The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
FRONTISPIECE.
RUFF and HONOURS (from the Compleat Gamester 1680).
They sit, and look their Partners in the face,
Who from their eyes shoot Cupids fiery darts;
Thus make them lose at once their Game and Hearts."
THE
LAWS AND PRINCIPLES
OF
WHIST
STATED AND EXPLAINED
AND ITS
PRACTICE ILLUSTRATED
ON
AN ORIGINAL SYSTEM
BY MEANS OF
HANDS PLAYED COMPLETELY THROUGH.
BY
"CAVENDISH."
EIGHTEENTH EDITION.
LONDON:
THOS. DE LA RUE & CO.
1889.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
PRINTED BY
THOMAS DE LA RUE AND CO., BUNHILL ROW,
LONDON.
DEDICATION TO THE NINTH EDITION.
TO
JAMES CLAY, Esq., M.P.
(Chairman of the Whist Laws Committee of the Arlington Club, 1864,)
This Book
IS
CORDIALLY DEDICATED
BY
HIS SINCERE FRIEND,
THE AUTHOR.
DEDICATION TO THE TENTH EDITION.
OF
JAMES CLAY
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
It has often occurred to the Author that there are twoprincipal defects in the existing treatises on the gameof Whist—the one that the principles of play are, ingeneral, laid down as so many isolated and arbitraryconventions, the reasons upon which such principlesare based being seldom, if at all, and scarcely everfully, stated; the other, that suitable illustrations, bywhich alone the principles can be brought forciblyhome and fixed in the memory, are almost entirelywanting. The present work is an attempt to supplythese deficiencies. With regard to the latter, theAuthor feels that nothing, in point of illustrationof princ