§ 327 The Personal Touch Was Lacking
Among gamblers there is a saying, and a true one, that no matter how wise a guy may be in his own line he’s always a sucker at some other fellow’s game. The expert confidence man goes against the crooked roulette wheel. The promoter of fixed foot-races blows his loot on faro.
It has remained for a sporting person whose specialty is poker to explain why, in his own case, he fails to garner any profits when he invades a kindred field of endeavor. He went to Belmont track one day to play the races. When he returned home in the evening he was penniless. The hand book-makers had stripped him of his last dollar.
His wife took him to task.
“You certainly are a boob,” she said. “Every time you go to the track you come home cleaned out. Why is it you always lose there when you always can win at cards?”
“Well,” he said, “I’ve been thinking about that very thing myself, and I guess the answer is that I don’t shuffle the horses.”
§ 328 Straight from the Scriptures
Several versions of this story are current but the one I like best of all goes like this:
There was a colored preacher who served a term in state’s prison in West Virginia for horse-stealing. After his release he changed his name and moved to Alabama. There he became the pastor of a prosperous flock. He figured that his past life was entirely buried. None of the congregation had the slightest suspicion that he was an ex-convict, and he hoped to go on until the end of his days enjoying the confidence of the community.
But one Sunday as he entered the pulpit, he suffered a distressing shock. Sitting in a front pew was a black man he instantly recognized as a former cell-mate in the penitentiary. That wasn’t the worst of it. He could tell by the expression on the other’s face that the latter also had recognized him. He had a feeling either that he must submit to blackmail or suffer exposure and lose his present charge. The distracted parson did some quick thinking. Then he opened the Good Book, fixed his eyes meaningly upon the countenance of the interloper, cleared his throat and began as follows: