may meanwhile have assisted the adversaries to bring in theirs. It is not denied that guerilla tactics sometimes gain tricks; but it remains to be shown that they gain more on the balance than the recognized informatory long suit game. The problem is of such extreme complexity that no proof can be offered. The investigator is, therefore, driven to seek the opinions of experienced writers and players. This, it is admitted, is not so satisfactory as a demonstration would be; but when demonstration cannot be had, the only course left open is to consult authorities. From the time of Lord Folkestone's party (1728) to the present, there has been wellnigh the unanimous opinion of experts that the original lead should be from the strongest suit; and it has been stated (but on what authority seems doubtful) that about ninety per cent. of American whist-players continue to adhere to the long-suit game. It is contrary to all human experience that so large a percentage should be wrong. It is conceded that there may be exceptional hands; a system based on exceptions is not one to be regarded favorably, as a rule, when submitted to the test of com mon-sense. served. But it may be, and often is in actual play, that the wary adversary counterplots and strives to obstruct the design. Then the bigger battalion will generally carry the day, and, if against, defence must be substituted for attack. The question then is, What is the best defence? When the opponent is firing off his trump artillery, and is known to have plenty of ammunition in reserve, there is no chance for the defender by ordinary methods. He must, therefore, reverse his tactics, and try to save what little he can, by protecting his weak spots, and, to revert to card language, must discard from the suit in which he is well protected, but which he cannot hope to bring in. There is another side to the shield. The man who starts the shooting may have encountered an adversary with as much ammunition as himself, or more, and who may shoot back. Then comes the trouble. Are the discards to be protective or the reverse? They become entirely a matter of judgment; and, as no rule can be laid down for judgment, the discards are often misleading. Then ensue recriminations, and the discard An approximate solution of the problem from strength is sneered at as an explodwill probably be found erelong from ed fallacy. If the players who desire to practical experience. The short-suit fad- explode it would only turn their attention dists play duplicate matches from which to the fact that the first discard depends luck is, to a great extent, eliminated. If on who has the command of trumps they win a considerable proportion of these when it is made, they would probably immatches, the whole theory of whist will prove their game and would displace the have to be reconsidered; if, on the other exploded - fallacy fad from their imagihand, they are hopelessly beaten, short- nation. Still, it has to be allowed that, suitism will die a natural death. under certain circumstances, the original discard is beset with difficulties. This, however, is no reason for attempting to explode a fallacy which is not a fallacy. The accepted style of discarding is consonant with sound reason; the only objection to it, and one which cannot be surmounted by introducing any other style, is that judgment is often requisite for its correct interpretation. The discard from the best protected suit, on adverse declaration of strength in trumps, has lately been assaulted, and has even been called an exploded fallacy. It seems advisable to say a few words in its defence; but as the arguments pro and con require an intimate knowledge of whist, the subject will only be touched lightly. The manœuvres of intelligent players, with the exception of short suiters, tend to this: To establish a suit; then, with reasonable strength in trumps, to exhaust the opponents; and finally to bring in the established suit. If these tactics work successfully, or seem to give promise of a successful issue, long cards of an established suit should be religiously pre The rotary discard is beneath notice. Take the suits in any agreed on order, and discard from the one next to that which partner is to lead, jumping the trump suit. A short trial will prove the inefficiency of this fad. There are other minor fads which are passed over in silence. It is not worth while to stick up wooden whist-men for and continues the suit, there is a division the fun of knocking them over. There remain for examination some modes of play respecting which good judges are not agreed. These cannot be properly denominated fads; they are more rightly named disputed points. It may be premised that when not merely two experts, but two bands of experts, differ as to the best course to adopt in certain cases, there is probably not much to be lost or gained by the adoption of either. What is important, however, is, that partners should know each other's proclivities. Should ace be led from ace and four small of a plain suit, or should the fourth best be led? This has been a vexed question for some years. As whist is played in England (straight, five up, and counting honors), it seems probable that the original lead of ace is best. The game is too short to admit of not making a certain trick (bar trumping), when able. There is, perhaps, one exception, viz., with such strength in trumps as to warrant a trump lead if partner can assist in the long suit headed by ace. But, when duplicate whist on the American method is the game, and every hand is played for what it is worth, the matter assumes quite a different aspect. According to the best modern calculations, for which precise accuracy is not claimed (the problem not lending itself to absolute demonstration), there is a slight advantage, so far as the probability of making tricks in the suit is concerned, in leading the fourth best rather than the ace. This, however, may be offset by other considerations which are of too remote and technical a character to be discussed here. One, however, may be mentioned, viz., that the lead of ace at once declares great strength in the suit, while the lead of fourth best leaves such strength uncertain during the early part of the hand. Hence it may be fairly assumed there is not much to it one way or the other; this bears out the premise that when doctors disagree, both sides may be justified in their opinions. Should original fourth best, or fourth best of those remaining in hand, be led after an original lead of ace, from ace and four or more small ones? Of course, if the leader is one who does not. lead ace originally, cadit quæstio. If he lead ace, of opinion as to the best card with which to proceed. From a careful analysis, made by the present writer, it seems to be a case of six of one and half a dozen of the other, or nearly so, with a very slight advantage (as it appears to him) to the lead of the fourth best remaining in hand. The difference, however, if any, is so trifling, and its determination depends on so many factors, that no one can be said to be wrong in adopting either method. Again, it will be observed, the premise as to opposite opinions of experts is in full vigor. Lastly, the Hamilton lead of ten, from queen, knave, ten, demands attention ; and it is rather an awkward customer to tackle. To begin at the beginning, it should be observed that when a high card (other than ace from ace and small ones) is led originally it is chosen because, however the unknown cards lie, the command will remain on the second or third round with the original leader. Thus king or queen is led from suits headed by king and queen; if the ace is forced out on the first round, the leader has the winning card of the suit. Again, from suits headed by queen, knave, ten, the first lead is queen or ten in preference to a small card. At the worst—that is, if partner has neither ace nor king—the leader will remain with the command on the third round. And for a similar reason, ten is usually led from king, knave, ten, and small, to prevent an adverse combination of ace, queen, nine, from winning three tricks in the suit. Consequently, when a high card is led originally, certain combinations of high cards can be read in the leader's hand. When queen is led originally the combinations may be ace, king, queen, with at least two small; or king, queen, with at least three small; or queen, knave, ten, with one or more small. In no other case is the leader's partner uncertain as to which of three combinations has been opened. It has, therefore, been proposed-and the proposal is certainly ingenious—to lead ten, from queen, knave, ten, and so to reduce the queen leads to two. But in order to render this action effective the lead of ten, from king, knave, ten, etc., must be dropped, and the lead of fourth best substituted. Then, every high-card lead will convey definite information to partner of one of two alternatives; the first lead may often decide between them, owing to the fall of the cards, or to the cards held by partner in the suit led; in default of this, the card chosen for the second lead will always decide. To explain in detail would involve a list of leads and a discussion of the inferences to be drawn from them. The discussion would then become too technical for the general reader, who, if he does not know the leads, can search for them in any text-book. For the whist-player, who already knows the leads, the insertion of them would be superfluous. That the Hamilton idea simplifies the leads, and would be, in the long run, advantageous to the leader and his partner, goes without saying, were it not that the risk is run of losing tricks by leading small from king, knave, ten, etc., which is its necessary complement. The argument then is narrowed to this: Is it better to run the stated risk for the sake of giving valuable information at once? This question is not susceptible of decision by calculation; it can only be determined by a long series of experiments. Those who adopt the Hamilton scheme are of opinion that the occasional failure to obtain command in king, knave, ten suits, is of less importance than the certainty of giving definite information by the first card led; those who reject the Hamilton lead, of course hold the contrary. And, as before observed, when bands of experts differ on a given proposition, the probability is, there is not much to it either way. With the intention of reconciling differences which at present prevail, it was resolved at the Whist League Congress of 1896 to appoint an advisory committee to consider the wisdom (or the reverse) of having a standing committee to examine the various systems of play now in vogue, and to recommend that which in their opinion is the best. The advisory committee has approved the appointment of a standing committee to report at the seventh congress, in 1897. Glendower's calling spirits from the vasty deep is nothing to this. Short suiters will short suit, long suiters will long suit, and faddists will fad without the slightest regard to the recommendations of any committee. It is not to be supposed that because some eminent players advise the lead of card A, others, perhaps less known to fame, will abstain from leading card B, if they deem it more likely to turn out a trick winner. Each man who thinks at all about the game will persevere with his favorite mode of play, and will laugh to scorn the suggestions of any committee whose views do not coincide with his. The committee will undertake the impossible task of trying to persuade everybody to think alike. It is to be hoped their recommendations will not be very specific, as, in the contrary case, they will probably be mortified at finding their expert tender as much honored in the breach as in the observance. THE POINT OF VIEW Ο 3 Use of Tall Buildings. NE of the first things said of New York by M. Ferdinand Brunetière was a thing to be remembered by those who are seeking to lead the studious life among difficult conditions; it was to the effect that the upper stories of the tall modern buildings" high up in the light The Idealistic and air," should be excellent places in which to work. M. Brunetière had had no personal experience of a meditative working existence at those architectural altitudes, ascended to and descended from with the swift motion of lifts, but his imagination discovered to him that a great deal of serenity-a serenity associated with spectacular visions of fine sunrises and sunsets-might invest it. Mr. Fuller, of Chicago, had already made an analogous discovery. This novelist has a fondness for characters that move and have their being at the top of high buildings, housed there like birds that have nested as far out of harm's way as possible, and he seems to find a certain satisfying pictorial quality in their position. These things, we say, are worth remembering. A disinterested observer of New York might declare that a local reason, a reason of a scenic nature, so to put it, militated largely against its becoming an intellectual centre. It is a city unprovided with secluded corners, sheltered harbors amid its rapid currents, where that order of mind which cannot do its work without drawing sustenance from occasional contemplation, and from a certain amount of periodical revery and rumination, can turn for a moment aside from the turmoil and take its bearings and reorganize its forces. Museums and picture-galleries and libraries and historic churches (or even churches not historic) open all day and every day, are such secluded corners, such sheltered harbors; sible parks are, likewise, and green and peaceful suburbs reached by pleasantly insensible degrees. There is nothing "pleasantly insenin the processes of ferriage by which New Yorkers reach most of their suburbs, and of public picture-galleries and museums they cannot yet expect to have any great supply. There are the quiet upper stretches of Central Park, certainly; but, in the circumstances, that is little. Let a man stop to consider by how much the intellectual streams that have poured forth for centuries from some little German university town might have been shorn of their richness but for those "excursions" in the neighborhood which art and nature and custom have combined to make so frequent and easy; let him think what an ally the Sorbonne may have had in apparently unoccupied hours spent alone with a clarified vision of things in the rooms of the Louvre, or under a vine-covered arbor along the Seine's banks; let him realize what our own Boston's literary vitality in its best day may have owed to the gentle placidity of Cambridge's umbrageous streets, so near at hand. The studious spirit, the spirit of investigation, of generalization, and that brooding imaginative activity from which spring great creations in art and letters, demand a fostering local habitat, as well as an atmosphere of congenial minds—a habitat, by the way, which cannot be supplied by the domestic circle only. There are times when a man must leave behind him even the best influences of his daily existence. There should be spots where he may do so. It seems to be absolutely a condition of poise, health, vigor, to one who works and lives in any sort in and by the mind, that he must be able to "get away" sometimes; without elaborate preparation, on the instant's spur, perhaps, for a quarter of an hour, an hour, only, when the necessity comes, or what's more to the purpose-before it comes. In New York, where shall he go? Escape is always possible if one may go far enough and take long enough in the process. But escape at short range, so to say, is what is required by the vast majority of intellectual workers. Has M. Brunetière suggested a solution? Perhaps it is the aërial window of the tall, modern building that is to be the escape, the refreshment. Those wide sweeps which the eye can take over the house-tops to skyey horizons, and which may carry the thought with them, dragging it from its grooves and changing its currents, are to be as restful oases-reached with no more trouble than the raising of a curtain comes to-to the minds of intellectual workers. The gaze of such a worker might range from his perch in midair, at the close of the day, from the many-shipped New York Bay and the converging flow of the two great rivers, to the white buildings of Cathedral Heights. In steadying the nerves, in lifting the aspiration, in purging the soul from trivial obsessions, that flight of the glance and the brain would be no mean substitute for the dim chapel or the silent gallery in which the Old World student and thinker pauses to gather fresh courage, and to tune his forces anew to the key-note of his endeavor. The order of the inspiration may be different; it arouses us to feel that it need not be less potent. If this is the idealistic use of the high modern building, in which, superficially, there appeared to be so little that could ever touch the ideal at any point, M. Brunetière has only perceived what many another student and scholar, born to our life and limited by its conditions, must thankfully perceive hereafter, not without a measure of exaltation. THE FIELD OF ART WOMEN ART STUDENTS' CLUBS. T HE Catherine Lorillard Wolfe Art Students' Club, established in the first days of last November, in Grace House, on Broadway, in this city, is one of the very latest organizations in the cause of the young woman student of art. It owes its existence to Mrs. Wm. W. Newell, who, with her husband, has been interested in the welfare of these students in Paris, and to Dr. Huntington of Grace Church. Two comfortable rooms on the second floor of Grace House, adjoining the rectory, formerly used by missionary and aid societies, were offered for the use of the club for a year, and funds were raised for its equipment. Of these two rooms, cheerfully furnished in red denim, with maroon curtains, the necessary tables, chairs, etc., one serves as a tea-room, in which, every afternoon from four to six, two ladies of the committee are in attendance to pour tea and distribute sandwiches, and the other offers one large table covered with periodicals and works of reference, and a second with a supply of neat stationery duly bearing the club imprint. The members have also the use of the circulating library connected with the church. The rooms are open from 10 A.M. to 10 P.M.; the annual due is $1, and there is no other expense. Within ten days of its organization the club had a list of forty members, and the advantages it offers are so great, and the class it appeals to is so numerous, that it is probable that the present accommodations will be too restricted before the end of the year. For the tenants of small and unwarmed hall bed-rooms, or of apartments occupied by |