“All the chips were in the center when Smith raised it a thousand, putting up a marker in the shape of an I. O. U., hastily scribbled. The other Congressman dropped out, and Jones came back with another thousand. Smith was fairly white, but he reached over and changed the figures on his I. O. U. from $1,000 to $4,000, saying quietly, ‘Two better.’ “‘Two more than you,’ said Jones, just as quietly, laying four one-thousand-dollar bills on the table. And then there was dead silence in the room. “Smith paused, and it seemed to me that I could read his thoughts. He was eager enough to go on with the play, but though he did not know, and could not stop just then to reckon how deeply he was dipped, he knew he was over his head. Moreover, four eights, strong as it was, was not an invincible hand, and his better sense urged him to call. “Finally he did, and when the showdown came, I thought for a moment he would faint. He rallied, however, and like the gallant fellow he was, made some light remark with a half-laugh as he rose from the table. “‘I’ve got enough for to-night,’ he said, and the game was over. I never knew all the circumstances of the settlement, but I know the bill was reported favorably by the committee within a week, and that Smith used to hang around the club-house more persistently than ever for the rest of the season. As for Jones, I never saw him after that night.” Poker for High Stakes _A BOUT WITH CARD SHARPERS ON A MISSISSIPPI BOAT_ “I have always found it hard to believe the stories I used to read about the luxury of travel and the magnificence of the appointments on the great Mississippi River steamboats,” said the gray-haired young-looking man in the club smoking-room. “It seems to be the generally accepted belief that forty years ago or so people went up and down on the bosom of the Father of Waters in floating palaces, enjoying something like the extreme of sumptuous luxury. Maybe that is true. I didn’t travel the river so long ago as that, and, of course, I can’t say what the condition of things may or may not have been when I wasn’t there to see. What I can say positively is that if it was true in those days, the war or some other disturbing cause changed things very materially before I became as familiar as I did afterward with the river boats. My notion is that the whole thing is a tradition, resting on very little foundation excepting comparison. The mere fact of having a stateroom to sleep in, with only one stranger as a room-mate, and a seat at a table with room for a waiter to pass behind you, served to make travelers at that time think they were in luxury, because they hadn’t experienced it before. And I imagine, from what I know of a later period, that that was about the extent of the luxury. Certainly none of the boats I was ever on, in the ’60s and ’70s, compared with the North River or the Sound boats of the same time. And even those would not seem very luxurious to travelers of the present day.