“But there were a good many stories told about the old-time Mississippi boats that I am fully prepared to believe. That the game of poker flourished on the river as it never has elsewhere, before or since, seems entirely probable. I have seen games that made me hold my breath because of the size of the stakes, and because of the fact that I knew the players were all armed, and a shot or a stab was certain to follow a hasty word or a suspicious act. “It was on a trip from Memphis to Natchez that I first saw a woman gamble in public. The boat wasn’t crowded, but there were perhaps fifty passengers on board, and among them were six or eight ladies and this woman. That she was a social outlaw was evident enough at a glance. Not only were her clothes of a fashion too pronounced for respectability and her jewelry too ostentatious for daylight wear, but there was a frank devilry in her eye, and a defiant swing--almost a swagger--in her carriage that told the story all too plainly. Her behavior was correct enough. She was, or seemed to be, traveling alone, and she took the somewhat too ostentatious avoidance of the ladies in perfectly good part, pretending to be utterly unconscious of it, and ignoring them as completely as they did her. Neither did she give any overt encouragement to the efforts that some of the men made to cultivate her acquaintance. It was evident that while she took no pains to conceal her character, she did not propose to make herself obnoxious. Naturally every one was curious to know who she was, and I soon learned, as I supposed the other passengers all did, that she was a notorious character in New Orleans, where she was known as ‘Flash Kate.’ What her business had been in Memphis I did not hear, but a dozen stories were told of her recklessness and general cussedness, and among other things it was said that she was a confirmed gambler. “After supper the first evening we were on board, the tables in the main saloon were cleared, and, as if it were a matter of course, two games of poker were soon in progress. It was plain enough that two of the men in the game that I watched at first were professionals, but the game was small, and I found no great excitement in it, though it was, in a way, interesting to notice how easily the others were being fleeced. Tiring, after a time, of watching so bold a fraud, I sauntered over to the other table, and found a very different game in progress.