Note 49 — LECTURE X. —— ON THINGS IN GENERAL. ——

Though whist is reported to be an old English word meaning silence, and though it is advisable for many reasons that it should be played with reasonable quiet, it is not at all compulsory to conduct yourself as if in the monastery of La Trappe; you have a perfect right—as far as the laws of whist are concerned—to discuss at any time the price of stocks, the latest scandal, or even the play going on, “provided that no intimation whatever, by word or gesture, be given as to the state of your own hand or the game.”—Etiquette of Whist.

At bumblepuppy you had better waive this right altogether, for if under any circumstances you open your mouth, you will infallibly put your foot into it. Even here, the bumblepuppist is not consistent, for while constantly laying down the extraordinary law—in a very loud voice—that whist is silence, he considers the carrying out of that law much more incumbent on the rest of the table than himself.