If gambling is a sin, let he who is without sin throw the first stone into a Porto Rican cock fight. Let the senator who never played draw poker be the first to introduce a resolution to stop gambling in Manila. Let the army general that never sat up all night at a faro bank issue the first order against monte and roulette in Havana. Let the men who furnished embalmed beef for widows' sons, issue edicts against making fresh meat out of live bulls. I can't decide your bet. You better call it a draw,” and the old man looked at the boys as though he wanted to change the subject. [Illustration: You better call it a draw 147] “Say, boys, Uncle Ike knows more than any man in the world,” said the red-headed boy, “but he argues too much. Let's go and play shinny and call it golf,” and they went off on a gallop, leaving Uncle Ike with his lame leg and his pipe. Uncle Ike sat and thought for an hour or more, on the porch, occasionally moving his rheumatic leg so it hurt him worse than it did before he moved it, and then he wondered what in the deuce he had moved it for. He thought of his experience as a gambler, since the boys had talked about gambling. He thought of the time he went to a State fair, when he was a boy, right fresh off the farm, with his white shirt his mother had sat up the night before to iron for him, his ready-made black frock-coat that the sun had faded out on the shoulders, the old brown slouch hat he had traded another one for with a lightning rod peddler, his shoes blacked with stove blacking, instead of being greased, as usual. He thought how a gambler at the State fair picked him out for a greeny before he had fairly got through the gate, and wondered how the gambler could have known he was so green without being told, and yet he carried a sign of greenness, from the faded and sunburned hair of his head to the sole of his stove-blacking shoes. He thought how the gambler got him to bet that he could find the pea in the shell, and how he had been so confident that he could find it that he had bet his whole month's wages, and when the gambler had taken it, and wound it around a wad he had, and put it in his vest pocket, he remembered, here sitting on the porch with his rheumatic leg, how mad he was when the gambler who had ruined him, shouted, “Next gentleman, now! Roll up, tumble up, any way to get up!” As he sat there waiting for the boys to come back and be company for him, he thought how destitute he was when the gambler had taken his money, how he was twenty miles from home, with only 20 cents in his pocket, and he sat down on a chicken coop, and ate 10 cents' worth of the hardest-hearted pie that ever was, and the tears came to his eyes, and the great crowd at the fair all mixed up with the horses and cattle, and he wandered about like a crazy person, all the afternoon, and at night started to walk home, with the balance of his wealth invested in gingerbread that stuck in his throat as he walked