The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-05-26
COSTLY POKER LESSONS.
IT IS OFTEN EXTENSIVE 40
 TEACH
The Uninitiated the Rudiments or the
 


 A brace of young married couples, living in adjoining flats in a Mount
 Pleasant apartment building, have
 been having little quarter-limit poker seances in each others rooms during l the past few months. A few weeks ago
 another young couple took a fiat on the
 same floor. It didn't take long for the
 first pair of young matrons to get into
 conversation with the newcomer on
 the subject of the care and treatment of
 rubber plants, the best flea wash for sky terriers. the dumb-waiter milk
 thief, and other topics dear to the souls
 of fatters.
 The newcomer was a very demure
 little things who had been raised in the
 country, and whose clothes as the oth- | CT two momen decided between them-
 selves, were suspiciously "bridey" She | hadn't, as a matter of fact, been mar
 ried very long. She looked as if she
 would about rank with the Class A
 bunch in spelling bee in Turnipville-
 on-the-pike's little red schoolhouse, and
 she didn't make any pretensons to be- 1 ing next to metropolitan ways ! Her husband looked as if he might run to fires on very slight provocation. He looked as if no suit of clothes could
 ever be made to suit him, and he had the Rube walk of an aggriculturist try | ing not to tread on beds of spring on- ions. He handled his hands and feet as | If they belonged to somebody else, and I he wore a pale pink crocheted four-in- hand that his wife had manufactured for him with her own little hands which ought to be about enough for him.
 It wasn't very long before the bridey- looking young matron from the country found out, by accident, that the other two couples indulged in semi-weeky poker-feasts. The other two women were afraid, when she found this out, that she would give them the sad eye and curl up on them. But she didn't.
 We should like to learn how to play poker, too," she said, a1luding to her l husband and herself.
 So she and her husband were invited l to sit in the next time.
 Here" remarked the two other hus- bands craftily, lis where we pick up | little loop-the-loop change for the | summer. It'll be just like knocking | 'em down with juvenile tree and talk | ing 1t away from them, but look at | the wash dresses and summer hats and | things our wives need. It'll be a shame to make this trustful young | Ipswich pair melt down their wedding | presents to make good, but haven't | they themselves invited ruin by volun- tarily putting in?"
 It was on the evening of the last pay day that the three young couples got | together The new corners didn't dis play much aptitude at learning the values of the hands until they were about fourteen dollars to the bad but 1 then they began to pick up. The se- date young matron had great difficulty in experimenting the value of fours, which she caught frequently, and she couldn't quite get over the habit of re- garding them as two pairs But she i won out on them every time. Her hus- band couldn't quite dope it out why a full house should be better than straight or flush, but he consented to let Hoyle have his own way about it, and played the full houses which he be- gan to get about every other deal, until the other folks felt like talking to them selves. They were playing all jack | pots, and the newcomers would stay { for a quarter apiece and draw five cards each, and then chase the opener !, to a dark corner of the attic K
 When cashing-in time came around, with the arrival of midnight, the young couple with the alfalfa-and-ensi- lage look about them were s94.35 to the good and the other two husbands were wondering whether their respec- l tive disbursing clerks would stand for the hurry touch for the rent coin on the 1 
 "The next time I make an assist in teaching tyros how to play poker" re- marked one of them when the new cou- 1 ple had made their escape with all of the money, tits going to be for sawed 1 4nd-split wax matches, and the rates going to be one hundred dollars per lesson, at that This game of instruct Ing elephants to box and then taking 1 them on as sparng partners hasn't got 1 enough percentage to- break-even in 1t to muss up a fly leaf on a pocket calen- lar" Then his wife--who didn't have to do [ he hustling for the car fare and morn ne paper money-called him a hard [ oser, and the thing broke up with sev- [ ,ral swirling cirrus clouds on the hori- on,-Washington Post.