ovide oysters and beer for the combination.
This disturbed me very seriously, since it promised me bankruptcy, and I
was sorry that this detail had been overlooked in the beginning. But my
pride would not allow me to back out now, so I stayed in, and did what I
could to look satisfied and glad I had come. It is not likely that I
looked as contented as I wanted to, but the others looked glad enough to
make up for it, for they were quite unable to hide their evil joy. They
showed me how to stand, and how to stoop, and how to aim the ball, and
how to let fly; and then the game began. The results were astonishing.
In my ignorance I delivered the balls in apparently every way except the
right one; but no matter--during half an hour I never started a ball
down the alley that didn't score a ten-strike, every time, at the other
end. The others lost their grip early, and their joy along with it. Now
and then one of them got a ten-strike, but the occurrence was so rare
that it made no show alongside of my giant score. The boys surrendered
at the end of the half-hour, and put on their coats and gathered around
me and in courteous, but sufficiently definite, language expressed their
opinion of an experience-worn and seasoned expert who would stoop to
lying and deception in order to rob kind and well-meaning friends who
had put their trust in him under the delusion that he was an honest and
honorable person. I was not able to convince them that I had not lied,
for now my character was gone, and they refused to attach any value to
anything I said. The proprietor of the place stood by for a while saying
nothing, then he came to my defence. He said: "It looks like a mystery,
gentlemen, but it isn't a mystery after it's explained. That is a
_grooved_ alley; you've only to start a ball down it any way you please
and the groove will do the rest; it will slam the ball against the
northeast curve of the head pin every time, and nothing can save the ten
from going down."

It was true. The boys made the experiment and they found that there was
no art that could send a ball down that alley and fail to score a
ten-strike with it. When I had told those boys that I knew nothing about
that game I was speaking only the truth; but it was ever thus, all
through my life: whenever I have diverged from custom and principle and
uttered a truth, the rule has been that the hearer hadn't strength of
mind enough to believe it.

[Sidenote: (1873.)]

A quar