As the vague and unsubstantial forms flit silently past me from out the ivory portals where Memory’s golden scepter holds undisputed sway, I recognize a host of my boyhood’s friends; “Poker Jim”, “Boston”, “Toppy,” “Big” Brown, “Yankee”, “Jersey”, “Link” Spears, Tom Chandler, Dave Smuggins, Ike Dessler, Bill Loveless, and many more of the bronzed, deep-chested, red-shirted, hair-triggered Knights of the Golden Fleece smile back at me from the ghostly file. Last, but not least, comes my boyhood’s hero, that Turpin of the border, “Three Fingered Jack” of Calaveras, who has been served up to us in so many and various forms of literary hash that I shall one day write his true history as a matter of pious duty. G. FRANK LYDSTON. POKER JIM, GENTLEMAN POKER JIM, GENTLEMAN It was in the spring of 1860, that the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania concluded to confer the degree of Doctor of Medicine upon your humble servant. Whether the faculty of that now famous school allowed me to graduate on the principle that actuated the performers in a western band, who implored their audiences not to shoot, as they were doing the best they could, I cannot say, but graduate I did, and as with all other students of medicine, it was then that my troubles began. I was not long in discovering that the piece of crisp parchment which the members of the faculty had endorsed as showing the scientific qualifications of William Weymouth, M. D. and which entitled him to practice medicine, was no open sesame to fame and prosperity. My parents were at that time living in Kentucky, in a small town that offered little encouragement to a young man beginning practice. The confidence of one’s old neighbors is of even slower growth than the beard for which the young doctor yearns, as a badge of wisdom and learning that he who runs may read. The country in which I spent my boyhood--I was born in the state of Maine--was even less inviting than the state of my adoption. It is possible that I entertained a little of my mother’s prejudice against Yankeedom in those days. She was a native of Kentucky, and had never become thoroughly reconciled to the country to which my father had taken her soon after her marriage. It was in acquiescence to her homesick pleadings that my father finally moved to Kentucky, and settled in the little town wherein my parents lived for the rest of their days in such happiness as people of modest means can secure only among the warm hearted, generous people south of Mason and Dixon’s line. Had my home surroundings offered any inducements to the professional career I had planned for myself, I should certainly have returned home to practice. My parents were living alone, and my natural impulse was to return to them and do the best I could at practice, as long as they should live. It was with some twinges of conscience, therefore, that I finally decided against going back to Kentucky to locate.