[Illustration:  Chased by Police.]

The worst thing we have had on pa was at Louisville, where we stayed over Sunday.  Another fellow and I got a system on slot machines, and one day we beat the machines out of a shotbag full of nickels, and when we showed up at the tent all the fellows wanted to know how we did it, and pa said it was gambling, and we ought not to do it, but he also wanted to know how we managed to win, and when we told pa about it pa said it was no sin to beat a slot machine, ’cause it was an inanimate thing, just a machine, and anybody who could beat a nickel in the slot machine at his own game was equal to a Rockefeller.

So after everybody had got excited about our nickels I told them how to beat the machine.  I told them I didn’t get excited and go rushing in where angels fear to tread, and feed the slot machine on good hard earned nickels of my own, but waited until the countrymen and tenderfeet had fed it on nickels until it was too full for utterance.  When the machine swelled out like it was blowed up, and it kind of wheezed, like it was ready to cough up, and was only waiting for an excuse, I put a cough lozenger about the size of a nickel in the slot and turned the diaphram.  The machine shuddered a minute and then had a regular hemorrhage, and coughed up a tin cupful of nickels into my hand, and the machine seemed to rest easy, and take nourishment again from the silly fellows, who thought they could beat it.

Well, sir, the whole crowd was so excited they could hardly wait to find a slot machine, and finally they bought nearly all my cough lozengers, and went out into the night, and pa and I went along, ’cause pa said he understood all the slot machines were owned by Rockefeller, and he made more money on them than he did on Standard oil, and the money that he gave away to schools and churches was from his rake-off on his slot machines.  Pa said it would be a good thing if someone could break up the reprehensible practice by beating the blasted machines to a finish.

So pa he got a bag to bring back the nickels in, and a bunch of us went to a store where one whole side of the place was filled with slot machines, and the way the people were playing the game was scandalous.  Pa watched a machine until the players had fed it so it seemed as though it would die unless it got air, and he stepped up and put in a lozenger and turned the wheel, and held the bag under the spout for the coin, but it didn’t come.  Some more fellows put in nickels, and the machine gave little hacking coughs and coughed up three or four nickels, but nothing that seemed at all in the nature of a financial hemorrhage, when pa took another lozenger and put it in, and by ginger the machine began to heave up nickels like it was in the trough of the sea.

Pa was so excited he forgot to hold the bag, and nickels went all over the floor, and everybody made a grab for them, and pa was shoved aside, and he swore he would have the place pulled, and just then a law officer took pa in charge because he had put a cough lozenger in the slot machine, and he searched pa and found a lot more bronchial trochees, and pa was in for it on a charge of malpractice, for giving cough medicine for the stomach trouble of the slot machine, instead of pepsin tablets.