THE peter, simple in its inception, and ineffably stupid in execution,
was already on the scene, and though among decent players it soon found
its level, and became comparatively inoffensive, was the pioneer of the
mass of wood-paving which has since been laid down; echoes, tampering
with the discard, penultimates, antepenultimates, developments,
extensions of principle, rules for exceptional play, with a few other
matters _quod nunc perscribere longum est_, all equally inelastic, but
differing from the signal in this, that while its mission is to supply
your partner with brains and to dictate to him, regardless of the state
of his hand, to play trumps when you think fit, theirs is to do away
with all necessity for any brains whatever.
The call for trumps appeared in this form, and in this form
Bumblepuppydom believes in it to this day. “Whenever a player is
strong in trumps, whether he has any reason for wanting them out or
not, he informs the table of the fact, and it is imperative upon his
partner to take the most violent and extraordinary steps to get in and
lead him one.” However, the proceeding—when not useless—turned out so
injurious to the perpetrator, that it had to be mitigated (for in that
benighted day it had not been discovered that it was philosophical
to lose on principle), and now reads something like this,—“whenever
a player is strong in trumps, and considers from the fall of the
cards that it is expedient they should be drawn, he makes those facts
public,” and as his partner is usually in possession of the lead at the
moment, he is able to play a trump without unduly straining himself.
Compulsory peters, anticipated peters, and peters late in the hand, are
matters of common sense and intelligence, and attempts to lay down
arbitrary conventions as substitutes for those qualities are the main
causes of the present decadence of Whist.