We were coming out of Chicago at one time on the Burlington & Quincy Railroad, and had downed some suckers, when one of them began to kick like a bad mule. He told the conductor that old Jack had robbed him out of his money. The conductor told him he could do nothing except turn the gambler over to the police at the next station. He locked the doors to keep Jack from jumping off, and the sucker quieted down, thinking he would be O. K. when he reached the station. I saw two gentlemen from Quincy in the car that I was acquainted with, so I wrote a note to them, requesting that they tell the kicker he was in the same boat with the gambler, as he would be fined just as much as the man who got his money, and that the fine in Illinois was $100. The result was the fellow hid himself, and when the conductor pointed old Jack out he could not find the kicker. We got off with the officers, and as no one was on hand to testify, of course we only had to treat until the next train arrived.
WILLIAM JONES. (CANADA BILL.)
Canada Bill—peace to his ashes—is dead. He died in Reading, Penn., about ten years ago, and, poor fellow, he did not leave enough money of all the many thousands he had won to bury him. The Mayor of Reading had him decently interred, and when his friends in Chicago learned the fact, they raised money enough to pay all the funeral expenses and erect a monument to the memory of one who was, while living, a friend to the poor. I was in New Orleans at the time of his death, and did not hear the sad news for some months after.
I hope the old fellow is happy in a better land. If kind acts and a generous heart can atone for the sin of gambling, and entitle men to a mansion in the skies, Canada Bill surely got one, "where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest."
There never lived a better hearted man. He was liberal to a fault. I have known him to turn back when we were on the street and give to some poor object we had passed. Many a time I have seen him walk up to a Sister of Charity and make her a present of as much as $50, and when we would speak of it, he would say:
"Well, George, they do a great deal for the poor, and I think they know better how to use the money than I do."
Once I saw him win $200 from a man, and shortly after his little boy came running down the cabin, Bill called the boy up and handed him the $200 and told him to give it to his mother.
He was a man, take him for all in all, that possessed many laudable traits of character. He often said suckers had no business with money. He had some peculiar traits. While he was a great man at monte, he was a fool at short cards. I have known men who knew this to travel all over the country after Bill, trying to induce him to play cards with them. He would do it, and this is what kept him poor.
Mason Long, the converted gambler, says of William Jones (Canada
Bill):
"The confidence men and monte players were in clover. Among them was the most notorious and successful thief who ever operated in this country, Canada Bill. He was a large man, with a nose highly illuminated by the joint action of whisky and heat. Bill squandered his money very lavishly, and drank himself to death in about a year after the incident I have related. He died a pauper."