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Updated: June 4, 2025
He had not the courage either to give his guests the excellent native claret where they had formerly enjoyed imported champagne or to appear a "piker" in the eyes of the far from democratic family butler. He consoled himself with the reflection that it was "good business." At all events it enhanced his standing and gave him intense pleasure.
Charley was listlessly struggling that losing struggle against mental, moral, and physical anaemia that takes place ceaselessly on the lower fringe of the middle classes. The first morning he stretched himself on a row of cereal cartons and carefully went over the limitations of the Theron G. Macy Company. "It's a piker organization. My Gosh! Lookit what they give me.
If I had doubted before, there was now no questioning the old rascal's claim to recognition as a fellow New Yorker. "But I was wrong. You are Mr. Piker from Uptown Somewhere. Had you been Mr. Arch, you would have recognized me as soon as I did you. We real ones do not forget. But I have your number. Would you like me to tell you a few things? Oh, I have your dossier, all right. Let me see.
He put me up at his club, and I got into some pretty high play, away over my head, but I wouldn't have him or his friends think I was a piker, so I stuck. "He won usually, and I almost got writer's cramp making out I. O. U.'s for him. Then his manner changed a bit and he began kidding me.
But don't ask me to be a piker and forget Dad! You don't know what he was to me! I appreciate what you-all are trying to do, Mrs. Halstead, and I sympathize with you, for it's going to be a tough job all around, no matter how I try to follow your lead, but don't stack the cards on the first deal, please. All I've got in the world now is my memory of the best friend that ever lived!"
"No, sir, I'm not going to hand over any forfeit money without making a fight for it!" Bud told him, anger showing in his voice. "I'm no such piker as that. I won't run Smoky, lame as he is " Bud probably nudged his own ribs when he said that! "but if you'll make it a mile, I'll catch up my old buckskin packhorse and run the race with him, by thunder!
"I see you don't recognize me with a full beard," sez Piker; "but down at Laramie they called me Jo Denton. It was my cousin, Big Brown, that you shot." "Do you happen to know what I shot him for?" Dick's face was as hard as marble, an' his voice was as cold as ice.
"Off goes the lid," sez Dick. They bet around awhile longer until nearly all of Dick's money was in the pot an' Jabez had a neat little pile of checks representin' him. Then Dick bet his balance an' called. We all laid down with a satisfied grin. Jabez had queens full on jacks, Piker had three bullets an' a team o' ten-spots; Dick had a royal straight flush, an' I had a nervous chill.
I was feelin' purty consid'able opulent myself, so I voted to double. "Three to one," sez Piker, "the stakes are doubled." "The original agreement can't be changed durin' a game without the unanimous consent of all the players," sez Dick, speakin' like a judge; "but as the rest of you wish it, I'll give mine." From that on the luck shifted.
Inasmuch as you have a deadly fear of being remembered afterward in this hotel as a piker, you continue to dip down and to fork over, and so by the time you reach the tail end of the procession your ten per cent has grown to twelve or fifteen per cent, or even more.
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