ut it doesn't work; the chances are all against
it. I know it from experience. I was a deacon myself once.

It was at a time when they were destroying gambling tools at Police
Headquarters. I was there, and I carried away as a memento of the
occasion a pocketful of red, white, yellow, and blue chips. They were
pretty, and I thought they would be nice to have around. That was the
beginning of the mischief. I was a very energetic deacon, and attended
to the duties of the office with zeal. It was a young church; I had
helped to found it myself; and at the Thursday night meetings I was
rarely missing. The very next week it was my turn to lead it, and I
started in to interpret the text to the best of my ability, and with
much approval from the brethren.

I have a nervous habit, when talking, of fingering my watch, keys,
knife, or whatever I happen to fish out of my pocket first. It
happened to be the poker chips this time. Now, I have never played
poker. I don't know the game from the smallpox. But it seems that the
congregation did. I could not at first account for the enthusiasm of
the brethren as I laid down the law, and checked off the points
successively on a white, a red, and a yellow chip, summing the
argument up on a blue. I was rather flattered by my success at
presenting the matter in a convincing light; and when the dominie
leaned over and examined the chips attentively, I gave him a handful
for the baby, cheerfully telling him that I had plenty more at home.

The look of horror on the good man's face remained a puzzle to me
until some of the congregation asked me on the train in the morning,
in a confidential kind of way, where the game was, and how high was
the ante. The explanation that ensued was not a success. I think that
it shook the confidence of the brethren in me for the first time.

It occurs to me now, looking back, that the fact that I had a black
eye on that occasion may have contributed in a measure to this result.
Yet it was as innocent an eye as those chips; in fact, it was
distinctly an ecclesiastical black eye, if I may so call it. I was
never a fighter, any more than I was a gambler. Only once in my life
was I accused of fighting, and then most unjustly. It was when a man
who had come into my office with a hickory club to punish me for a
wrong, as he insisted upon considering it,--while in reality it was an
act of strictest justice to him,--happened to fall out of a window,
taking the whole