Later on in the game, Governor Carver called a bet of $27 worth of wampum made by Massasoit, with his daughter Priscilla, and lost on eights and treys.
Longfellow, in his beautiful poem, describes what followed:
Then from her father’s tent,
Tripping with gentle feet,
Priscilla, the Puritan
Maiden, stepped. All that she
Knew was obedience;
Ready to sacrifice
All for her father’s word,
Priscilla, the dutiful,
Gentle and meek as the
Dove. As the violet
Modest and drooping-eyed,
Up from his poker game
Gazed Massasoit,
Chief of the Tammanies,
Brave as a lion. Up
Gazed Massasoit.
Then, as a roebuck springs,
Swift as an arrow, or
Leapes Couchee-Couchee, the
Panther, or Buzzy the
Rattlesnake springs from his
Coils in the sumac bush,
So Massasoit got a
Move on his chieftainlets;
Got to his Trilby’s and
Fled to the wildness.
Rushing through snowdrifts, and
Breaking down saplings, till
Far in the distance he
Looked back and saw that she
Followed not far behind;
Priscilla the sprinter was
Not very far behind;
Cutting a swath through the
Snow with her number fives;
Right on his trail was she;
Right on his track with a
New-woman look on her;
Longing and hungry look,
Look of a new-born hope,
Hope for a man that might
Be her own tootsicums.
Then Massasoit, the
Chief of the Tammanies,
Gave a loud yell that woke
Wise-Kuss the owl, and woke
Kat-a-Waugh-Kew-is, the
Ring-streaked coon, and woke
Snakes in the forest.
Then Massasoit was
Gone like an arrow that
Speeds from the hunter; he
Only touched ground on the
High elevations; he
Fled from the land of the
Pilgrims and Puritans,
Fled from Priscilla the
Puritan maiden;
Fled from Priscilla who
Wanted to tickle him
Under the chin and call
Him her sweet toodleums.
Thus Massasoit, the
Indian warrior,
Laid down four aces and
Took to the wilderness,
Bluffed by a maiden.
Laid down a jack-pot, and
Lost his percentage.
Lost it to treys and eights,
And to the forty years
Lived by Priscilla;
Priscilla, the maiden.
(Houston Daily Post, Thursday morning, November 28, 1895.)
When the Train Comes In
Outline Sketches at the Grand Central Depot
Next to a poker game for a place to contemplate human nature in its most aggravated form, comes a great railway passenger station. Statistics show that nine-tenths of the human race lose their senses when traveling on the cars, and give free demonstrations of the fact at every station. Traveling by rail brings out all a man’s latent characteristics and propensities. There is something in the rush of the train, the smell of the engine smoke, the yell of the butcher, the volapuk cries of the brakeman and the whizzing scenery visible from the windows that causes the average human being to shake off the trammels of convention and custom, and act accordingly.
When the train stops at the depot and unloads its passengers, they proceed at once to adopt for their style of procedure the idea expressed by the French phrase sauve qui peut, or in polite language—“the devil take the hindmost.”