And if you have no caps, which you sometimes haven’t, you must just
find something else to play with. Buttons, for instance--everybody
knows the old game of BUTTONS (or BANG-OUT, or BANGINGS) where you
pitch them against a wall and have to measure the intervals between
them with the span of your fingers and always end up with a row about
cheating distances. You can make a fine gamble out of BUTTONS if you
play the same game with halfpennies; you can win quite a lot, when
there are no coppers about....
But nobody need play for money unless they like, and, anyhow, I don’t
care to talk about these things. Because, of course, our boys don’t
gamble, and there’s an end to it. They never try to make money,
like some do, out of silly tricks like BRAG, and BOOKS, and SPIN UP
THE PENNY, and RAPS ON THE BUGLE, and NAP, and TRUMP, and BEAT YOUR
NEIGHBOUR OUT OF DOORS, and MY BIRDIE WHISTLES, and POLISH BANKER,
and DONKEY, and TUPPENCE YOU HEAD IT, and PITCHING UP THE LINE (double
or single), and SHOVE HA’PENNY, and NEAREST THE LINE TAKES, and
CHUCK-FARDEN, and PONTOON,[A] and PIEMAN, and ODD MAN SPINS, and ON THE
STICK, and GUESSING WITH THREE CARDS, and GUESSING WITH SIX CARDS, and
ANCHOR-CROWN-HEAD, and PITCH AND TOSS and BLIND SAM and OVERS KEEPS--or
whatever all these things are called; no, not _our_ boys. They never
climb down to the cut[B] on a Sunday afternoon like some people
do--although, as a matter of fact, it’s a pretty safe place just now,
because only three weeks ago a couple of peelers were chucked into the
water for interfering.
Many of these sports are played with cigarette-cards or with ordinary
playing cards, or with either; and I might tell you the names of some
of those of the first kind, seeing that the lads have to play their
card-games out of doors, hereabouts, if--if it weren’t for the gambling
they lead to. For instance, there’s KNOCKING DOLLY OUT O’ BED where you
lay down three for a king, two for a jack, one for a queen and none
for an ace, and--well, there you are! You must just come and ask some
of the boys higher up the street; maybe they’ve heard of the game[C].
Ours are respectable. Gambling is forbidden by law, and they know it.
That’s why you have to be so darned careful not to get copped.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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