People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 November 1896 — BLUE PETER IN WHIST. [ARTICLE]

BLUE PETER IN WHIST.

The Signal For Trumps First Employed by Lord Henry Bentinck. Thero is a house in London which should he the Mecca of all whist players who believe in the new school and the “information” gamo, a shrine before which they should bow respectfully as the fountain head of all that is modern in the game. This is 87 St. James street, and it is within sight of Marlborough House. Its fame rests chiefly on the fact that it was at one time known as Graham’s club, and that within its walls Lord Henry Bentinck first introduced the blue peter, or signal for trumps, which consists in playing a higher card before a lower when no attempt is made to win the trick. That signal has been to the whist players of the world like the pillar of fire to the ohildren of Israel For more than 40 years it has led them up and down in the wilderness of arbitrary conventions, but it has never brought them to the promised land of better whist. The blue peter was the introduction to whist of a purely arbitrary signal or convention, and its seed has spread like a thistle’s until it has entirely overrun the old game of “calculation, observation, position and tenaoe, ” leaving in its place long suits, American leads, plain suit echoes, four signals and direotive discards. These seem to have choked up all the dash, brilliancy and individuality in our whist players, reducing them all to the same level, not by increasing the abilities of the tyro, but by curtailing the skill of the expert.—R. Frederic Foster in Monthly Illustrator.