le. Ben
Palmer, a well-known character in State Street, who is one
of the main cog-wheels of Lawson's machine, first made
Lawson's acquaintance during this period of his career.

I do know the Waldron Brothers, of Providence, who are among the oldest
residents of Rhode Island, and who, with the present United States
Senator Nelson A. Aldrich, composed the great wholesale grocery house of
Waldron, Wightman & Co. They did not graduate from a gambling-house on
Broadway. I knew the brother referred to familiarly throughout Rhode
Island as "Honest Bill," and a royal old fellow he was. I did business
with him in those days, and to any connection I ever had with him I look
back with pleasure. He was then conducting a farm in the suburbs of
Providence, and in a straightforward, old-fashioned way supplying that
city with produce and poultry, and had, to the best of my knowledge, the
respect and confidence of all who knew him. I never knew of his having
been a gambler, and had no means of knowing, as such matters were then
an unknown world to me.

I never, up to reading it in Donohoe's story the other day, heard of 818
Broadway, curious as it may seem for a man of my experience. My
knowledge of gambling has always been confined to that kind which comes
under the head of stock gambling. I had not met my present friend, John
J. Roche, of New York, at the time mentioned. I never heard of Herbert
Gray, of Boston, until I employed him to manage my stable in 1899. I
have known J. Benjamin Palmer all my life. We were boys together on
State Street. Afterward he was the Stock-Exchange member of one of the
oldest banking-houses in Boston. He is still a broker on State Street.

Nothing of certainty can be learned of his career during
this period. That he sold "base-ball" cards (a unique kind
of playing-cards) at the Providence railroad station is
stated on credible authority; that he "worked the trains"
between New York and Providence; that he sold books; that he
was a hanger-on at race-tracks, has been alleged. Any or all
of these rumors may be true--or false--for whatever may be
said of Lawson, his career has undoubtedly been one of
marvellous activity in many diversified lines.

I have never sold baseball playing-cards at the Providence station, nor
anywhere, at this time nor any time, but I did invent the Lawson
Baseball Playing-Cards, and was president of the Lawson Playin