, to see just how they'd fall.
Some of the students got that interested they bet on the results."

"Oh!" said Charley, "I took a course in that one winter myself.
Did you always draw _one_ card at a time out'n that box, Zeke?"

"So help me, Bob! I did," returned Mr. Scraggs most earnestly.
"Hence I didn't get rich. It sometimes happened that a Wild Wolf
from Up the Creek would breeze in, full of rum, plumb foolishness,
and money. Oh, man! High or low, red or black, odd or even,
coppered or open, on the corner or let her rip, last turn and in
the middle, from soda-card to hock, them brier-whiskered
sons-of-guns would whipsaw my poor little bank till there wasn't
much left of her but sawdust. Yes, sir," mourned Mr. Scraggs, "I
made enough out of the early birds to eat, but them Roarin' Bears
from Bruindale uset sometimes to apply the flat of their hands to
my seat of learning till the sparks flew out of my eyes. In short,
this sportin' life was too much up and down hill for me. No sooner
would I git ready to declare a dividend than one of my outside
customers would come in and take that dividend and wipe both feet
on it, roll on it, stomp it, fly ten foot in the air and come down
on it, bite chunks out of it, and then I'd light a match, gather
the crumbs from the floor, and wisht I could git holt of something
at once easy and reliable.

"Well, there was a friend of mine lived at the Transcontinental
Hotel. The partition between his room and mine didn't come clear
to the ceiling, so when I arrived home late I uset to heave a boot
over on top of him and have a chin. He was a nice feller, Hadds.
A pale, thin sort of man, very red-headed--that is to say, not
red-headed like some parties I have known, but a sort of bashful
red, that would ha' been different if it could; and he wore eight
large freckles on his face. There would have been more if there
had been more room. Hadds was then workin' for the railroad
company, but not happy. He was in the dispatcher's office, and I'd
hear him holler in his nightmares, 'There they go! Bang!
Everybody killed! I always expected it!'

"You see, he lived in fear of running two excursion trains
together. Nervous cuss--oh, awful! Not without reason, neither.
Seems when he was at college he studied chemistry. Always
experimentin'. Mixed two things that was born to live apart.
Hadds left simooltaniously with that corner of the buildin'. He
didn't stop till he reached