“What is a striker?” I asked the landlord at the first opportunity.
“Oh! to rope in fat fellows for the gamblers; they don’t do that themselves, but get somebody else. I don’t know as it is so; all I know is, they don’t have no business, not till late at night; they never stir out till late at night, and nobody knows how they live, and that’s what I expect they do. Fellows that come into town flush, you know—sold out their cotton and are flush—they always think they must see everything, and try their hands at everything—they get hold of ’em and bring ’em in to the gamblers, and get ’em tight for ’em, you know.”
“How’s —— got along since his father died?” asked Mr. S.
“Well, ——’s been unfortunate. Got mad with his overseer; thought he was lazy and packed him off; then he undertook to oversee for himself, and he was unfortunate. Had two bad crops. Finally the sheriff took about half his niggers. He tried to work the plantation with the rest, but they was old, used-up hands, and he got mad that they would not work more, and tired o’ seein’ ’em, and ’fore the end of the year he sold ’em all.”
Another young man, whom he inquired about, had had his property managed for him by a relative till he came of age, and had been sent North to college. When he returned and got into his own hands, the first year he ran it in debt $16,000. The income from it being greatly reduced under his management, he had put it back in the care of his relative, but continued to live upon it. “I see,” continued our host, “every time any of their teams pass from town they fetch a barrel or a demijohn. There is a parcel of fellows, who, when they can’t liquor anywhere else, always go to him.”
“But how did he manage to spend so much,” I inquired, “the first year after his return, as you said,—in gambling?”
“Well, he gambled some, and run horses. He don’t know anything about a horse, and, of course, he thinks he knows everything. Those fellows up at Natchez would sell him any kind of a tacky for four or five hundred dollars, and then after he’d had him a month, they’d ride out another and make a bet of five or six hundred dollars they’d beat him. Then he’d run with ’em, and of course he’d lose it.”
“But sixteen thousand dollars is a large sum of money to be worked off even in that way in a year,” I observed.
“Oh, he had plenty of other ways. He’d go into a bar-room, and get tight and commence to break things. They’d let him go on, and the next morning hand him a bill for a hundred dollars. He thinks that’s a smart thing, and just laughs and pays it, and then treats all around again.”
By one and the other, many stories were then told of similar follies of young men. Among the rest, this:—