IT WAS COLD.
There are many occasions when a shrewd man can get in his work on gamblers, it matters not how smart they are, provided his conduct is not suspicious, and his ambition so vaulting that when it leaps it is not lost upon the other side. I shall never forget the trip I made down the river from Louisville in the good old ante-bellum days. When we reached the mouth of the Cumberland River, Anderson Waddell, who is now one of Louisville's wealthiest citizens, and William Cheatham came on board bound for the New Orleans races. Charles Burns and Edward Ryan, better known to the sporting fraternity as "Dad Ryan," were along with me. Both Waddell and Cheatham were gentlemen of good repute in Nashville, and it was not long before they proposed a game of poker. Burns and Ryan both sat in the game, and at the time they were unknown to the gentlemen. The wine flowed freely, and everybody felt very happy, and I resolved it was about time for me to go to the bar and procure some cards similar to those they were playing with. It did not take me long to run up three good hands, and, sitting down by Ryan, I laid the cold deck in Ryan's lap. It was not long before the cold deck came up, and then the boys began to bet lively, each getting in a few hundred. Then Waddell commenced to smell a rat, and turning to Cheatham, said, "Hold on, Bill, don't go in any deeper, as I think this deck of cards does not feel as warm as it did a few minutes ago."
"Oh, no," responded Bill, "I hardly believe there is anything wrong."
At last they came to a call; then they knew that they had got the worst of it, yet they never uttered a word or make a kick, and when we reached New Orleans they confessed that the boys had made suckers of them. Poor Bill is now dead, and Waddell, who is still living, would, if asked, laugh and say that he had long ago learned not to hunt up poker games on steamboats.