Foster's Book

According to an Iowa State Colege bulletin, Iowa farmers lost 525,000,000 in 1914 owing to weeds. R. F. Foster, famed card player, jotted this fact down; and it became recently the point of departure for a chapter in a book on religion. How many millions of dollars does society lose because of human weeds! So, with the most orthodox technique, he develops his subject.

In manner orthodox, Mr. Foster is in matter heretical. But even the heresy is simply orthodox agnosticism, which has nourished since science began to reach the masses. Mr. Foster's Coming Faith is simply a belief in the perfectibility of human nature through human intelligence--or, in two words, faith in man, neutrality towards a possible Supreme Power, denial of Christianity. But Mr. Foster would be the last to suggest that his book is a contribution to philosophy. It is written obviously for laymen by a layman.

The raison d'etre of the book is the author, for R. F. Foster is a unique character. Almost what Hoyle* was to the 18th century, Mr. Foster is to the 20th (particularly within the radius of Manhattan newspapers). He was 40 years old when he became "card editor of the New York Sun. Soon famed as authority on auction bridge, his production of literature on cards within the last 20 years has been enormous. The "rule of eleven owes its origin to him. Men by the thousand and women by the ten thousand have applied themselves to study of his works with an intensity which would have created a race of theologians had it been devoted to biblical lore. Perhaps the daily bridge women have been asking him questions about religion. If so, that is the significance of the book.

*Edmond Hoyle (1672-1769) first systematized the laws of whist, and it became a byword: "according to Hoyle." His treatises also include rules for quadrille, piquet, quinze, vingt-et-un, casino, put, all fours, Pope Joan, thirty-one, brag, commerce, Earl of Coventry, lansquenet, ecarte, cribbage, five & ten, faro rouge et noir, matrimony, cuchre, poker or bluff, reversi, connexions, speculation, snip snap snore 'em, Boston, catch the ten, lift smoke, lotto, chess, backgammon, draughts, hazard, dominoes, cricket, billiards, tennis, golf, horse racing, cocking, twenty deck, poker, archery.