It is pleasanter to regard this whole disagreeable sheriff
business as an episode that is soon to pass away and to be forgotten,
if not forgiven.

Surely the clouds will roll by; surely you, Septimius, and you,
Tuliarchus mine, will presently gather with others of the old cronies
around the hospitable board of that genial host to renew once more
the delights of days and nights endeared to us in memory!

Billy Boyle's succumbed to his love for the race-track and the abuse
of his credit-check system. Field has mentioned gamblers as among the
patrons of the place. After midnight they were his most liberal
customers. Winning or losing, their appetites were always on edge and
their tastes epicurean. Nothing the house could afford was too good
for them, and, while Charlie was on deck, what the house could afford
was good enough for them, whether they thought so or not. During the
'80s Chicago was a gamblers' paradise. Everything was run "wide
open," as the saying is, under police regulation and protection, and
Billy Boyle's was in the very centre of the gambling district. If
Billy had been paid cash, and could have been kept away from the
race-tracks, he would have grown rich beyond the terrors of the
sheriff. While the gamblers were winning they supped like princes and
paid like goldsmiths. When they were losing their losses whetted
their appetites, they ate to keep their spirits up, and Billy's
spindles were not long enough to hold their waiters' checks. In flush
times a goodly percentage of these checks were redeemed, but the
reckoning of the bad ones at the bottom grew longer and dirtier and
more hopeless, until it brought the sheriff.

We of the Morning News--Field, Stone, Ballantyne, Reilly, and
I--frequented Boyle's until the war which the paper waged unceasingly
upon the league between the city administration and the gamblers
brought about a stricter surveillance of gaming, and we came to be
regarded by our fellow-guests as interlopers, if not spies, upon
their goings in and out. Neither Boyle nor the ever faithful Charlie
ever by word or sign intimated that we were _personae non gratae_, but
the atmosphere of the place became too chilly for the enjoyment of
late suppers.

I have devoted so much space to Billy Boyle's because for several
years Field found there the best opportunity of his life "to study
human nature" and observe the "ambitions, h