me is 41 points, the object of the play being to
win the cards which have a special value. These are, with their values:
knave of trumps 11, ace of trumps 4, king of trumps 3, queen of trumps
2, ten of trumps 10. All other cards have no counting value. As the ten
can be taken by any other honour the object is to "catch the ten."

CATECHISM (from Gr. [Greek: katechein], teach by word of mouth), a
compendium of instruction (particularly of religious instruction)
arranged in the form of questions and answers. The custom of
catechizing, common to all civilized antiquity, was followed in the
schools of Judaism and in the Early Church, where it helped to preserve
the Gospel narrative (see CATECHUMEN).

The catechism as we know it is intended primarily for children and
uneducated persons. Its aim is to instruct, and it differs from a creed
or confession in not being in the first instance an act of worship or a
public profession of belief. The first regular catechisms seem to have
grown out of the usual oral teaching of catechumens, and to have been
compiled in the 8th and 9th centuries. Among them the work of Notker
Labeo and of Kero, both monks of St Gall, and that of Ottfried of
Weissenburg in Alsace deserve mention. But it is not until the first
stirrings of revolt against the hierarchy, which preceded the
Reformation, that they became at all widespread or numerous. The
Waldenses of Savoy and France, the _Brethren_ (small communities of
evangelical dissenters from the medieval faith) of Germany, and the
_Unitas Fratrum_ of Bohemia all used the same catechism (one that was
first printed in 1498, and which continued to be published till 1530)
for the instruction of their children. It was based on St Augustine's
_Enchiridion_, and considers (a) Faith, i.e. the Creed, (b) Hope, i.e.
the Lord's Prayer, and (c) Love, i.e. the Decalogue.

The age of the Reformation gave a great stimulus to the production of
catechisms. This was but natural at a time when the invention of
printing had thrown the Bible open to all, and carried the war of
religious opinion from the schools into the streets. The adherents of
the "old" and the "new" religions alike had to justify their views to
the unlearned as well as to the learned, and to give in simple formulas
their reasons for the faith that was in them. Moreover, in the universal
unrest and oversetting of all authority, Christianity itself was in
danger of perishing, not only as the resu