CAUGHT A DEFAULTER.
It is a singular fact that most of the men who turn out embezzlers, defaulters, and dishonest clerks, sooner or later lose their money gambling. Oftentimes it is their love of cards that induces them to commit the crimes they do. I very well recollect a number of instances of this kind, and one in particular. I was going up the river on board the J. M. White, when I received a card requesting me to call at room No. 14. The name was written in a business hand, so I knew the card was from a gentleman. When I knocked a voice said, "Come in!" Upon entering, I saw a young man that I knew very well, who was a bookkeeper in one of the largest cotton houses in New Orleans. I at once inquired what he was keeping himself locked up in his room for, and he replied, "I am afraid to show up in the cabin, but I will tell you all about it before you get off;" as he knew that I rarely went above Baton Rouge.
Late at night he came out of his state-room so completely disguised that I did not know him. We took several drinks together, until he began to feel jolly; then I asked him what he was up to. "Well," he replied, "I have been playing the bank and poker for some time, and have been several thousand dollars loser, and I knew sooner or later the books would be overhauled, so I collected some money and skipped. Here I am, and what to do I don't know, nor where I shall wind up."
"Oh, there are plenty of people in the same box that you are," I said. "Don't flatter yourself that you are the only one who has taken money; but perhaps they will now go through the books, and, discovering the deficit, arrest you."
"Yes, but I don't intend to be caught. I think I will go to Canada.
I am now traveling under an assumed name."
"Are you sure none of the discharging clerks saw you when you came aboard?"
"I was in this disguise, and came over two boats until I reached this one, and having a friend with me, he secured a room for two."
"How much did you get away with?"
"Seventy-two hundred dollars."
Which he had collected the day before he left. He proposed going out and shaking the dice for the drinks. I stuck him again and again, and at last he proposed to shake for five dollars. That suited me; and when he proposed to shake for ten dollars, I was ready.
Then I began to work on him, for I thought I might as well have that money as anybody, as I knew he would gamble, and never reach Canada with it. I suggested that we go to my state-room, as the bar-room was too public a place, and he acceded. In half and hour we were throwing for a hundred dollars a throw, and when I quit I was $4,100 ahead, as I knew that it would not do to win it all from him, so I told him that I was sleepy and tired. We took a drink at the bar, and he drank so heavily that I was obliged to tell the porter to see him to his room.
I knew that he must have money to go out of the country, and it would not do to break him, as I would then have to loan him money. We were then twenty-five miles from Baton Rouge, and I slept on a couple of chairs in the cabin, and was awakened by my partner, who wanted to know if I wanted to sleep forever—as I had retired with him, but, unable to sleep, had risen. When I told my partner of the roll I had made, he said that I was the luckiest man he ever saw; but I told him it was no luck to hold out the dice most of the time.
When we reached New Orleans the detectives were hunting him high and low, but they thought he had gone out on one of the trains, and I never made them any the wiser. When I inquired if I had seen him, I replied: "Oh, such fellows wouldn't get on a boat where I was." From that day to this I have never seen him; but I think he went West, as when he was under the influence of liquor he talked a great deal of that part of the country.