CANADA BILL.
Canada Bill was a character one might travel the length and breadth of the land and never find his match, or run across his equal. Imagine a medium-sized, chicken-headed, tow-haired sort of man with mild blue eyes, and a mouth nearly from ear to ear, who walked with a shuffling, half-apologetic sort of a gait, and who, when his countenance was in repose, resembled an idiot. For hours he would sit in his chair, twisting his hair in little ringlets. Then I used to say, "Bill is studying up some new devilment." His clothes were always several sizes too large, and his face was as smooth as a woman's and never had a particle of hair on it. Canada was a slick one. He had a squeaking, boyish voice, and awkward, gawky manners, and a way of asking fool questions and putting on a good natured sort of a grin, that led everybody to believe that he was the rankest kind of a sucker—the greenest sort of a country jake. Woe to the man who picked him up, though. Canada was, under all his hypocritical appearance, a regular card shark, and could turn monte with the best of them. He was my partner for a number of years, and many are the suckers we roped in, and many the huge roll of bills we corralled. He was an arrant coward, though, and would not fight a woman if she said boo. His right name was Jones. When Tom Brown and Holly Chappell traveled with me, the four of us made a quartette that could give most any crowd any sort of monte they wanted. Brown got $240,000 for his share of the profit, and Chappell went North with his portion, and is to-day as poor as myself. Bill never weighed over 130 pounds, and was always complaining of pains in his head. I always found him honest to a fault; and when the poor fellow died, I felt that I had lost one of my truest friends.