I used to know Brother Holcombe in those days; knew him to be a gambler. He was considered one of the best of gamblers, but I always looked upon him as being an honorable gambler, so far as I have heard. I knew him even before he was a gambler. Well, my father and mother were very pious, my mother especially. She was a praying woman, and everybody knew her by the name of "Aunt Kittie," and my father as "Uncle Billy." My father did not think it was any harm to play cards in the parlor every night. When I was young he loved to play whist. I had a sister older than I, sixteen or seventeen years old, and she used to invite young men, and father used to invite them, to come there and play cards; and the moment they commenced to fix the table, my father beckoned his head to me, and I knew what that meant--to get out. We had a young negro that used to wait on the ladies in the parlor, and he told me one time, "You steal a deck of cards and I will show you how to play cards." And I stole a deck of cards from the house and we went back in the stable; and that is the way I came to learn how to play cards. I was twelve or fifteen years old at that time--not any older than that--and I commenced playing cards for money, and I kept on playing cards for money with the boys; for money or for anything. I was sent off to school--to St. Mary's College, and we got to playing cards there for money, and we were caught, and the oldest one was expelled from school, and I promised never to do it any more, and the other boys promised not to do it any more, and they did not. But I kept on and I was caught playing cards, and I was expelled from school. After that my father sent me to St. Joseph's College in Ohio. I ran off from that school and came home, and I was appointed a Deputy Marshal by my brother-in-law, W. S. D. McGowen; and I got to gambling then sure enough and running after women; and about that time the war came on, and I went off with my brother-in-law into the army, and I gambled all through the army--everywhere I could get five cents to play with. All I had I gambled away. I came back home and I gambled here; played in the faro banks all the time. And a proprietor of a gambling house by the name of Jo. Croxton came to me and said, "You are too good a man to be gambling around. I will give you an interest, and you can take charge of my house." I did not know much about gambling, but I knew how to take care of his house. He gave me the bank roll; and I went on down and down.