poppy-cock Anglice bosh you talked about poker, I'd ha' played a

straight game, and skinned you. I wouldn't have taken the trouble
to make you drunk. You never knew anything of the game, but how

I was mistaken in going to work on you, makes me sick."
He glared at me as though I had done him an injury. To-day I

know how it is that year after year, week after week, the bunco
steerer, who is the confidence trick and the card-sharper man of

other climes, secures his prey. He clavers them over with
flattery as the snake clavers the rabbit. The incident depressed

me because it showed I had left the innocent East far behind and
was come to a country where a man must look out for himself. The

very hotels bristled with notices about keeping my door locked
and depositing my valuables in a safe. The white man in a lump

is bad. Weeping softly for O-Toyo (little I knew then that my
heart was to be torn afresh from my bosom) I fell asleep in the

clanging hotel.
Next morning I had entered upon the deferred inheritance. There

are no princes in America--at least with crowns on their
heads--but a generous-minded member of some royal family received

my letter of introduction. Ere the day closed I was a member of
the two clubs, and booked for many engagements to dinner and

party. Now, this prince, upon whose financial operations be
continual increase, had no reason, nor had the others, his

friends, to put himself out for the sake of one Briton more or
less, but he rested not till he had accomplished all in my behalf

that a mother could think of for her debutante daughter.
Do you know the Bohemian Club of San Francisco? They say its

fame extends over the world. It was created, somewhat on the
lines of the Savage, by men who wrote or drew things, and has

blossomed into most unrepublican luxury. The ruler of the place
is an owl--an owl standing upon a skull and cross-bones, showing

forth grimly the wisdom of the man of letters and the end of his
hopes for immortality. The owl stands on the staircase, a statue

four feet high; is carved in the wood-work, flutters on the
frescoed ceiling, is stamped on the note-paper, and hangs on the

walls. He is an ancient and honorable bird. Under his wing 'twas
my privilege to meet with white men whose lives were not chained

down to routine of toil, who wrote magazine articles instead of
reading them hurriedly in the pauses of office-work, who painted

pictures instead of contenting themselves with cheap etchings
picked up at another man's sale of effects. Mine were all the

rights of social intercourse, craft by craft, that India,
stony-hearted step-mother of collectors, has swindled us out of.

Treading soft carpets and breathing the incense of superior
cigars, I wandered from room to room studying the paintings in

which the members of the club had caricatured themselves, their
associates, and their aims. There was a slick French audacity

about the workmanship of these men of toil unbending that went
straight to the heart of the beholder. And yet it was not

altogether French. A dry grimness of treatment, almost Dutch,
marked the difference. The men painted as they spoke--with

certainty. The club indulges in revelries which it calls
"jinks"--high and low, at intervals--and each of these gatherings

is faithfully portrayed in oils by hands that know their
business. In this club were no amateurs spoiling canvas, because

they fancied they could handle oils without knowledge of shadows
or anatomy--no gentleman of leisure ruining the temper of

publishers and an already ruined market with attempts to write
"because everybody writes something these days."

My hosts were working, or had worked for their daily bread with
pen or paint, and their talk for the most part was of the

shop--shoppy--that is to say, delightful. They extended a large
hand of welcome, and were as brethren, and I did homage to the

owl and listened to their talk. An Indian club about
Christmas-time will yield, if properly worked, an abundant

harvest of queer tales; but at a gathering of Americans from the
uttermost ends of their own continent, the tales are larger,

thicker, more spinous, and even more azure than any Indian
variety. Tales of the war I heard told by an ex-officer of the

South over his evening drink to a colonel of the Northern army,
my introducer, who had served as a trooper in the Northern Horse,

throwing in emendations from time to time. "Tales of the Law,"
which in this country is an amazinglyelastic affair, followed

from the lips of a judge. Forgive me for recording one tale that
struck me as new. It may interest the up-country Bar in India.

Once upon a time there was Samuelson, a young lawyer, who feared
not God, neither regarded the Bench. (Name, age, and town of the

man were given at great length.) To him no case had ever come as
a client, partly because he lived in a district where lynch law

prevailed, and partly because the most desperate prisoner shrunk
from intrusting himself to the mercies of a phenomenal stammerer.

But in time there happened an aggravated murder--so bad, indeed,
that by common consent the citizens decided, as a prelude to

lynching, to give the real law a chance. They could, in fact,
gambol round that murder. They met--the court in its

shirt-sleeves--and against the raw square of the Court House
window a temptinglysuggestive branch of a tree fretted the sky.

No one appeared for the prisoner, and, partly in jest, the court
advised young Samuelson to take up the case.

"The prisoner is undefended, Sam," said the court. "The square
thing to do would be for you to take him aside and do the best

you can for him."
Court, jury, and witness then adjourned to the veranda, while

Samuelson led his client aside to the Court House cells. An hour
passed ere the lawyer returned alone. Mutely the audience

questioned.
"May it p-p-please the c-court," said Samuel-son, "my client's

case is a b-b-b-bad one--a d-d-amn bad one. You told me to do
the b-b-best I c-could for him, judge, so I've jest given him

y-your b-b-bay gelding, an' told him to light out for healthier
c-climes, my p-p-professional opinion being he'd be hanged

quicker'n h-h-hades if he dallied here. B-by this time my
client's 'bout fifteen mile out yonder somewheres. That was the

b-b-best I could do for him, may it p-p-please the court."
The young man, escaping punishment in lieu of the prisoner, made

his fortune ere five years.
Other voices followed, with equallywondrous tales of

riata-throwing in Mexico and Arizona, of gambling at army posts
in Texas, of newspaper wars waged in godless Chicago (I could not

help being interested, but they were not pretty tricks), of
deaths sudden and violent in Montana and Dakota, of the loves of

half-breed maidens in the South, and fantastic huntings for gold
in mysterious Alaska. Above all, they told the story of the

building of old San Francisco, when the "finest collection of
humanity on God's earth, sir, started this town, and the water

came up to the foot of Market Street." Very terrible were some
of the tales, grimlyhumorous the others, and the men in

broadcloth and fine linen who told them had played their parts in
them.

"And now and again when things got too bad they would toll the
city bell, and the Vigilance Committee turned out and hanged the

suspicious characters. A man didn't begin to be suspected in
those days till he had committed at least one unprovoked murder,"

said a calm-eyed, portly old gentleman.
I looked at the pictures around me, the noiseless, neat-uniformed

waiter behind me, the oak-ribbed ceiling above, the velvet carpet
beneath. It was hard to realize that even twenty years ago you

could see a man hanged with great pomp. Later on I found reason
to change my opinion. The tales gave me a headache and set me

thinking. How in the world was it possible to take in even one
thousandth of this huge, roaring, many-sided continent? In the

tobacco-scented silence of the sumptuous library lay Professor
Bryce's book on the American Republic.

"It is an omen," said I. "He has done all things in all
seriousness, and he may be purchased for half a guinea. Those

who desire information of the most undoubted, must refer to his
pages. For me is the daily round of vagabondage, the recording of

the incidents of the hour and inter-course with the