opened a bar room, and was
making money like dirt, when one day a man walked in with a bucket
of water, and commenced pouring it on one of my billiard tables
that I got in Chicago, and which cost me $500. I walked up to him
and asked him what he was doing? He told me to go to h--l. I let
fly, caught him on the neck, and down he went, and he lay there
for some time. Finally they took him to where he and his wife were
stopping, and that night he died. Then I commenced to think about
getting out of that hot box. I got together what money I could,
and carried a canoe to the river, and started for Dubuque. There
were no telegraph lines at that time. I had been there but a few
days before the news came to me that the doctors had held a post
mortem examination, and decided the man had had delirium tremens,
and could only have lived a short time. They sawed open his skull,
and found his brain a jelly in the center. So I went back and
found his wife, gave her one of the houses which I had built and
$700 in money.

I then put a man in charge of my business, and went back to St.
Paul, where my keno games were still going on. But the man I left
in charge of my business at Winona sold all he could and skipped
out, and that was the last seen of him till I went up the Missouri
River two years after, when I found him in Kansas City. At that
time there were but three or four houses and a hotel down at the
river bank. It was a great point for the Santa Fe traders.

I became acquainted with a man named McGee, who owned the largest
part of Kansas City. He was a great lover of the game of "seven-
up," so we commenced to play at $10 a game, and I beat him out of
five lots (as he had no money), which I afterward sold at $10 a
piece. Twelve years ago, as I passed through there, I saw those
same lots bringing $600 per foot.

I went from there to St. Joe, Omaha, and Council Bluffs, and broke
a great many fellows playing poker. I then settled down at dealing
faro in St. Joseph, Mo. After staying there one year I went to
St. Louis, where I remained two or three months, and then went to
New Orleans. I landed there in 1853. The yellow fever was raging,
there being 300 deaths per day. Then was the time, if there was
any fright in the young gambler, for it to have shown itself; but
I made up my mind that if I had to go I might as well go then as
at any other time.

I was taken down with the fever, and nurses were scarce; but