“Oh!” said Charley, “I took a course in that one winter myself.  Did you always draw one card at a time out’n that box, Zeke?”

“So help me, Bob!  I did,” returned Mr. Scraggs most earnestly.  “Hence I didn’t get rich.  It sometimes happened that a Wild Wolf from Up the Creek would breeze in, full of rum, plumb foolishness, and money.  Oh, man!  High or low, red or black, odd or even, coppered or open, on the corner or let her rip, last turn and in the middle, from soda-card to hock, them brier-whiskered sons-of-guns would whipsaw my poor little bank till there wasn’t much left of her but sawdust.  Yes, sir,” mourned Mr. Scraggs, “I made enough out of the early birds to eat, but them Roarin’ Bears from Bruindale uset sometimes to apply the flat of their hands to my seat of learning till the sparks flew out of my eyes.  In short, this sportin’ life was too much up and down hill for me.  No sooner would I git ready to declare a dividend than one of my outside customers would come in and take that dividend and wipe both feet on it, roll on it, stomp it, fly ten foot in the air and come down on it, bite chunks out of it, and then I’d light a match, gather the crumbs from the floor, and wisht I could git holt of something at once easy and reliable.

“Well, there was a friend of mine lived at the Transcontinental Hotel.  The partition between his room and mine didn’t come clear to the ceiling, so when I arrived home late I uset to heave a boot over on top of him and have a chin.  He was a nice feller, Hadds.  A pale, thin sort of man, very red-headed—­that is to say, not red-headed like some parties I have known, but a sort of bashful red, that would ha’ been different if it could; and he wore eight large freckles on his face.  There would have been more if there had been more room.  Hadds was then workin’ for the railroad company, but not happy.  He was in the dispatcher’s office, and I’d hear him holler in his nightmares, ’There they go!  Bang!  Everybody killed!  I always expected it!’

“You see, he lived in fear of running two excursion trains together.  Nervous cuss—­oh, awful!  Not without reason, neither.  Seems when he was at college he studied chemistry.  Always experimentin’.  Mixed two things that was born to live apart.  Hadds left simooltaniously with that corner of the buildin’.  He didn’t stop till he reached the Transcontinental Hotel.

“Hadds worked at me to start a drug store with him.  He’d saved some out of his wages, and he knew I had a fluctuatin’ roll.  He says, ‘You’re goin’ bust some day, young man—­why don’t you quit it?  You come with me and we’ll make a decent thing.  It’s mighty lucky for the gang that they swill patent medicines instead of lettin’ that Jones up the street give’ em a quick finish over the prescription counter.  That pill-wrangler couldn’t tell the difference between an auger-hole riffle-board and a porous plaster if there wasn’t a label on the box.  Jeeminnetticus!’ says Hadds, ’when he mixes coffin varnish for a man you’d think he was scramblin’ eggs.  Come on, Washy,’ he says, ’while you got the price.  You’d like the business.’