casino joe, when thirty years ago he came about the bowery, was in manner and speech a complete expression of the rustical. his brow was high and fine and wise; but lank hair of yellow spoiled with its ragged fringe his face—a sallow face, wide of mouth and with high cheek bones. his garb was farmerish; kip-skin boots, coat and trousers of gray jeans, hickory shirt, and soft shapeless hat. nor was casino joe in disguise; these habiliments made up the uniform of his ancestral new hampshire. countryman all over, was casino joe, and this look of the uncouth served him in his chosen profession.
possibly “chosen” as a term is indiscreet. gamblers are born and not made; they occur and they do not choose; they are, compared with more conservative and lawful men, what wolves are to honest dogs—cousins, truly, but tameless depredators, living lean and hard, and dying when die they do, neglected, lone and poor. yet it is fate; they are born to it as much as is the ishmael wolf and must run their midnight downhill courses.
gamblers, that is true gamblers, are folk of specialties. casino joe’s was the game which gave to him his name—at casino he throve invincibly.
“it is my gift,” he said.
two things were with casino joe at birth; the genius for casino and that jack-knife talent to whittle which belongs with true-born yankees. of this latter i had proof long after poor casino joe wras dead and nourishing the grass. the races were in boston; it was when goldsmith maid reigned queen of the trotting turf. her owner came to me at the adams house and told how the aged sire of goldsmith maid, the great henry clay, was in his equine, joint-stiffened dotage pastured on a not too distant farm. he was eager to have a look at the old horse; and i went with him for this pilgrimage.
as we drove up to the tavern which the farmstead we sought surrounded, my curious eye was caught by a fluttering windmill contrivance perched upon the gable. it was the figure of a woman done in pine and perhaps four feet of height, carved in the somewhat airy character of a ballet dancer. instead of a dance, however, the lady contented herself with an exhibition of indian club swinging—one in each pine palm; the breeze offering the whirling impulse—in the execution wherof she poised herself with one foot on a wooden ball not unlike the arrowing bronze diana of madison square. this figure, twirling clubs, as a mere windmill would have been amazing enough; but as though this were not sufficiently wondrous, at regular intervals our ballet dancer shifted her feet on the ball, replacing the right with the left and again the left with the right in measured alternation. the miracle of it held me transfixed.
the host came fatly to his front stoop and smiled upon my wide-eyed interest.
“where did you get it?” i asked.
“that was carved with a jack-knife,” replied mine host, “by a party called ‘casino joe.’ it took him’most a year; he got it mounted and goin’ jest before he died.”
for long i had lost trace of casino joe; it was now at this change house i blundered on the news how my old gambling friend of the bowery came with his consumption and some eight thousand dollars—enough to end one’s life with—and made this place home until his death. his grave lay across a field in the little rural burying ground where he had played when a boy, for casino joe was native of these parts.
there were no cheatings or tricky illicitisms hidden in joe’s supremacies of casino. they were works of a wax-like memory which kept the story of the cards as one makes entries in a ledger. when the last hands were out between joe and an adversary, a glance at his mental entries of cards already played, and another at his own hand, unerringly informed him of what cards his opponent held. this he called “telling the last four.”
it was as an advantage more than enough to enable joe to win; and while i lived in his company, i never knew him to be out of pocket by that divertisement. the marvel was that he could keep accurate track of fifty-two cards as they fell one after the other into play, and do these feats of memory in noise-ridden bar-rooms and amid a swirl of conversation in which he more or less bore part.
those quick folk of the fraternity whom he encountered and who from time to time lost money to casino joe, never once suspected his victories to be a result of mere memory. they held that some cheat took place. but as it was not detectable and no man might point it out, no word of fault was uttered. joe took the money and never a protest; for it is as much an axiom of the gaming table as it is of the law that “fraud must be proved and will never be presumed or inferred.” with no evidence, therefore, the losing gamblers made no protesting charge, and joe went forward collecting the wealth of any and all who fought with him at his favorite science.
casino joe, as i have said, accounted for his mastery at casino by his power to “tell the last four,” and laid it all to memory.
“and yet,” said joe one evening as i urged him to impart to me his secret more in detail, “it may depend on something else. as i’ve told you, it’s my gift. folk have their gifts. once when i was in the town of warrensburg in western missouri, i was shown a man who had gifts for mathematics that were unaccountable. he was a coarse, animalish creature, this mathematician; a half idiot and utterly without education. a sullen, unclean beast of a being, he shuffled about in a queer, plantigrade fashion like a bear. he was ill-natured, yet too timid to do harm; and besides a genius for figures, his distinguishing characteristics were hunger measured by four men’s rations and an appetite for whiskey which to call swinish would be marking a weakness on one’s own part in the art of simile. yet this witless creature, unable to read his own printed name, knew as by an instinct every mathematical or geometrical term. you might propose nothing as a problem that he would not instantly solve. he could tell you like winking, the area of a seven or eight-angled figure so you but gave him the dimensions; he would announce the surface measurements of a sphere when told either its diameter or circumference. once, as a poser, a learned teacher proposed a supposititious cone seven feet in altitude and with a diameter of three feet at the base, and asked at what distance from the apex it should be divided to make both parts equal of bulk and weight. the gross, growling being made correct, unhesitating reply. this monster of mathematics seemed also to carry a chronometer in his stomach, for day or night, he could and would—for a drink of rum—tell you the hour to any splinter of a second. you might set your watch by him as if he were the steeple clock. i don’t profess,” concluded casino joe, “to either the habits or the imbecility of this genius of figures, yet it may well be that my abilities to keep track of fifty-two cards as they appear in play and know at every moment—as a bookkeeper does a balance—what cards are yet to come, are not of cultivation or acquirement, but were extant within me at my birth.” when casino joe appeared in the bowery he came to gamble at cards. that buzzing thoroughfare was then the promenade of the watchful brotherhood of chance. in that hour, too, it stood more the fashion—for there are fashions in gambling as in everything else—to win and lose money at short-cards, and casino enjoyed particular vogue. there were scores of eminent practitioners about new york, and joe had little trouble in securing recognition. indeed, he might have played the full twenty-four hours of every day could he have held up his head to such labors.
there was at the advent of our rural joe into metropolitan circles none more alert or breathless for pastmastery in unholy speculation than myself. about twenty-one should have been my years, and i carried that bubbling spirit for success common to the youth of every walk. aut cosar aut nullus! was my warcry, and i did not consider joe and his career for long before i was slave to the one hope of finally gaining his secret. one might found fortune on it; like the philosopher’s stone it turned everything to gold.
with those others who fell before joe i also believed his success to be offspring of some cheat. and while the rustic joe was engaged against some fellow immoralist, i’ve sat and watched for hours upon end to discover what winding thing joe did. there was no villainy of double dealing or chicane of cut-shifting or of marked cards at which i was not adept. and what i could so darkly perform i was equally quick to discover when another attempted it. but, albeit i eyed poor joe with a cat’s vigilance—a vigilance to have saved the life of argus had he but emulated it with his hundred eyes—i noted nothing. and the reason was a simple one. there was literally nothing to discover; joe played honestly enough; his advantage dwelt in his memory and that lay hidden within his head.
despairing of a discovery by dint of watching, i made friendly overtures to joe, hoping to wheedle a secret which i could not surprise. my proffers of comradeship were met more than half way. joe was a kindly though a lonely soul and had few friends; his queer garb of the cowpastures together with his unfailing domination at casino kept others of the fraternity at a distance. also i had been much educated of books by father glennon, and put in my spare time with reading. as joe himself had dived somewhat into books, we were doubly drawn to each other. hours have we sat together in joe’s nobly furnished rooms—for he lived well if he did not dress well—and overhauled for our mutual amusement the literature of the centuries back to chaucer and his tabard inn.
at this time joe was already in the coils of that consumption whereof at last he died. and what with a racking cough and an inability to breathe while lying down, joe seldom slept in a bed. the best he might do was to gain what snatches of slumber he could while propped in an arm-chair. it thus befell that at his suggestion and to tell the whole truth, at his generous expense, i came finally to room with joe. somebody should utilize the bed. being young and sound of nerves, his restless night-roamings about the floors disturbed not me; i slept serenely through as i doubtless would through the crack of doom had such calamity surprised us at that time, and joe and i prospered bravely in company.
beseech and plead as i might, however, joe would not impart to me that hidden casino strength beyond his word that no fraud was practiced—a fact whereof my watchings had made me sure—and curtly describing it as an ability to “tell the last four.”
while joe housed me as his guest for many months and paid the bills, one is not to argue therefrom any unhappy pauperism on my boyish part. in good sooth! i was more than rich during those days, with a fortune of anywhere from five hundred to as many as four thousand dollars. like all disciples of chance i had these riches ever ready in my pocket for what prey might offer.
it was now and then well for joe that i went thus provided. that badly garbed squire of good dame fortune, who failed not of a profit at casino, had withal an overpowering taste to play faro; and as if by some law of compensation and to preserve an equilibrium, he would seem to sit down to a faro layout only to lose.
time and again he came to his rooms stripped of the last dollar. on these harrowing occasions joe would borrow a round-number stake from me and so return to the legitimate sure harvests of casino, vowing never to lose himself and his money in any quicksands of farobank again.
it must be admitted that these anti-faro vows were never kept; once firm on his feet by virtue of casino renewed, it was not over long ere he “tried it just once more,” to lose again. these faro bankruptcies would overtake joe about once a month.
one day i made a mild plot; i had foregone all hope of coaxing joe’s secret from him; now i resolved to bring against him the pressure of a small intrigue. i lay in ambush for joe, waylaid him as it were in the weak hour of his destitution and ravished from him at the point of his necessities that which i could come by in no other way.
it was following a disastrous night at faro when joe appeared without so much silver in his pockets as might serve to keep the fiends from dancing there. having related his losses he asked for the usual five hundred wherewith to re-enter the sure lists of casino and begin the combat anew.
to his sore amazement and chagrin—and somewhat to his alarm, for at first he thought me as poor as himself from my refusal—i shook my sage young head.
“haven’t you got it?” asked joe anxiously.
“oh, yes,” i replied, “i’ve got it; and it’s yours on one condition. teach me how to ‘tell the last four,’ and you may have five hundred and five hundred with it.”
then i pointed out to joe his mean unfairness in not equipping me with this resistless knowledge. save for that one pregnant secret i was as perfect at casino as any sharper on the bowery. likewise, were the situation reversed, i’d be quick to instruct him. i’d lend no more; there would come no further five hundred save as the price of that touchstone—the golden secret of how to “tell the last four.” this i set forth jealously.
“why, then,” said joe, “i’ll do my best to teach you. but it will cost a deal of work. you’ll have to put in hours of practice and curry and groom and train your memory as if it were a horse for a great race. i tell you the more readily—for i could elsewhere easily get the five hundred and for that matter five thousand other dollars to keep it company—since i believe i’ve not many months to live at best”—here, as if in confirmation, a gust of coughing shook him—“and this secret shall be your legacy.”
with these words, joe got a deck of cards and began a game of casino with me as an adversary. slowly playing the cards, he explained and strove to illustrate those mental methods by which he kept account and tabbed them as they were played. if i could lay bare this system here i would; but its very elaboration forbids. it was as though joe owned a blackboard in his head with the fifty-two cards told off by numbers in column, and from which he erased a card the moment it appeared in play. by processes of elimination, he came finally to “tell the last four,” and as the last hands were dealt knew those held by his opposite as much as ever he knew his own. this advantage, with even luck and perfect skill made him not to be conquered.
it took many sittings with many lessons many hours long; but in time because of my young faculties—not too much cumbered of those thousand and one concerns to come with years and clamor for remembrance—i grew as perfect as joe.
and it was well i learned the secret when i did. soon after, i became separated from joe; i went southward to new orleans and when i was next to new york joe had disappeared. nor could i find trace or sign of his whereabouts. he went in truth to his old village, and my earliest information thereof came only when the tavern host told the origin of the club-swinging ballet dancer then toeing it so gallantly on his gables.
but while i parted with my friend, i never forgot him. the knowledge he gave double-armed me at the game. it became the reason of often riches in my hands, and was ever a resort when i erred over horse races or was beaten down by some storm of faro. then it was profitably i recalled casino joe and his instructions; and his invincible secret of “how to tell the last four.”
“is it not strange,” said the jolly doctor, when the red nosed gentleman had finished, “that i who never cared to gamble, should listen with delight to a story of gamblers and gambling? but so it is; i’ve heard scores such in my time and always with utmost zest. i’ll even tell one myself—as it was told me—when it again becomes my duty to furnish this good company entertainment. meanwhile, unless my memory fails, it should be the task of our descendant of hiawatha”—here the jolly doctor turned smilingly to sioux sam—“to take up the burden of the evening.”
the old cattleman, joining with the jolly doctor in the suggestion, and sioux sam being in no wise loth to be heard, our half-savage friend related “how moh-kwa fed the catfish.”
