The American has many clubs, but is not entirely at home in them. He uses them as places in which to play poker or whist, to dine his men friends, and in a great measure because it is the "proper thing." At many a room is set apart for the national game of poker--a fascinating game to the player who wins. Poker was never mentioned in my presence that some did not make a joke on a supposed Chinaman named Ah Sin; but the obscurity of the joke and my lack of knowledge regarding American literature caused the point to elude me at first, which was true of many jokes. The Americans are preeminently practical jokers, and the ends to which they go is beyond belief. I heard of jokes which, if perpetrated in China, would have resulted in the loss of some one's head. To illustrate this, in the Spanish-American War the camps at Tampa were besieged with newspaper reporters, and one from a large journal was constantly trying to secure secret news by entertaining certain officers with wine and cigars; so they determined to get rid of his importunities, and what is known as a "job" in America was "put up" on him. He was told that Colonel ---- had a detailed map of the forthcoming battle, and if he could get the officer intoxicated he doubtless could secure the map. This looked very easy to the correspondent, so the story goes, and he dropped into the colonel's tent one night with a basket of wine, and began to celebrate its arrival from some friends. Soon the colonel pretended to become communicative, and the map was brought out and finally loaned to the correspondent under the promise that it would not be used. This was sufficient. The correspondent hied him to his tent, wrote an article and sent the map to his paper in one of the large cities, where it was duly published. It proved to be what dressmakers call a "Butterick pattern," a maze of lines for cutting out dresses for women. The lines looked like roads, and the practical jokers had merely added towns and forts and bridges here and there.