it in your face. Such authorities
as Fred Perry and Dick Ling claim that the proper thing to do is to
arise gracefully from your chair and sing something plaintive, in
minor chords. This generally brings your partner back to earth,
because nine times out of ten he is only temporarily crazy with the
heat.

Don't lead the ten of clubs by mistake for the ace of trumps and
then get mad and jump seventeen feet in the air because they refuse
to let you pull it back.

In order to jump seventeen feet in the air you would have to go
through the room upstairs, and how do you know whose room it is?

There, Gladys, if you follow these rules I think you can play the
game of auction bridge without putting a bruise on the law
regulating the income tax.

P. S. When you play for money always bite the coin to see if it
means as much as it looks.

I hope Gladys wasn't offended.

She hasn't sent me even a postal card containing thanks and a view of
Chestnut Street.

CHAPTER IX

YOU SHOULD WORRY ABOUT GETTING THE GRIP

Say! did you ever put on the goggles and go joy-riding with an attack of
grip?

It has all other forms of amusement hushed to a lullaby--take it from
Uncle Hank.

As a Bad Boy the grip has every other disease slapped to a sobbing
stand-still.

It's dollars to pretzels that the grip germ is the brainiest little bug
that was ever chased by a doctor.

I was sitting quietly at home reading Maeterlinck on Auction Bridge when
suddenly I began to sneeze like a Russian regiment answering roll call.

Friend wife was deep in the mysteries of Ibsen's latest achievement,
"The Rise and Fall of the Hobble Skirt," but she politely acknowledged
my first sneeze with the customary "Gesundheit!"

Then she trailed along bravely with her responses for ten or fifteen
minutes, but it was no use--I had more sneezes in my system than there
are "Gesundheits!" in the entire German nation, including
principalities, possessions across the sea, and the Musical Union.

"John," she ventured after a time, "you are getting a cold!"

"I'm not getting it," I sniffed; "I have it now."

What a mean, contemptible little creature a grip germ must be.
Absolutely without any of the finer instincts, it sneaks into people's
systems disguised as an ordinary cold. It isn't on the level, like
appendicitis or inflammatory rheumatism, both of which are brave and
fearl