MR DALTON ON BRIDGE 295 



Now this is all mystery to me, for on this point 

 the march of time has beaten me. I suppose one 

 ought to be ashamed to confess to absolute ignorance 

 of even the elementary rules of Association football, 

 and I have never watched a game for more than 

 ten minutes, for the play conveyed no impression to 

 my mind. 



Of course it must be a great game, or it would not 

 attract so many people, but it is one of the attractions 

 of life that I have wholly missed. 



More remarkable still to me is the craze for bridge. 

 I used to be a fairly good whist player, many years ago, 

 and shall never forget one morning in the bar of the 

 Rutland Arms, during a Newmarket Meeting, when 

 Mr Dalton, a son-in-law of the late Mr John Hammond 

 (owner of St Gatien and Florence), came in and gave 

 me a little book, which, he said, explained a game that 

 was going to supersede whist. Would I make some 

 mention of the book in The Sportsman! 



I readily agreed to do so, but, I am sure Mr Dalton 

 will forgive me when I say that I did not then regard 

 him as a man of such revolutionary capacity. 



Rather, having regard to our then surroundings, I 

 thought it must be a variant of solo whist, or some 

 other such game, in which the racing crowd takes 

 speculative pleasure. I wrote the notice, and the book 

 I wrote about was the original of Dalton on Bridge. 

 What I wrote I don't in the least remember, but I must 

 have read some part of the book in order to write a 

 notice of it. Mr Dalton's prophecy to me on that 

 occasion proved to be extraordinarily true ; for bridge 

 has absolutely expelled whist, which latter is now an 

 almost unknown game. Dalton on Bridge is still 



