"It was while I was making this little journey, hitting a high place only once in a while, that I came to the determination that for a man who could not fight shy of bull-head luck any better than I could, the game of draw poker was altogether too exciting and spirit-ruffling for health and peace of mind; and I haven't departed from that determination down to the present moment of time."
[CARD-PLAYING ON OCEAN STEAMERS.]
Some of the Crafty Dodges Resorted to by the Professional Sharpers Who "Work the Liners."
An Englishman who travels a good deal was generalizing at one of the clubs last night on the subject of the card sharpers who devote themselves exclusively to the ocean steamers.
"It's a marvel to me," he said, "that the American steamship people, or the police, or somebody, can't drive these sharpers off the American steamers. It's nothing short of disgraceful. Must be something wrong somewhere. Can't be collusion, I don't suppose, or"——
"Oh, come now, stow that, mate," said an American who does a bit of traveling himself. "If they're not worse, and more of them, on the English transatlantic steamers, I'll turn British subject, take the Queen's shilling, put on a red coat, and fight all the naked blacks from Dahomey to"——
"Humbug! We don't fight naked blacks. We only subdue them, that's all. Punitive expeditions, you know. But about these card sharpers on the American ships. Why, it's simply barbarous, you know, to permit them to mingle with gentlemen as they do. And the worst of it is, the cads get themselves up like gentlemen, so how's a man to know"——
"Must have been hit yourself last trip over, old man," put in the American.
The Englishman got red and flustered, as Englishmen will when compelled to admit that the universe is not entirely an open book to them.
"Well, yes, I did," he admitted gamely. "Not very hard, though. I think twenty guineas would about cover it. But it wasn't the money so much. It was the way the thing was done—positively beastly, I say. Man was introduced to me on sailing day on the other side by an American I know well. Good fellow, too. Man had been introduced to him by somebody else, and so on, so that it would take a Scotland Yard man to trace how he came to know and rob most of us coming across. Worst of it was, I myself presented the chap to any number of fellows I knew on the ship, and all of 'em got bit more or less, and all of 'em looked at me reproachfully when it came out after we landed that the chap was a sharper, just as I looked reproachfully at the man who"——