"A little more potato, please. Thanks, I am hungry, and that's no dream.
"Well, as I was saying, one day at the bath I meets a young guy in the cooling-room, and he springs a system to beat roulette, which figures out a mortal cinch. I do n't remember the system now, but I recollect we tried it ourselves on a private wheel, and it could n't lose. The only trouble with it was that with luck against us we might get soaked in doubling up before we win. But we made up our minds to begin it small, and be content with a little profit.
"We had a bank-roll of $600—four from me and two from him. I was to have two-thirds of the profits, because I risked two thirds of the stuff.
"It was Thursday night we set to try it. Thursday was always my Jonah day. I wanted to wait until Saturday, but he did n't want to wait that long. I was to do the playing while he kept tab and told me what to do each whirl.
"Well, we buys a stack of a hundred chips, and runs them up to two hundred and fifty. I says, 'let's quit,' but he was stuck on pushing our luck while it came our way. We played along for half an hour, and hardly varied $50; then, all at once, we 'struck the slide,' and I had to buy another stack. We lost that; bought another and lost it, and stood in the hole $300.
"All the while we were playing the system, and I had a 'hunch' that if we kept on it would pull us out. So I starts to buy another stack when Kendall—his name was Arthur Kendall—stops me and says he wants to quit. Quit, with half our money gone! I was so sore I could have smashed him. And while we stood there arguing, without a nickel on the board, the wheel was rollin' dead our way—enough to have put us ahead of the game.
"I gave him his hundred, and told him to 'take it and chase himself'—I was through with him. I stuck to the game until five in the morning. They got every cent I had in the world.
"Well, I went to the hotel and went to bed, but I lay there wondering how I was going to dig up the money to pay my bill, and give me a start when my luck turned again. The longer I wondered the tougher it seemed. Finally I ordered an absinthe frappé—it kind of gave me a new idea. I 'd put up a song to my Uncle Giles, and try to make a little 'touch.'
"I had n't seen or heard of him for half a dozen years, but I thought after all we had done for him, he could n't hardly lay down on his nephew.
"Well, I wrote him a letter that would have brought tears to a pair of glass eyes. Say, it was the literary effort of my life. Of course, I did n't just stick to the facts. Then I goes down and gets me a little breakfast, and begins to feel like myself again.