The rest of the story can be told briefly.  About daylight the jury came in, and Deacon Job, the foreman, read the following: 

     Verdict: 

We, the jury in the case of the Commonwealth of Kentucky vs.  John Wheeler et al., have carefully considered the points of the case, and tested the merits of the several theories advanced, and do hereby unanimously decide that the game commonly known as old sledge or seven-up is eminently a game of science and not of chance.  In demonstration whereof it is hereby and herein stated, iterated, reiterated, set forth, and made manifest that, during the entire night, the “chance” men never won a game or turned a jack, although both feats were common and frequent to the opposition; and furthermore, in support of this our verdict, we call attention to the significant fact that the “chance” men are all busted, and the “science” men have got the money.  It is the deliberate opinion of this jury, that the “chance” theory concerning seven-up is a pernicious doctrine, and calculated to inflict untold suffering and pecuniary loss upon any community that takes stock in it.

“That is the way that seven-up came to be set apart and particularized in the statute-books of Kentucky as being a game not of chance but of science, and therefore not punishable under the law,” said Mr. K-----.  “That verdict is of record, and holds good to this day.”

The late Benjamin Franklin—­[Written about 1870.]

["Never put off till to-morrow what you can do day after to-morrow just as well.”—­B.  F.]

This party was one of those persons whom they call Philosophers.  He was twins, being born simultaneously in two different houses in the city of Boston.  These houses remain unto this day, and have signs upon them worded in accordance with the facts.  The signs are considered well enough to have, though not necessary, because the inhabitants point out the two birthplaces to the stranger anyhow, and sometimes as often as several times in the same day.  The subject of this memoir was of a vicious disposition, and early prostituted his talents to the invention of maxims and aphorisms calculated to inflict suffering upon the rising generation of all subsequent ages.  His simplest acts, also, were contrived with a view to their being held up for the emulation of boys forever—­boys who might otherwise have been happy.  It was in this spirit that he became the son of a soap-boiler, and probably for no other reason than that the efforts of all future boys who tried to be anything might be looked upon with suspicion unless they were the sons of soap-boilers.  With a malevolence which is without parallel in history, he would work all day, and then sit up nights, and let on to be studying algebra by the light of a smoldering fire, so that all other boys might have to do that also, or else have Benjamin Franklin thrown up to them.  Not satisfied with these proceedings, he had a fashion of living wholly on bread and water, and studying astronomy at meal-time—­a thing which has brought affliction to millions of boys since, whose fathers had read Franklin’s pernicious biography.