it was observed first, I think, by Mogul, that in several hands the discard from a weak suit, when the adversaries evidently had in their hands the command of trumps, had resulted very disastrously.[26] This caused us to consider whether the weak suit should not be protected under these circumstances, and we finally came to the conclusion that discards should be divided into two classes, viz., ordinary discards and forced discards. These I proceed to distinguish.
The reason a weak suit is chosen for the discard is, that when a strong suit is broken into, the number of long cards which might be brought in, if the suit is ever established, are lessened, and so many potential tricks are thus consequently lost.
But little harm, certainly none of this kind of harm, is done by throwing away from a weak suit, in other words, from a suit that can never be brought in. But when the adversaries have declared great strength in trumps, the chance of bringing in a suit is reduced to a minimum. On the assumption that you can never bring it in, the small cards of your long suit are valueless to you. That suit will protect itself so far as its high cards are concerned, but the weak suits require protection.
Thus, by guarding honours, or by keeping four cards to a ten or nine, a trick is often won, or the establishment of an adverse suit prevented. It was this point, indeed, which first led us to condemn the invariable discard of the weak suit; the remark was frequently made, “I was obliged to deceive you then, partner, and to throw my long suit in order to keep my king guarded in another suit.” This, of course, when the game was in danger.
Honours in weak suits may be freely unguarded by the players who have strong trump hands, but the guards should be religiously preserved by those who are weak. Our discussions resulted in our laying down the following rules for our own guidance, viz., 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. This I may call the foundation of the modern system of discarding; it has been adopted by all the best players with whom I am acquainted.
For the sake of having a short and easily remembered rule, however, it is the fashion to say, “Discard originally from your strong suit when the adversaries lead trumps.”[27] “No doubt you will be right in your discard in most cases, but this aphorism does not truly express the conditions.” (Query, then why use it?).... “The conclusion I have arrived at is that the modern system of discarding requires so much judgment in its application as to be rather a stumbling-block than an assistance to the ordinary run of players,”—rough on the neophyte!—“This is a pity, as there can be no doubt but that the classing of discards into ordinary and forced is sound in principle, and adds beauty to the game. I have been prompted to write this letter in the hopes of seeing this classification more generally adopted, and its limitations more distinctly observed and acted on.”—Cavendish.
I have met with the same conclusion and the same regret in a metrical form: it is short, and may be useful to any of you troubled with bad memories:
If this principle were carried out to its logical result, and everybody played for amusement in the ludicrous sense in which this word is generally understood, it is manifest that—as no one would ever see either a card led or played, or know what suit was trumps—it would be useless continuing to ask each other for information on those abstruse points; and unless, by some alteration in the laws of whist, an intelligence department outside the table were provided to supplement the precarious knowledge acquired by looking at the last trick, the game would shortly collapse from its innate absurdity; unfortunately we seldom arrive at this point; what usually takes place is this:
Four people sit down nominally to play whist, when suddenly one of them announces, to the consternation of his partner, that he is not there with any such intention, but solely for his own amusement; he altogether ignores the possibility of the others wishing to play whist for their amusement, and lays down his stale proposition with such an air of originality that he often deludes the unwary bystander into the belief that he is somehow superhuman, and much superior to the other three, who are consequently looked down upon as mean and sordid individuals; this is not the case. If yelling when he is trodden upon, and crying if he loses, are proofs of humanity, he is essentially human.
Now, no one has the slightest objection to your amusing yourself as long as you do not annoy anybody else. I go further than this, and admit your abstract right to amuse yourself at your partner’s expense, but I protest against your expecting him to rejoice with you in his own discomfiture.
Because eels are accustomed to being skinned, it does not at all follow that they should like it—at any rate, whether they do so or not, it is not expected of them.
Again, the practice of vivisection may be both amusing and instructive to the vivisector, while it may be neither the one nor the other to his victim. Though I have no practical acquaintance with this pursuit, I have often seen large portraits of the vivisectee pasted on hoardings, and judging from the expression of his countenance, and the uncomfortable position in which he is always depicted, I should imagine that the entire proceedings were supremely distasteful to him.
From the time when Cain was short-coated, and tipcats, pea-shooters, catapults, and other instruments of torture appeared on the scene, there have been peculiar ideas of amusement. Fortunately—with the exception of your doting mammas—public opinion has been against you. A gentleman found in the street with a tipcat embedded in his eye is usually conducted to the nearest chemist, and the malefactor given in charge. (The crafty Ulysses, before he performed a very similar operation on Polyphemus, made every preparation to escape from the room as soon as it was over, and took uncommonly good care not to originate the now trite witticism, “there you go with your eye out,” till he was well beyond his reach. He was far too intelligent a man to expect the Cyclops to take it pleasantly.) But if this occurs at Whist, and the victim even hints an objection, he is looked upon as a bear, and sometimes the verdict is “served him right,” while at other times he seems to be expected to “rub it in.” There I draw the line; annoy your partner as much as you like, but don’t expect that! It is contrary to nature; still, while fully and freely admitting your right of annoying, and also your right to throw away your own property if you please, you are not privileged to treat your partner’s in the same way. This borders closely on theft, and before taking such a liberty, in order to be on the safe side, I think you ought first to obtain his consent in writing. It is all very well for Shakespeare to call his purse trash (he knew the contents of it, and his description may have been most accurate), but whether things are trash or not, if they don’t belong to you, you must not make away with them (as the poet himself experienced when he took to deer-stealing), and unless you wish, like him, to fall into the clutches of the criminal law, you had better take Captain Cuttle’s advice, and overhaul your catechism, with special reference to your duty to your neighbour. You will find it a safer guide.
I ought to apologise for the length of this note, but I have suffered myself, and although I never killed an albatross, and am by nature most inoffensive,
“Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum.”—Eton Grammar.
The last lecture went thoroughly into the forced discard and, after looking at it in every possible light, left it exactly at the point where it was left by Mathews nearly a hundred years ago: “If weak in trumps, keep guard on your adversary’s suits. If strong, throw away from them and discard as much as possible from your partner’s strong suits in either case.”
Here I should gladly have let the matter rest—as the boy said when he saw the wild cat. It is a thorny subject; but the New Man will not permit it.
“The Decline and Fall of Whist” contains a view of him and his game, which is very widely entertained in this country, and though it may or may not be a better game, it is not Whist in the English sense of the word.
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.
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.
Now, I have dealt myself innumerable hands—it is a favourite amusement of mine when I have a little spare time—and taking the shortest and weakest suit for trumps, have carefully calculated how often I could discard a suit I wanted led; how often I should feel justified in dictating to my partner to make me third player in it. It comes out well under fifty per cent.
Hands of this kind are constantly turning up.
Diamonds (trumps)—9, 7.
Hearts—Kg., Qn., 3.
Spades—Qn., Kn., 9.
Clubs—10, 8, 6, 3, 2.
Here I must discard a club, but I don’t necessarily want it led.
Diamonds (trumps)—Qn. and another.
Hearts—Kn. and three small ones.
Spades—Kn. and three small ones.
Clubs—Three small ones.
As I am not going to unguard either of these knaves, again I discard a club, and again I don’t want to dictate to my partner to lead it, and so ad infinitum.
The simple faith that, whenever the adversary leads trumps, you are bound to hold a strong suit, may be better than Norman blood. If it is, it only tends to prove of how singularly little value that fluid may be.
Therefore, in my own case, this is the way the rule works out: “When we are in a very tight place, and trumps are declared against us, my first discard always shows clearly the suit I want led;” only, in more than half the instances, it does nothing of the kind.
This is a pretty sort of universal rule. Whatever view you may take of it, it scarcely comes up to my idea of a sheet anchor.
But if I prefer to wallow there, don’t let me thrust my opinions on you—you may object to mud; your cards may be better than mine; judge for yourselves! Deal a few hands, and if you find once in five times, or once in ten times, that the rule won’t work, then you have this formula for your guidance: “We always discard from the suit we want led, except when we have no such suit,” and mind this, the first time you fail, all the fat is in the fire; there is no retreat. When once you cast judgment and common-sense to the four winds of heaven, and submit yourselves body and soul to the rule of thumb—and such a thumb!—you cannot play fast and loose with it; you must take it for “all in all, or not at all.” Like a wife, which you may have some day, you take it for better or worse, till death do you part; and this is all worse; it is an utterly unworkable arrangement,
If you are to have an always in this most intricate and difficult affair (which I strongly deprecate), and are unable to sit comfortably at a whist-table without a crutch of some kind to lean upon—and this in such a position seems uncalled for—you will find discarding from your longest suit a safer plan, though this is not always available. Why cannot you leave good old best-guarded alone?
After all I have said, should you still persist in running your heads against “strongest” and “the suit I want led,” these lines of Moore undoubtedly “touch the spot”—
There is one method of forced discarding which is often extremely useful; it is simple to a degree and always practicable; it has been in use for some years, and is approved of by all the good whist-players I have ever come across.
If you have a really strong suit to discard from—a suit that you can order your partner to lead you—signal in it, and throw away the highest card you safely dare.
This was first brought to my notice by Mr. Proctor, and—like Newton’s apple, Columbus’s egg, and many other great discoveries—is almost obtrusively obvious when it is once pointed out.
It is no new invention, for it has been the well-known practice of whist from primæval times.
Possibly known in the cave of Neanderthal.
Its inhabitants, when they had a really powerful suit, discarded an unnecessarily high card. With a quint major, they discarded the ace; with a quart to a king, they discarded the king, and so forth.
Here is a declaration of absolute strength at the very moment it is required; no uncertainty as to whether it is a protective discard, or mere length; it is also flexible,[28] for you can use your own judgment; give the information; conceal it for a time if you think fit, or withhold it altogether.
Minor details—such as that when only one discard is available, a high card would in all probability indicate strength, while a low one (though it might indicate length) would do nothing of the kind, but rather the opposite; and its use under many circumstances, even when your partner is leading trumps—if not at once obvious to your own unassisted intelligence, are better left to the professional development-mongers.
Having a rooted antipathy to formulating an interminable series of minute regulations for exceptional cases, a practice which has done irreparable injury to whist, far be it from me to trench upon their preserve.
The convention I have shown to be venerable, and I believe it to be perfectly legitimate.
Here I begin to tread upon delicate ground, for though whist is entirely made up of conventions, many different views are held as to what a convention is (see note page 60), and when it is and is not legitimate.
Between the Albert Club and the Bloomsbury back parlour there is a great gulf fixed—
and it would be a life-long regret to me if I seduced them from the paths of rectitude.
Still, for practical purposes, I should imagine that a mode of play which is known, or open to be known by all players, and which contravenes neither the laws nor the etiquette of whist, fulfils all the necessary conditions; at all events, it satisfies my moral sense.
If, in addition, it is conducive to trick making,—as it undoubtedly is—I hail it with effusion.
With innumerable treatises; treatises on developments, on counting number, on exceptional play; treatises philosophical and treatises mathematical; with exercises in simple addition; with arrangements for exorcising superfluous winning cards as elaborate as if winning cards were enemies of the human race, and a direct emanation from the evil one, the time has arrived, if possible, to import a little common-sense into the game, and to make an effort to win an occasional trick.
This lecture, though quite irrelevant, is given to gratify the curiosity of many youthful enquirers.
The eleven rule (which only applies to American leads) is simply this: that, if under favourable circumstances, you add certain integers together and the result should be eleven, then you shall see what you shall see. (It can scarcely be called a novelty, for it seems to have been well known to Virgil,
Bearing this cardinal fact firmly in mind, supposing a deuce is led—and it is ex rei necessitate a fourth best; this is the favourable circumstance just referred to—then, if you hold nine higher cards of the suit, you add nine to the pips on the deuce, and if you add it correctly and it comes to eleven, you play the lowest of your superior cards, and (with the proviso the suit is trumps) win the trick.
Though it is scarcely an epoch-making discovery,[29] still it is true, and that in these days of the new journalism is something to be thankful for.
There is one example of this rule in the “Field” which is to me a source of perennial joy.
The second player who holds the ace, the king, the queen, the knave, and the eight of hearts, to his own enquiry which card he ought to play on the six led, replies, “I say the eight!”
Now, though certainly 6 + 5 = 11, and the rule—as I have already admitted—is true, this play does not commend itself to my intelligence, and I should advise you not to trouble your youthful brains about the later rounds of a plain suit—when the leader, to your own certain knowledge, has from four to eight, and you yourself follow holding five, including a quart major. If you win the first four tricks in it, you will do as much as you can reasonably expect, and will have done enough for glory.
O sancta simplicitas! That eight, so innocently stepping to the front, has done more to reconcile me to human nature than anything that was ever done by Jonas Chuzzlewit.
May it continue to retain its evergreen faith unspotted of the world!
and that it may never be rudely awakened to find a serpent in its Eden, and the harmless looking six a singleton, is my fervent prayer.
I have mentioned that this kind of thing is not whist as played in this country, and it is by no means certain it will long be the whist of any country; for I hear that in the American Whist Club of Boston, “they have now quite chucked the American leads,” and one of the later Cavendishes has propounded this singular view; “I have the craze for giving information in such an acute form that I should like to be allowed to show my whole hand to the whole table before the first lead, on the condition that my cards are not to be called.” I presume all the hands must be exposed, otherwise this is merely an offer to back his partner against his two opponents at single dummy, and there is nothing particularly sporting in that.
If, then, this doctrine and position is a rule of faith and not merely a pious opinion—and pious opinions have a nasty knack of becoming extended into principles—the devotees of the new game will, it is to be hoped, at once relegate its uninviting literature to the nearest dust-bin, and all with one accord, in pairs (like the wooden animals in your Noah’s ark), betake themselves to double-dummy; where, happily, elaborate schedules of leads are not required; where extensions of principle are unknown, and where “faith is lost in sight.”