“‘My wildest fancies have got exceeded,’ says he. ‘Do you want to hear a weird and wilful tale of woe?’
“‘Of course not,’ I says.
“‘All right,’ says he. ‘I’ll tell you.’
“‘Well,’ says he, ‘here’s the way she come up. I’m a lost one in the wilderness out at a telegraph station. I see where I get my talents buried in a napkin made of sole-leather, hence I get handy with a deck of cards in front of the lookin’-glass. My work is so good after a while that I lose my whole salary to myself, and yet watchin’ careful all the time in the lookin’-glass. I’m fit to handle the steamboat trade, but I aims higher: I buy me a ticket to Noo York and hunt up a place where they hew to the line, let the chips fall where they will.
“‘“What’s your noo box o’ tricks?” says the Murphy that run the joint.
“‘“Well,” says I, “nothin’ new, but the good old reliable line. The world is my oyster, as Hamlet says, and I’ve got openers.”
“‘“H’m,” says he, makin’ a fat man’s shift in his chair and pushin’ his seegar into the other corner of his face. “I want you to understand this is a dead-straight game run here, my bucko—yet you look good—s’pose I’ve come in an’ laid thirty cents or so on the king, coppered. Lift the joker out of that deck an’ le’s see what happens.”
“‘He threw me a pack and I riffled and boxed ’em.
“‘“Why, you lose,” says I, much surprised as the king came out open on the turn.
“‘“And not so worse,” says he. “Play on!”