264 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[September 1, 1887. 



forced to discard. Z, apparently, is a player who draws an adverse 

 losing trump merely because he has got the idea into his head that 

 it is his duty to prevent its ever winning a trick ; but at the same 

 time, without redectiug that if he has not a clear impression as to 

 what he ought to do next, it would be better to make his leap in the 

 dark before" he parts with the trump command for the mere pleasure 

 of disarming an adversary. 



It is absurd, then, to attempt, as General Drajson has done, to lay 

 down canons of play to meet circumstances such as he contemplates 

 in his illustrative case. In framing conventional rules it is impos- 

 sible to make sufficient allowance for the "personal equal ion " of 

 the player by whom they are to be applied. 



General Drayson suggests, however, that when a player, who holds 

 five minor cards of one plain suit, together with commanding but 

 numerically short strength in the other two, is compelled to part 

 with one of the former, the proper thing for him to do is to throw 

 away an unnecessarily high card. This is to be a new convention — 

 to be known as the convention of " change your suit from the suit 

 which your partner is now throwing away." It is a development, 

 according to its ingenious proposer, of the " call for trumps" — being 

 intended as a call, when trumps have been drawn, for one or other 

 of the remaining plain suits — the one being clearly indicated in the 

 preceding illustrative example, as necessarily being the club. It is 

 DOW nearly three years since General Drayson invited '• progressive " 

 wliist-players to turn their attention to his idea of adding the 

 "plain-suit Peter" to the recognised conventions of the game, and 

 he remarks somewhat plaintively, that, hitherto, his proposition has 

 neither been examined nor practised. He thinks, however, that 

 now that " American leads " have been fairly worked out the time 

 is ripe for further attempts to tamper with that portion of whist in 

 which— despite of all the " extensions " that have been hitherto 

 based on the absurd assumption that a principle is something of an 

 elastic character— the difficulties of the discard still survive to tax 

 the judgment of the whist-player. AVe are glad, liowever, to note 

 that, for the moment, at all events, the general's proposal has a 

 very fair chance of being quietly ignored by the London whist- 

 playing world. 



There are several reasons for drawing this deduction. In the 

 first place, it is to be observed that in Knowledge, which, with the 

 exception of the t^ield, is the only journal in London in which whist 

 questions are regularly discussed, "Five of Clubs " (Mr. Richard A. 

 Proctor) no longer maintains towards the modern conventions the 

 attitude of unquestioning acceptance to which he committed 

 himself in the early days of his whist editorship. Moreover, not 

 content with modifying his own views on conventional play, he 

 has published a series of articles from " Mogul's " pen, of which 

 the first opened with the argument that the quality which gives to 

 whist its greatest charm is that it exercises the faculty of reasoning 

 from the known to the unknown. Hence the introduction into the 

 game of signals which convey positive information cannot but be 

 regarded as tending to make whist less scientific, and conse- 

 quently, to lower its character. It follows, then, that Pole outrages 

 common sense when he calls modem whist, as compared with the 

 whist of Mathews and DeschapeUes, the " scientific " game. For, in 

 point of fact, modern whist is only the old and really scientific 

 game, phis certain " dodges for giving information which are known 

 as signals.'* These are purely mechanical. Therefore, they are 

 "unscientific." For the very essence of a signal is that, by virtue 

 of a previous convention, it conveys certain definite information. 

 Moreover, as a matter of fact, so entirely does the meaning of an 

 arbitrary signal depend upon a prior understanding, that two of the 

 modern signals were once regarded as conveying different informa- 

 tion from that which they now give. If the matter be examined 

 carefully it will be found that one of two things must be true. 

 Either supposing all the players at a table to be possessed of equal 

 skill, the adoption of signals gives no advantage to any one of them 

 over any other ; or else if better players are pitted against worse, 

 the latter ought to have a handicap in their favour. In the latter 

 case, since, as a rule, odds are not given at the whist-table, signals 

 ought to be " squelched " without further argument, while in the 

 former there is no reason for introducing them. Why not be con- 

 tent, then, with leaving well enough alone ? 



Such outspoken language as this is sufficient indication that at 

 length efforts are being made to open the eyes of the London whist- 

 playing world to the fallacies of the reasoning by which Cavendish 

 has succeeded for a long series of years in persuading himself and in 

 persuading many disciples that whist is improved by the introduction 

 of arbitrary and purely mechanical signals. According to " Mogul," 

 the secret of his success is that " the inferior players, always con- 



* There is more of true whist science in " Mathews on Whist " 

 than in all the modern treatises put together, excluding what has 

 been derived from Mathews.—" Five of Clubs." 



stituting a majority," have been only too glad to avail themselves 

 of anything "which, apparently, they can use as well" as the most 

 gifted and the most skilful. To this is to be added the obvious con- 

 sideration that whenever any fad creeps in among the members of 

 a whist-circle, the non-faddists must either make the best of the 

 situation, or else they must resign themselves to the prospect of 

 going without their customary rubber. There remains, however, a 

 third fact of even greater significance than either of the two we 

 have already mentioned. Cavendish, whom " Mogul " dubs the 

 " arch-inventor of signals," lost no time in declaring his opinion 

 that "the difficulties of the discard cannot be satisfactorily disposed 

 of " by General Drayson's " cast-iron rules." Nor is this only an 

 indication that Cavendish is annoyed at finding that another con- 

 vention-monger has been poaching on his own pet and peculiar 

 manor. For the fact is, says Cavendish, that " the discard is often 

 a matter of judgment. Judgment cannot be taught by letters in 

 the Field, nor by whist-books, however practical." No doubt the 

 existence of spite in measurable quantity may be inferred from the 

 fact that in the /'(Wii the" practical " of the immediately preceding 

 sentence is printed with a capital " P." But the whist world is con- 

 cerned only with Cavendisli's change of front on the convention ques- 

 tion, and need not trouble itself about the exact amount of 

 irritation of temper with which he has begun to write off the six 

 million and odd square inches of pica type which embody his long- 

 continued efforts to knock the brains out of his favourite game. 

 Moreover, sudden as has been his conversion, there need be little 

 doubt that, although it seems to have come with a rush, it will 

 prove to be thorough and complete; for already, in one paragraph 

 of his criticism of General Drayson's suggestions, he says that, " of 

 all modern whist developments, the discard from the strong suit is 

 the one about the value and soundness of which no reasonable doubt 

 can exist." This statement, by the way, " Jlogul " absolutely con- 

 tradicts in the second of his Knowledge articles. The only 

 objection to the modern rule, continues Cavendish, is that to apply 

 it properly "requires the keenest whist judgment." In another 

 paragraph Cavendish remarks that "people who follow the rule of 

 discarding from the strong suit because the adversary has started a 

 trump lead are not worthy of being called whist-players." Nor is 

 this all. For in a tliird paragraph he, tlie greatest sinner 

 alive in that particular respect, remarks that "people talk and 

 write about whist as though it could be played by a machine." 

 To which he adds the naive confession that " no doubt there 

 are many players who regulate their plans by 'book alone,' 

 but they never rise above mediocrity." From the class of 

 writers, "however, whom Cavendish has in his mind, he expressly 

 exempts General Drayson by name, thus gracefully preparing 

 for the new era in his own history as a writer on whist, in 

 which he himself will deserve to be paid the same compli- 

 ment. Nor is there anything surprising in the suddenness of his 

 apparent conversion from the familiar errors of his ways. It is 

 quite in accordance with the known peculiarities of his natural 

 temperament. For, as Pembridge humorously remarks in the 

 " Decline and Fall of Whist," " the constitution of whist and the 

 constitution of our beloved country are both at the mercy of a 

 grand old man of exuberant verbosity. Each [of these] is able in 

 some extraordinary wa)' to persuade himself that the side of any 

 question on which he happens to be looking is not only the right 

 side, but that it positively has no other ; [and this, too,] in spite of 

 the fact that in previous stages of his existence he has himself both 

 recognised and vehemently supported that other side." 



Contents 



PAGE 



Bflcon and Scifnce 217 



The Story of Creaiion : a Plain Ac- 

 count of Evolution. Bv E. Clodd 219 

 Coal, Bv W. MattieuWiUianas .. 222 



The One-Scale Atlas 2i4 



Tl e Southern Skies 22S 



Improving Shakespeare. Bv Ben- 



Toio 226 



The Saturday Retu'tc on Luck. By 



Richard A. Proctor 228 



Notes on Americanisms. By 



Richard A. Proctor 230 



Wind Myths. By "Stella Occidens" 232 



OF No. 22. 



PAOX 



j How Americin-^ view Englind .. 233 

 The Wild West ; and hon' English- 

 men view America 234 



I The Total Solar Eclipse of August 



I lil 234 



1 Gossip. By Richard A. Proctor . . 23S 



Reviews 236 



The Face of the Sky for August. 



ByRR.A.S 238 



Our Whist Column. By "Five of 



Clubs" 238 



Our Chess Column. By "Me- 

 phisto " 239 



TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. 



" KxowLKDOK" as a Monthly Magazine cannot be registered as a Newspaper for 

 transmission abroad. The Terms of Sulscription per annum aje therefore altered 

 as follows to the Countries named : s. d. 



To West Indies and South America 9 



To the East Indies, China, &c 10 6 



ToSonthAfrica 12 



To Australia, New Zealand, &C. 14 



To any address in the United Kingdom, the Continent, Canada, United States, 

 and Sgypt, the Subscription is 7s. 6d,, ae herttofoie. 



