score is a very important incident of the game of Auction, and to
keep it properly requires considerable care and skill.

The figures frequently run into high numbers on both sides, and when
the rubber continues during three hotly contested games, they become
quite voluminous.

The score-sheet should be left on the table, and the writing on it
should be of such size that it can be seen at a glance. This saves time
and trouble, as it relieves the players from the necessity of asking
the state of the score.

In some clubs two scores are kept, so that, in the only too probable
contingency of a mistake being made, it may invariably be detected.
This, however, is unnecessary, and at times confusing. The extra sheet
is also apt to prove annoying, because of the space it occupies upon
the table. One score is quite sufficient, if it be competently kept,
and each entry, as well as the additions, verified.

There are two totally different types of Auction score-sheets. The one
which is used in perhaps ninety per cent. of the private games, and,
strange as it may seem, in many clubs, has absolutely no excuse for its
existence, except that it was the first to be introduced and has the
reputation of being universally used in foreign countries. It requires
scoring above and below the line, which is a most cumbersome and
dilatory proposition. Keeping tally by this method involves, at the end
of a rubber, long mathematical problems, which, as the scorer is then
in a hurry, frequently result in serious, and at times undiscovered,
mistakes.

The modern system adopted in the up-to-date clubs, in which the game
has received its most scientific development, and in the highest class
of social games, does away with the antiquated methods and exacting
mathematical problems of the above- and below-the-line system, by using
a form of score-sheet which allows and encourages the scorer to
mentally compute simple sums during the progress of the rubber. By the
elimination of complicated figuring, it minimizes the opportunity for
mistake, and delay at the end of the rubber.

All players are doubtless familiar with the old system of above-and
below-the-line scoring, but only three classes now use it:

A. Those who have never had the modern system and its advantages
called to their attention.

B. Those who believe that, having once become accustomed to any
method, it should never be changed for a better.

C. Those who bel