Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/56

ONCE A CLOWN, ALWAYS A CLOWN of the club above. The first words I heard as we topped the steps were "And a thousand more", spoken by a player in a seven-handed poker game, and the goose flesh rose on my skin like a relief map of the Colorado mountains.

Champagne, the finest of Havana cigars and the best food in Leadville were served like the free lunch of New York bars. Having tried all, Davenport and I felt under certain obligations. We agreed to pool twenty-five dollars on a roulette wheel and were buying checks, when the proprietor ordered the croupier to return our money.

"Take it out in looking, boys," he told us, "and keep your money in your pockets. The odds are against you."

Our manhood thus impugned, we objected that we paid as we went.

"Give us a song then," the Brooklyn man suggested. "The boys would enjoy it."

Harry could play the piano after a fashion, but his repertoire was severely limited. When we came to canvass it we found only one song that he could play and I could sing, and it was not a tune that the environment suggested.

"We're sorry," we reported back, "but the