Rose Fisher's. I couldn't blow
in until after work, but even as late as it was, I won $4.90 at penny
ante, and it tickled me most to death. I have been trying to learn a new
game called bridge that the girls are crazy about. I guess it is not in
my line cause it is a thinking part. I can't remember what cards are out
or what is trumps or what is anything else, and set sort of making over
my old clothes or thinking up new steps when we are playing, and you
can't do that with bridge. I lost a lot of money the other afternoon,
and what is worse, Katie Regan was my partner and she took it hard and
gave me an awful call-down. I got sore and felt like slapping her face,
but I guess she is right. Don't play a game with other people's money
unless you attend to business.

Do you remember that fat old brewer that use to come hanging around you?
Well, he blew in while I was dancing the other night, and claimed to be
a long lost friend. He come down every night for about a week, and then
tried that old gag of putting some money for me in a wheat deal or some
such thing where it was tails I win and heads you lose. I told him I was
on to that chorus trick, and wasn't at all crazy about it. You see,
whether he won or lost he would have handed me over three or four
hundred dollars and kinda felt he owned me body and soul. I simply
laughed at him, and said with a voice of a Wall Street broker, "Man, I
am making so much money that it is quite impossible to find investments
for my income, so I am planting it around the yard in tin cans." I even
offered to make him a loan if business was bad. He went away in a huff,
and I got a call-down from the manager because the brewer owns the bar
the same as he does all the other saloons around our district, and the
saloon-keeper is only in on a percentage. If the temperance people would
only go after the brewer and the distiller, instead of the poor devil of
a saloon-keeper, they might do something worth while, cause there ain't
one bar in twenty in New York that is owned by the man who keeps it.

Well, good-bye, I am going to dinner in a place in 39th Street where
they say they have an awful pretty dancer. I am saving up my money,
Kate, so when you come out, you will have enough to live on for awhile
until you find out what you want to do. Now don't worry, and don't write
me any more letters like that last one. Everything is fine and dandy.
Billy is all right, and I am as happy as a clam and gett