I find that you should not be too ready to show by your countenance
whether you are bored or pleased in poker. Tour opponent will take
advantage of it and play accordingly. It cost me £8 10s. to acquire a
knowledge of this fact. If all the information I ever got had cost me as
much as this poker wisdom, I would not now have two pennies to jingle
together in my purse. Still, we have had a good time, take it all in all,
and I shall not soon forget the evenings we have spent here together
buying knowledge regardless of cost. I think I shall try to control my
wild thirst for information awhile, however, till I can get some more
funds.
[Here the diary breaks off abruptly, and on turning the book over we find
the royal signature at the foot of the last page, “The Queen of Spades.”]
Shorts.
A Colorado burro has been shipped across the Atlantic and presented to the
Prince of Wales. It is a matter of profound national sorrow that this was
not the first American jackass presented to his Tallness, the Prince.
At Omaha last week a barrel of sauer kraut rolled out of a wagon and
struck O'Leary H. Oleson, who was trying to unload it, with such force as
to kill him instantly and to flatten him out like a kiln-dried codfish.
Still, after thousands of such instances on record, there are many
scientists who maintain that sauer kraut is conducive to longevity.
As an evidence of the healthfulness of mountain climate, the people of
Denver point to a man who came there in '77 without flesh enough to bait a
trap, and now he puts sleeves in an ordinary feather-bed and pulls it on
over his head for a shirt. People in poor health who wish to communicate
with the writer in relation to the facts above stated, are requested to
enclose two unlicked postage stamps to insure a reply.
At Ubet, M.T., during the cold snap in January, one of the most inhuman
outrages known in the annals of crime was perpetrated upon a young man who
went West in the fall, hoping to make his pile in time to return in May
and marry the New York heiress selected before he went.
While stopping at the hotel, two frolicsome young women hired the porter
to procure the young man's pantaloons at dead of night They then sewed up
the bottoms of the legs, threw the doctored garment back through the
transom and squealed “Fire!”
When he got into the hall he was vainly trying to stab one foot through
the limb of his pantaloons while he danced around on the other and joined
in the general cry of “Fire!” The hall seemed filled with people, who were
running this way and that, ostensibly seeking a mode of egress from the
flames, but in reality trying to dodge the mad efforts of the young man,
who was trying to insert himself in his obstinate pantaloons.
He did not tumble, as it were, until the night watchman got a Babcock fire
extinguisher and played on him. I do not know what he played on him. Very
likely it was, “Sister, what are the wild waves saying?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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