“Who do you suppose marked that on it?” Collinson said thoughtfully.
“Golly!” his host exclaimed. “It won’t do you much good to wonder about that!”
Collinson frowned, continuing to stare at the marked dollar. “I guess not, but really I should like to know.”
“I would, too,” Smithie said. “I been thinkin’ about it. Might ’a’ been somebody in Seattle or somebody in Ipswich, Mass., or New Orleans or St. Paul. How you goin’ to tell? Might ’a’ been a woman; might ’a’ been a man. The way I guess it out, this poor boob, whoever he was, well, prob’ly he’d had good times for a while, and maybe carried this dollar for a kind of pocket piece, the way some people do, you know. Then he got in trouble—or she did, whichever it was—and got flat broke and had to spend this last dollar he had—for something to eat, most likely. Well, he thought a while before he spent it, and the way I guess it out, he said to himself, he said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘most of the good luck I’ve enjoyed lately,’ he said, ‘it’s been while I had this dollar on me. I got to kiss ’em good-bye now, good luck and good dollar together; but maybe I’ll get ’em both back some day, so I’ll just mark the wish on the dollar, like this: Luck hurry back to me! That’ll help some, maybe, and anyhow I’ll know my luck dollar if I ever do get it back.’ That’s the way I guess it out, anyhow. It’s funny how some people like to believe luck depends on some little thing like that.”
“Yes, it is,” Collinson assented, still brooding over the coin.
The philosophic Smithie extended his arm across the table, collecting the cards to deal them, for the “hand” was finished. “Yes, sir, it’s funny,” he repeated. “Nobody knows exactly what luck is, but the way I guess it out, it lays in a man’s believin’ he’s in luck, and some little object like this makes him kind of concentrate his mind on thinkin’ he’s goin’ to be lucky, because of course you often know you’re goin’ to win, and then you do win. You don’t win when you want to win, or when you need to; you win when you believe you’ll win. I don’t know who was the dummy that said, ‘Money’s the root of all evil’; but I guess he didn’t have too much sense! I suppose if some man killed some other man for a dollar, the poor fish that said that would let the man out and send the dollar to the chair. No, sir; money’s just as good as it is bad; and it’ll come your way if you feel it will; so you take this marked dollar o’ mine——”
But here this garrulous and discursive guest was interrupted by immoderate protests from several of his colleagues. “Cut it out!” “My Lord!” “Do something!” “Smithie! Are you ever goin’ to deal?”
“I’m goin’ to shuffle first,” he responded, suiting the action to the word, though with deliberation, and at the same time continuing his discourse. “It’s a mighty interesting thing, a piece o’ money. You take this dollar, now: Who’s it belonged to? Where’s it been? What different kind o’ funny things has it been spent for sometimes? What funny kind of secrets do you suppose it could ’a’ heard if it had ears? Good people have had it and bad people have had it: why, a dollar could tell more about the human race—why, it could tell all about it!”
“I guess it couldn’t tell all about the way you’re dealin’ these cards,” said the man with the green shade. “You’re mixin’ things all up.”
“I’ll straighten ’em all out then,” said Smithie cheerfully. “I knew of a twenty-dollar bill once; a pickpocket prob’ly threw it in the gutter to keep from havin’ it found on him when they searched him, but anyway a woman I knew found it and sent it to her young sister out in Michigan to take some music lessons with, and the sister was so excited she took this bill out of the letter and kissed it. That’s where they thought she got the germ she died of a couple o’ weeks later, and the undertaker got the twenty-dollar bill, and got robbed of it the same night. Nobody knows where it went then. They say, ‘Money talks.’ Golly! If it could talk, what couldn’t it tell? Nobody’d be safe. I got this dollar now, but who’s it goin’ to belong to next, and what’ll he do with it? And then after that! Why for years and years and years it’ll go on from one pocket to another, in a millionaire’s house one day, in some burglar’s flat the next, maybe, and in one person’s hand money’ll do good, likely, and in another’s it’ll do harm. We all want money; but some say it’s a bad thing, like that dummy I was talkin’ about. Lordy! Goodness or badness, I’ll take all anybody——”