the Philippines; and while we do not have bull fighting, we have prize
fighting every night in the week, far more brutal. It is the gambling
instinct in men and women that keeps the stock exchanges going, and
industrial stocks, manipulated by those who control the prices, is
tinhorn gambling, as much as pulling faro cards from a silver box in a
brace game, where the dealer gets a rake-off, the same as the commission
man, who deals the cards in stock or wheat. I don't know whether it is
the object of our government to attempt to show the people of these new
possessions the wickedness of gambling, and cock fighting, and all that;
but if it is, thousands of men who have become bankrupt from gambling
here at home could be sent there as object lessons; but the chances are
they would put up a job to skin the natives out of their last dollar on
some game they did not understand. If gambling is a sin, let he who is
without sin throw the first stone into a Porto Rican cock fight. Let
the senator who never played draw poker be the first to introduce a
resolution to stop gambling in Manila. Let the army general that never
sat up all night at a faro bank issue the first order against monte and
roulette in Havana. Let the men who furnished embalmed beef for widows'
sons, issue edicts against making fresh meat out of live bulls. I can't
decide your bet. You better call it a draw," and the old man looked at
the boys as though he wanted to change the subject.

[Illustration: You better call it a draw 147]

"Say, boys, Uncle Ike knows more than any man in the world," said the
red-headed boy, "but he argues too much. Let's go and play shinny and
call it golf," and they went off on a gallop, leaving Uncle Ike with his
lame leg and his pipe.

Uncle Ike sat and thought for an hour or more, on the porch,
occasionally moving his rheumatic leg so it hurt him worse than it did
before he moved it, and then he wondered what in the deuce he had moved
it for. He thought of his experience as a gambler, since the boys had
talked about gambling. He thought of the time he went to a State fair,
when he was a boy, right fresh off the farm, with his white shirt his
mother had sat up the night before to iron for him, his ready-made black
frock-coat that the sun had faded out on the shoulders, the old brown
slouch hat he had traded another one for with a lightning rod peddler,
his shoes blacked with stove blacking, instead of being greased, as
usual. He t