An old man whose mind is still alert, and the movements of whose tall, somewhat stooped body are as free and spry as those of many a man fifty years his junior, is Cole Martin, once the most famous faro dealer in this country. He slipped the cards out of the box for the statesmen with a penchant for gaming who lived in Washington fifty, forty, and thirty years ago, when it was deemed no disgrace for the strong men of the land to try an occasional buck at the tiger, openly and above board. Martin is now verging upon 80 years of age, and even to the present generation of Washingtonians his white-bearded countenance is very familiar. His age does not tell upon him, and his commerce among men is about as wide now, he says, as it was back in the fifties. He had a great deal of money at one time in his career, but most of it went by the board. He had the caution to purchase an annuity for himself a good many years ago, and upon this he lives comfortably. He has passed most of his life in Washington, but before and after the war of the rebellion he had adventures in many parts of the United States where gaming was at its highest. He is a mine of curious, first-hand information about the statesmen-gamesters who were great figures in the national life of the country before the war, and the local newspaper have published many of his reminiscences of this sort. He is not garrulous, but once he gets into his stride and the company is congenial he talks well and entertainingly. He was speaking recently of the case of the well-known young American turf plunger who, after having beaten the English racing game to the tune of $150,000 a few weeks ago, waded in so recklessly that, only a short time later, he quit $90,000 to the bad.

"Another example of the chance taker who has not mastered the fine science of quitting," was his way of summing it up. "That seems to be the most difficult point in the gambling business—to know just the right time to quit. Few men master it. I never did, myself. I wish I had. Any fool can go on playing when he is away ahead of his game, but it takes a man of unusual strength of character, perception and foresight to knock off when, after riding a high tide, he notices that it begins to ebb. The scientists, I believe, talk of a 'psychological moment.' I don't know of any business in life in which the psychological moment plays a greater part than it does in gambling. Most of this country's old-time gamesters have died, as you know, very poor, or, worse, poverty-stricken. I never hear of the death of one of them leaving not enough money behind to have his body put into the ground that I don't recall the time when he had tens or hundreds of thousands. The gambler by profession has many a psychological moment in the course of his career, but he rarely takes advantages of them. He goes on dabbling at a percentage that his common-sense tells him is against him, and that he has only temporarily beaten, and after a while he finds himself broke; then he asks himself remorsefully why he didn't break off when he was on top of the wave. I have known a few professional gamblers who knew just when to quit. Some of them are still alive, old men like myself, and they are well fixed. Those of them who are dead left good sums of money behind them.

"I once saw George Plantagenet, one of the best known of the New Orleans gamblers before the war, win $60,000 in an afternoon's play at faro. This was in Memphis. He cashed in and left the bank. After supper he returned with all of the money and he began to buck the king. He played it open every time and the king lost eight straight times in two deals. That cost Plantagenet $20,000 of his winnings. The lid had been taken off the game for him. When the dealer pulled out the eighth straight losing king Plantagenet cashed in. He was frank enough to admit that he had cold feet.

"'While freely acknowledging that I am more or less of a d—d fool,' he said coolly, 'I strive for the reputation of knowing when I've got enough, even of a good thing. I quit. This is just my time to quit. If the box were only depleting me gradually but surely I don't doubt that I'd go until I was all up. But I can see legible handwriting on the wall from as considerable a distance as my neighbors, and when I'm on top, as I am now, well and comfortably, and eight straight kings range themselves against me on the left hand side of the layout, that's the kind of a signal I'm waiting for, and I pass. I'll bet any man on the side, just for a flyer, $5,000 that the next king out of the box wins, but no more faro.

"Frank Wooton, the proprietor of the layout, was standing by when Plantagenet made this little talk.

"'You are wise in your generation, George,' said he. 'Now, it is about a 10 to 1 shot against the king losing again. Consequently you can afford to give me at least 2 to 1 on that proposition. I'll bet you $2,500 to $5,000 that the king does lose the next time out.'

"'Taken,' said Plantagenet, covering Wooton's money, and the crowd gathered round to watch the dealer riffle the cards. The box was fully half out before a king showed, and it showed on the losing side—nine straight. Wooton pulled down the side bet.

"'Which I may remark,' said Plantagenet with the greatest coolness, 'that this ninth consecutive lose of the king simply confirms and makes good the hunch I had to quit when it lost the eighth time. But I will go a bit further to prove that my inspiration to quit is a proper and sensible one. I will bet you $1,000 that I can buck your bank now with dummy chips representing all of my winnings and the roll I originally started with, and that, although I shall play as carefully and as cautiously and as earnestly as I would did the dummy chips really represent money, I shall lose every stack within two hours.'

"Plantagenet and Wooton were old friends, and the latter knew that Plantagenet would try to win with the dummy chips even though he would be $1,000 loser if he did.

"'Go ahead and prove your case,' said Wooton, and a dealer who was off duty was called upon to deal. Plantagenet kept cases himself and played his own particular system with all manner of care and effort. Wooton stood by and saw that Plantagenet was playing his regular game. Plantagenet's luck had deserted him, and he lost two bets out of every three. It seemed impossible for him to get down right, and he lost steadily. He had played in his last stack in an hour and forty minutes and Wooton hand him the $1,000.

"'That's the way it would have been had I been playing with money,' said Plantagenet, and Wooton agreed with him. Plantagenet was one of the men who knew when to quit, and when he died, with his grandchildren around him, in the early seventies, he left more than $500,000 to be distributed among his heirs.

"Edmund Baker of Louisville, who was not a professional gambler, but who outdid most of the famous professional gamblers of the South in the late fifties in the heaviness of his play when he felt in a winning humor, was another man who knew when to quit. I saw him win $32,000 in one night at bank in the rooms of the old Crescent City Club. Then he curled up all of a sudden and cashed in. He wasn't a quitter in the ungenerous sense, but he used to say that the little angel, supposed by the sailors to sit aloft and watch out for Jack Tar, had a habit of informing him, when he was bucking another man's game, just the proper time to pass it up and quit. It was a matter of pure hunch with him. On this occasion Joe Randolph, a heavy player from Virginia, twitted Baker a bit for not pressing his luck—for quitting when he seemed to be winning four bets out of five.

"'All right, Randolph,' said Baker after he had cashed in. 'I'll let you make five $10 bets in my behalf on the deal now running and I'll bet you an even $2,000 that I (or you) lose four out of the five; this, just to show you that my intuition about the proper time to lay off is good.'

"Randolph took that bet, which was a good one, with more than an even chance in his favor, and he lost, for every one of the five bets lost. Baker would quit when he was loser just as suddenly as he would when he was away ahead of the game. I saw him lose over $3,000 in a four-handed poker game with friends in one of the parlors of the old St. Charles Hotel between the hours of 6 and 9 o'clock one evening. He had practically an unlimited amount of money at his disposal, considering the size of the game—$200 limit—but he yawned and pushed his chair back with the simple statement that it wasn't his night. The next night he lost $2,000 more to the same three friends, and again he resumed his seat. On the following night he was $4,000 loser after four hours' play, but he gave no sign of quitting.

"'Isn't it pretty near time for you to stretch your arms and forsake us again, Baker?' asked one of his friends in the game, jokingly.

"'No,' said Baker, 'I'm going to stay along to-night. I'll begin to win soon, and then you can all stand by.'

"He began to win on the very next deal and at 2 o'clock in the morning he had not only retrieved his losses on the week's play, but he had all the money in the crowd. Baker was possessed of a species of intuition that was something extraordinary. I don't know what else to call it but intuition. I never saw him take a daring chance that he did not win out on it—chances that no professional gambler would dream of taking, and diametrically opposed to all of the rules of percentage in games of hazard. One night he walked into 'Don' Haskell's Madrid Club in St. Louis—this was in the fall of '59—and stood and watched a few deals out of the box at the $500-limit faro table. Then he reached over and bought five yellow—$100—chips from the dealer. He put them all on the ace and coppered the card. The ace lost, and the dealer put five yellow chips on the top of the original five on the ace, and waited for Baker to haul them down. Baker absent-mindedly made no move, to take the chips until the dealer reminded him of them.

"'Let them stand, with the ace coppered,' said Baker.

"'But it's $500 limit, Mr. Baker,' said the dealer.

"'Let it stand, Jack,' said 'Don' Haskell, coming up behind Jack and addressing the dealer. 'Let it stand as long as Mr. Baker wants to make play with the ace coppered, and we'll see if we can't commit assault and battery on his "intuition."'

"Baker nodded good-naturedly to Haskell and then waited for the turns on the ace. The ace was only half a dozen cards below, and it lost. The dealer ranged ten more yellows beside Baker's pile.

"'Let them stand, ace coppered,' said Baker, scanning the cases for a few deals back carelessly.

"'Don' Haskell nodded in the affirmative to the dealer and the other players at the table neglected to put any bets down in their interest in Baker's peculiar play. There was only one more ace left in the box and it came out a loser. The dealer stacked up twenty more yellows beside Baker's pile—$4000—and he and the proprietor waited for Baker to haul them down. Baker leaned back and lit a cigar, leaving the $4000 in yellows to stand.

"'I'll leave them there, with the ace coppered, if you're willing, "Don,"' he said quietly to Haskell.

"'The longer the better,' said Haskell, and the dealer began to slip them out. The first ace was way down in the center of the box, and Haskell looked a bit chagrined when it came out a loser.

"'Eight thousand, eh?' he said, looking over the stack of yellows on the coppered ace. 'One more whirl at it, Baker—that'll be about all I can stand to-night if you take it down.'

"The ace came out on the losing side again—a thing that no professional gambler would have bet on had he been offered 5 to 1 on the proposition—and Baker cashed in $16,000. He would have let it run again had Haskell been able to stand it, but the 'Don' had enough. Baker stood by and watched the ace come out a loser twice again and then he put $500 on it to win. It won and he took the boat for New Orleans with $16,500 of Haskell's money. Three months later, when Frank Caxton, Ned Ripley and Monk Terhune, a well-known New Orleans trio of tiger buckers, broke the Madrid Club's bank roll wide open, to the tune of $100,000, Baker was the man who started Haskell in business again.

"When I was dealing heavy games myself I used often to have a sudden feeling that it was time for some strong bucker on the other side of the table to cash in and quit, but of course it was no part of my business to make any such suggestions. I was dealing a game once in Washington, in the winter of '66, when the outcast son of a rich tobacco man of Richmond came along and whacked my box for $12,000 in a single night's play at $200 limit. I knew the young fellow pretty well, and I knew that since his father had run him out of Richmond he had had more than his share of hard luck. In fact, he had often been hungry, and I had often given him a $5 or $10 bill, being pretty flush myself just then. He had started in on my box with a shoestring—where he got it I don't know—and, as I say, he got me to the tune of $12,000 before I turned the box on him for the night. The man in whose interest I was dealing was very wealthy and a generous man. He knew the young chap's father. He came to me after the young man had left with his winnings and said:

"'You'd better hunt up that boy and tell him that he'd better not play any more. He's had his run of luck, and he's got enough to give himself a start. I don't want the money back. If he handles it right it'll do him more good than it would me. Just try to pound a bit of sense into the lads' head.'

"That was a pretty square talk to come from the throat of a man whose bank had been raided. I hunted the young fellow up that morning and told him about it. He was full of hifalutin' talk about wanting to give the proprietor of the bank a chance and all that sort of thing.

"'He can take care of himself,' said I to the boy. 'He knows your father, and I dare say he's clipped your father's bank roll for a good deal more than $12,000 on occasions when your dad has visited Washington and gone against the bank. Better array yourself in purple and fine linen, keep sober, and go back to the Governor in Richmond with a high head and a proper countenance. That'll be better than walking into Richmond in need of a Russian bath.'

"The fever was on the boy, though, and he couldn't keep his promise to me to stop. He came in that night, and in half an hour's play he ran his $12,000 up to $15,000. I kicked him under the table then, as a sort of final warning. He paid no attention to me, though. Then he began to lose, and in three hours he was flat broke. He went out with a wild light in his eye, and the next morning he was found dead in his little boarding-house room, with a bullet in his brain.

"It may be true, in the ordinary sense, that Providence hates a quitter, but that doesn't apply to gambling. The knowledge of when to get cold feet, and the gentle art of doing the same, are valuable assets for any man who tries to buck another man's game."