When I came to think the matter over in cold blood, I could see that my proper course would have been to lead the losing card before drawing my partner's trump. I merely made a mistake (a fatal one I grant) in the order of playing them. That was all.
My friend goes on to make learned remarks about "American leads," "the fourth best," and the difficulties of playing a knave; lead him at once, _I_ think, on _Dogberry's_ principle: and "thank heaven you are rid of a knave."
The depths of my guilt may be guessed from the fact that many of my Mentor's explanations are Hittite to me. People talking of laying up a wretched old age by not playing, I should be laying it up for other people if I did play much. Half-crown points, a partner who knows how to score (those counters and candlesticks, or the machines with little bone grave-stones that shut up with a snap, bother me), and amiable conversation on well-chosen topics while the game goes on, make the kind of Whist that I enjoy. We used to play it in Common Room in the happy past; it was easier than Loo, which I never quite understood. The rigour of the game is the ruin of Whist.
There has not been time yet to arrange the Figures.]
"_Sich a Nice Man Too!_" is one of the latest, and greatest, successes of the clever Coster Laureate, Mr. ALBERT CHEVALIER, who, "Funny without being Vulgar," proves that he, the Muse of the Market Cart, and Bard of the Barrow, "Knocks 'em in the Old Kent Road,"--and elsewhere--with well-deserved success. As is ever the case with the works of genuine genius, "liberal applications lie" in his "patter" songs, the enjoyment of which need by no means be confined to the Coster and his chums. For example, at Caucus-Conferences and places where they sing--and shout--the following might be rendered with relish:--
There's party-men yer meets about What wins yer 'eart instanter; Of _their_ success there's ne'er a doubt, They romps in in a canter. There's one as means to lick the lot, Brum JOE, the artf'llst dodger. For 'im we Rads went 'ot and 'ot; Sez we, "Yus, JOE's the codger!"
Sich a smart man too! Sich a _very_ smart man! No Tory pride, no toffish affectation! Yet 'e somehow makes yer feel That in 'im yer 'ave to deal With a gent, if not by buth, by edgercation!