some sense before I was commsssioned,
but it had spoiled me. He said in less than a week I would be borrowing
money of him. I knew better, and went around camp with my thumbs stuck
in my armholes, and felt big. It was an awful long day, but I put in the
time thinking how I would draw cards, and bet judiciously, and finally
night came, and I went over to the major's tent, where the officers
usually congregated. I was early, and had to wait half an hour before
the crowd showed up. As they came in each had something to say to me.
"Here's the man who walked off with our wealth last night," said one.
"Here's our victim," said another. "We will send him to his tent tonight
without a dollar." They chaffed me a good deal, but I made up my mind
that I could play as well as they could, and some of them were old
fellows that had played poker before I was born. Well, we went to work,
and the first hand I got I lost ten dollars. It was the history of all
smart Aleck's, and there is no use of going into details. In less than
an hour they had won the hundred dollars, and fifty that I had sewed
inside my shirt to keep for a rainy day, and they had joked me every
time I bet until I was exasperated to such an extent that I could have
killed them. Winning or losing money with them was a mere pastime, and
they seemed to enjoy losing about as much as winning. I was too proud,
or too big a fool to leave the game when I had lost all I had, and I
borrowed a little of each of them, and lost it, and then I said I was
tired and I guessed I would go to bed, and I went out, dizzy and sick at
heart, and the officers laughed so I could hear them clear to my tent. On
the way to my tent, and as I walked around for half an hour before going
there, I thought over what a fool I was, how I had forgotten all the
good advice ever given me by my friends. Knowing that I was not intended
by nature for a gambler, I had gone in with my eyes open, made a
temporary success, got the big head, as all boys do, and gone back and
laid down my bundle, and become the laughing stock of the whole crowd.
I figured up that I was just an even hundred dollars out of pocket, and
decided that I would never try to get it back. I would simply swear off
gambling right there, forget that I knew one card from another, pay up
my gambling debts when I got my first pay, and never touch a card again.

That was the wisest conclusion that I ever come to. After I had walked
around until my he