The Clifton clarion., 1885-04-01
PcRcr as n Fine lar.

I
 Poker as fine art is something I know very little about. My poker knowledge has been acquired with
 great difficulty, and more or less
 expense; my education in the
 game is a practical one so far as it
 goes, and my experience has been
 a sort of pull Dick, pull devil one,
 from beginning to end.
 I like the game. No one can
 deny that it is in its very nature
 an elevating art every one who
 ever engages in it, at some period I of his career, being raised clear
 above all minor considerations of
 life-raised in fact till he could
 stand to be raised no more.
 Poker was introduced into the
 United States about fifty years
 ago, and at once became very pop
 ular-especially along the Missis-
 sippi river and in the South gen.
 erally. It was formerly played
 with twenty cards-excluding all
 below the tens, the players not
 being allowed to draw in order to
 help their hands, after the deal;
 but that form of the game, known
 as twenty-deck poker, never at
 tained much favor in this country,
 and was soon superseded by the good old game of draw, which, with a few slight variations, has held its position-unchanged in theory and unrivalledin the hearts of the people. In poker proper, and the way it is played in the East, sequence fushes beat fours and straights beat two pair-the latter consideration, I will add, making pat flush mighty inter esting thing to hold in a good live game. Sequence fushes are played in the East because most people there are church members, and think it would be wrong to rake in deacon's cash on four aces, with no possibility of a better hand being against them. In the West, however, the people are more liberal in their views, and don't think any more of drawing down a mans money on an in- vincible hand than they would of downing him in any other trans action wherein he was entirely helpless. I saw a talented gentle man show down four aces t'other night and scoop $142 pot, and when I looked to see if any qualms of conscience were reflected in his intelligent countenance, I read there as plain as if it had been printed in eight-line pica boldface, "Why didn't I bet him more?"
 A good stiff game of poker makes a man experience a greater diversity of emotions in a given length of time than anything known. In playing poker, a man will feel at one moment like he is the smartest fellow on earth-and in fifteen minutes more he will think he is the biggest fool in town-and everybody knows it. Then they'll turn the low card for the drinks, and he'll get stuck, and he'll take whisky straight, and in all that mans memory there will not loom up single recollec tion of anything he ever under took that fortune smiled upon and he will put the question to himself if he is not a jackass on general principles, and the ayes will have it by an immense ma jority. But there is no more pleas ant triumph in a mans life than when he stands s raise on a four flush, and catches his injun, and passes, and the other fellow bets S7.50, and another fellow calls it for bluff, and he backs in and bets S12.50 more. Oh! I tell you what 1t is, my countrymen, that is the time in mans career that makes him glad, and does more to strengthen his tottering belief in an ever watchful and all-kind Providence than all the thirst producing Sunday sermons ever preached. I never knew a man who liked to play poker who would not square up his debts when he made winning, or who didn't have the energy to rustic for another stake when he made losing. I have known more young men who learned to sing psalms and pray devout prayers to turn out seducers, defaulters and deadbeats than I ever knew to do so who sought solace and recrea- tion in jacks-up.
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