“Jack,” he’d say; “you’d only lose your money. Shure! you’re nawthin’ but a boy an’ not fit to pla-ay cards with th’ loikes av grown-up men.” But I persisted; I argued--to myself, you may be certain--while I might be no match for these old professors of forty-five who played the game with never a mistake, if I, like them, played honestly, that the cunning work I meditated could not fail to bring me in the wealth. At last one of the others came to my rescue. “Let him pla-ay, Mishter Roche,” he said. “Let’s win his money fr-rom him an’ it’ll be a lesson. He’ll not lose much befure he’ll be gla-ad to quit.” “All right, thin,” replied my father; “you can pla-ay, Jack, till you lose fifty cints; an’ that’ll do ye. Moind now! whin you lose fifty cints you shtop.” And so I was made one of the circle. As I foresaw, I did not lose the four-bits which my indulgent parent had marked as the limits of farthest sacrifice to my ambitious innocence. Already I had brought back to Tom’s Run a curious trick or two from Pittsburg. It soon came to be my “deal,” and the moment I got the cards in my hands I abstracted the ace of hearts--a most doughty creature in this game of forty-five!--and dropped it in my lap, covering the fact from vulgar eyes with a fold of my handkerchief. That was all the chicane I practiced; I kept myself in constant possession of the ace of hearts and played it at a crisis; and at once the wagered dimes of the others began to travel into my illicit pockets where they made a merry jingle, I warrant you! The honest Irish from whom I was filching these small tributes never once bethought that I might play them sharp; they attributed my gains to luck and loud was exclamation over my good fortune. Time and again, for I was not their equal as a mere player, I’d board the wrong card. When I’d make such a mistake, one of them would cry: “D’ye moind that now! D’ye moind how ba-ad he plays!” “An’ yet,” another would add, “an’ yet he rakes th’ money!” Altogether I regarded my entrance into this ten-cent game of forty-five a most felicitous affair. I won at every sitting; getting up on some occasions with as much as eight dollars of profit for my evening’s work. In those days I went willingly to Tom’s Run, quitting Pittsburg without a sigh; and such was my ardor to fleece these coaldigging comrades of my father--and for that matter, my father, also; for like your true gambler, I played no favorites and was as warm to gather in the dimes of my parent as any--that I was usually found waiting about the forty-five table when, following supper, they appeared. And it all went favorably with me for perhaps a dozen sittings; my aggregate gains must have reached the mighty sum of sixty dollars. Of a merry verity! silver was at high tide in my hands!