MR. PRESTON
"Now I'll tell you," he said growing suddenly confidential. "There 's a 'hot thing' coming off to-day, and I want you to put a swell bet on it. They've been laying dead with it all the meeting—pulled his head off his last two outs—but to-day they 've got him in a good soft spot, and they 're going to 'put it over the plate.'"
"Checkers," I said, "I want you to understand, once and for all, that I am no gambler. I went to the races Derby Day, as I would go to any other show, and now and then I play a little quarter limit game with my friends. But even that I do n't approve of. I tell you I consider gambling the most insidious of all the vices, and it's on just that point that I want to talk to you.
"I want you to give up that kind of life, get a position in some good house, and begin to make a man of yourself. I tell you you 're too bright a boy to be throwing yourself away as you are. Suppose your 'good thing' wins to-day—suppose you do make some money on it—you will lose it on something else to-morrow. You are simply living from hand to mouth, growing older every day with nothing to show for the time you have spent.
"Now, what I propose is simply this. I shall look about among all my friends in the wholesale lines, and try to find you a position where you can learn some business from the beginning. If you are industrious and quick it will be but a comparatively short time when you 'll have a chance to go on the road, or something of that sort. Now, what do you say?"
I can't say that Checkers seemed wholly delighted. He looked anywhere but into my eyes and finally said he "would like a job, but he did n't believe I could get him one."
I replied that I was sure I could, as my uncle was a wholesale dry-goods merchant, and I had several friends who were heads of departments in other large stores of various kinds.
"Well, we 'll try it and see," he said resignedly, "but I 'll tell you just about how it is. A guy goes into a wholesale house and he starts at the bottom in some department. He gets up at the break of day, and he works like the devil after a Christian. If he has good luck he do n't get 'fired,' but he never gets a raise on earth, unless the mug above him dies, or breaks down his health and has to quit.
"Why, I knew a joker who worked in a certain big store in this town for fifteen years. He lived somewhere way out in the suburbs, and he told me he had to get down so early, that when he was coming home at night he used to meet himself starting down in the morning. Well, one day some one gave him a pass to the Harlem track—one Saturday afternoon. He went to the races for the first time in his life. I got ahold of him and made him win three hundred dollars with a five-dollar bill, and you ought to have heard the talk he put up. 'Has this game been going on all this time,' he says, 'with me doing the Rip Van Winkle act? Why, I 'd be worth all kinds of money now, if I 'd had any sense.' And Monday he went down and threw up his job, and started in to play the ponies. Of course he went broke, but not long ago he struck a streak, and made a killin'. He started in to making a book, and now he's got a stable with five good sprinters, and a twenty thousand dollar bank-roll. If he had stuck to his job in that store, he 'd have probably had nervous prostration by this time."