at which Murphy was playing poker with some
guileless planters. Mr. Knowles was not himself guileless, and very
shortly he perceived that the one-eyed gambler was dealing himself cards
from the bottom of the pack. Thereupon he drew his revolver from his
pocket and rapping with it on the table addressed the assembly:

"Gentlemen," he said, speaking in courtly fashion, "I regret to say that
there is something wrong here. I will not call any names, neither will I
make any personal allusions. _But if it doesn't stop, damn me if I don't
shoot his other eye out!_"

I cannot drop the river, and stories of river gambling, without
referring to one more tale which is a classic. It is a long story about
a big poker game, and to tell it properly one must know the exact words.
I do not know them, and therefore shall not attempt to tell the whole
story, but shall give you only the beginning.

It is supposed to be told by a Virginian.

"There was me," he says, "and another very distinguished gentleman from
Virginia and a gentleman from Kentucky, and a man from Ohio, and a
fellow from New York, and a blankety-blank from Boston--"

That is all I know of the story, but I can guess who got the money in
that game.

Can't you?

CHAPTER XLIX

WHAT MEMPHIS HAS ENDURED

An article on Memphis, published in the year 1855, gives the population
of the place as about 13,000 (one quarter of the number slaves), and
calls Memphis "the most promising town in the Southwest." It predicts
that a railroad will some day connect Memphis with Little Rock,
Arkansas, and that a direct line between Memphis and Cincinnati may even
be constructed. This article begins the history of Memphis in the year
1820, when the place had 50 inhabitants. In 1840 the settlement had
grown to 1,700, and fifteen years thereafter it was almost eight times
that size.

Your Memphian, however, is not at all content to date from 1820. He
begins the history of Memphis with the date May 8, 1541--a time when
Henry VIII was establishing new matrimonial records in England, when
Queen Elizabeth was a little girl, and Shakespeare, Bacon, Galileo and
Cromwell were yet unborn. For that was the date when a Spanish gentleman
bearing some personal resemblance to "Uncle Joe" Cannon--though he was
younger, had black hair and beard, was differently dressed and did not
chew long black cigars--arrived at the lower Chickasaw Bluffs, from
which the city of Memphis now overlooks the