as each moment growing feebler, and easier to be endured.

CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN.

A GAME OF WHIST.

In the centre of the smoking-saloon, there was a table, and around it
some half-dozen men were seated. Other half-dozen stood behind these,
looking over their shoulders. The attitudes of all, and their eager
glances, suggested the nature of their occupation. The flouting of
pasteboard, the chink of dollars, and the oft-recurring words of "ace,"
"jack," and "trump," put it beyond a doubt that that occupation was
gaming. "Euchre" was the game.

Curious to observe this popular American game, I stepped up and stood
watching the players. My friend who had raised the false alarm was one
of them; but his back was towards me, and I remained for some time
unseen by him.

Some two or three of those who played were elegantly-dressed men. Their
coats were of the finest cloth, their ruffles of the costliest cambric,
and jewels sparkled in their shirt bosoms and glittered upon their
fingers. These fingers, however, told a tale. They told plainly as
words, that they to whom they belonged had not always been accustomed to
such elegant adornment. Toilet soap had failed to soften the corrugated
skin, and obliterate the abrasions--the souvenirs of toil.

This was nothing. They might be gentlemen for all that. Birth is of
slight consequence in the Far West. The plough-boy may become the
President.

Still there was an air about these men--an air I cannot describe, but
which led me at the moment to doubt their _gentility_. It was not from
any swagger or assumption on their part. On the contrary, they appeared
the _most gentlemanly_ individuals around the table!

They were certainly the most sedate and quiet. Perhaps it was this very
sedateness--this polished reserve--that formed the spring of my
suspicion. True gentlemen, bloods from Tennessee or Kentucky, young
planters of the Mississippi coast, or French Creoles of Orleans, would
have offered different characteristics. The cool complacency with which
these individuals spoke and acted--no symptoms of perturbation as the
trump was turned, no signs of ruffled temper when luck went against
them--told two things; first, that they were men of the world, and,
secondly, that they were not now playing their maiden game of "Euchre."
Beyond that I could form no judgment about them. They might be doctors,
lawyers, or "gentlemen of elegant leisure"--a class by no means uncom