for my roll, in addition to about fifty I lost at a crooked wheel.  I think the workers was mostly ex-convicts, and not so darned ex- at that.  Anyway, their stuff got too raw even for the managers of an exposition, so they had to close down in spite of their name.  That’s where I get my idee when these ladies said think up something novel and pleasing.  Just come and see how I’m taking it off of ’em.”  And, with that, he grabs me by the arm and rushes me down to this joint of his.

At the side of the doorway he had two signs stuck up.  One says, Ye Olde Tyme Saloone; and the other says, Ye Olde Tyme Gambling Denne.  You could of pushed me over with one finger when I looked in.  He’d drew the crowd, all right.  I knew then that Aggie Tuttle might just as well close down her Rebekkah-at-the-Well dive, and that no one was going to take any more chances on pincushions and tidies and knitted bed slippers.

About a third of the crowd was edged up to the bar and keeping Louis Meyer and his father busy with drink orders, and the other two-thirds was huddled round a roulette layout across the room.  They was wedged in so tight I couldn’t see the table, but I could hear the little ball click when it slowed up, and the rattle of chips, and squeals from them that won, and hoarse mutters from the losers.

Cousin Egbert rubbed his hands and giggled, waiting for me to bedeck him with floral tributes.

“I suppose you got a crooked wheel,” I says.

“Shucks, no!” says he.  “I did think of it, but I’d of had to send out of town for one and they’re a lot of trouble to put in, what with the electric wiring and all; and besides, the straightest roulette wheel ever made is crooked enough for any man of decent instincts.  I don’t begrudge ’em a little excitement for their money.  I got these old bar fixings out of the Spilmer place that was being tore down, and we’re charging two bits a drink for whatever, and that’ll be a help; and it looks to me like you ladies would of thought you needed a man’s brain in these shows long before this.  Come on in and have a shot.  I’ll buy.”

So we squeezed in and had one.  It was an old-time saloon, all right—­that is, fairly old; about 1889, with a brass foot rail, and back of the bar a stuffed eagle and a cash register.  A gang of ladies was taking claret lemonades and saying how delightfully Bohemian it all was; and Miss Metta Bigler, that gives lessons in oil painting and burnt wood, said it brought back very forcibly to her the Latin Quarter of Chicago, where she finished her art course.  Henrietta Templeton Price, with one foot on the railing, was shaking dice with three other prominent society matrons for the next round, and saying she had always been a Bohemian at heart, only you couldn’t go very far in a small town like this without causing unfavourable comment among a certain element.