Lockwood, The Nook,
Monk's Langford. Sir, am I Hobbs? Hobbs."

* * * * *

[Illustration: LOVERS' QUARRELS.

JOHN BULL (_to France_). "WONDERFUL HOW A LITTLE STORM IN A TEA-POT BRINGS
OUT THE FLAVOUR!"]

* * * * *

[Illustration: OUTSIDE THE RADIUS.

_Strong Man._ "NOW THEN, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, KIND APPRECIATION, IF YOU
PLEASE. YOU SHORLY DON'T EXPECT A GENUINE WEST-END PERFORMER TO 'ALF KILL
'ISSELF IN THE SUBUBS FOR FOURPENCE?"]

* * * * *

BRIDGE NOTES.

(_With acknowledgments to several contemporaries._)

It would, I feel, be but fair to the great Bridge-playing public to preface
these few notes with a word of warning against the writers whom I find to
my regret affecting to speak with authority on this subject in other
periodicals. Until, as in the kindred profession of Medicine, it is
impossible to practise without a Bridge degree, nothing can be done to
prevent these quacks from laying down the law. All I can do for the present
is to point out that there is only one writer who can speak not merely with
authority, but with infallibility, upon all matters pertaining to our
national game.

In this the eighth instalment of my series on Auction etiquette, I should
like to urge once more upon the young Bridge-player the importance of
playing quickly. And this because yet another case has come under my notice
in which much trouble might have been avoided by doing so. In this case A.
took seven minutes to decide whether to play the King or the Knave, which,
especially as the Queen had already been played, was, I consider, far too
long. Y., the declarer, sitting on A.'s left, certainly found it so, for
towards the end of the seventh minute he dropped off to sleep and his cards
fell forward face upward on the table. Dummy having gone away in search of
liquid refreshment, A. and his partner B. then played out the hand as they
liked and then roused Y. to inform him that, instead of making game, he had
lost three hundred above.

Now, A. and B. were strictly within the rules of Auction Bridge in acting
as they did. There is no legal time limit for players, as there is at
cricket. But it would have been more tactful had they roused Y. at once,
that he might see what they were doing with his cards.

Nor should tact be confined to such comparatively rare incidents as this.
For instance, it is a mistake to confuse Auction