CHAPTER NINE.

POKER AND PHILOSOPHY.

There were few Americans on the Fields, scarcely a score, but you heard from each one of them, as an individual, and soon learned on what footing you must meet him. Were he a gentleman from the "States," if you had not heard of that country, he had, and could give you information about it, from its present commander-in-chief to the one who in early days first held aloft the screaming eagle--that invincible bird!--a man like himself in one particular--he could not tell a lie. That is to say, if you dared to doubt his word, you could immediately have a chance to choose your weapons.

He was celebrated for his talent in forming stock companies, then running up the price of shares and quietly selling out; after which, intimating that he needed a vacation, he would return to the States, leaving the bubble to burst after his departure.

Sometimes he was known as a physician who, with his patent medicines, pretended to successfully combat those African fevers which English flesh is heir to; or a surgeon of skill, with instruments acknowledged to be as keen as Damascus blades, compared with those with which his English professional brother was "handicapped."

He was not less renowned for playing a beautiful hand at the (so-called) American national game of Poker, and for teaching some highly intellectual emissary of Duke of This and Lord That, who had come out to speculate for their Serene Highnesses, how neatly the game could be played, provided they took a few lessons, and paid well for them.

Among the few Americans on the Fields none stood higher in public favour than the really skilful surgeon, Dr Fox, who took a deep interest in all public matters.

Dr Fox was sitting in his office puffing at his briar-wood, and thinking of--nothing; a subject which he made it a point to reflect on daily, at least one hour of his sixteen waking ones.

He had knocked around the world a good deal, and now, among people from everywhere, was "settled" for the time at Kimberley. Strange as it may seem, it was no less a fact, that right here amidst the most intense excitement of an easily excited population he had suddenly stumbled across a thought. That thought was not to think: here where everybody was thinking and thinking, he thought of the thought--not to think. To give his brain a rest, he stopped thinking in the very midst of a deep thought. Great scheme!

This idea came to him something in this wise. He had been walking until he became very tired. Wanting to rest, and not being near a convenient hotel, or at home, or in any place where he could go to bed, he sat down, pulled out his pipe, lit it, and smoked. As he smoked he thought; he had not yet learned how not to think.

"My body rests while sitting: I do not always go to sleep to rest. Why not sit down for an hour, and think of nothing, and rest my brain by vacancy, instead of sleep?"

He did so. While resting his body by keeping still, he rested his brain by not thinking. When the hour expired he said to himself:

"To think constantly on one subject, will relax our hold on it. Given a subject we think and think on it, until all the grip of the brain is lost. I'll give the grey matter a rest."

On this evening, his hour for meditating on nothing was interrupted by a visit from Herr Schwatka and Major Kildare.

"Good evening, Doctor."

"Good evening, gentlemen; glad to see you. Cool night this, after such a hot day. These African nights are glorious. Step inside," and the doctor led the way to his private room. "Now, with your permission, I will mix you a concoction, the secret of which I learned in New York; 'tis a nectar fit for--men," and turning to the sideboard loaded with lemons, spices, and cooling beverages, he commenced to prepare the summer drink whose delights he had extolled.

"Do you know," said Kildare, "I have not tasted a drop of palatable water since I've been on the Fields?"

"I have had many encounters with the water question, and have subdued, but not yet conquered it. I had a barrel brought from the Dam yesterday. The brownish liquid you see in that jar is some of it. Don't look so disgusted, Major, the little water you will drink in the compound I am mixing has been filtered through that Faitje of powdered charcoal," and the doctor pointed to a bag suspended from the ceiling of an adjoining room.

Major Kildare was a retired English officer, who had been sent, as Agent of his Grace the Duke of Graberg, to purchase from the unsuspecting Boers, at nominal sums, their Transvaal farms on which he knew there was gold. Many of these farms were valueless stone mountains, but if His Grace the Duke allowed his name to appear at the head of the great South African gold mining company, it must be a good thing to invest in.

The Agent had an original idea--so he thought--as to the way a certain game of cards should be played, suggested by an American Diplomat at the Court of Saint James, from whom he had taken several expensive lessons.

He unfolded his scheme to the two gentlemen present, and proposed a practical exhibition of his science. Dr Fox, having limited the game to eleven o'clock, at which hour he had an appointment with two other M.D.'s, for an important consultation, consented, and then proceeded to become initiated in the mysteries of the game of Poker, as taught by an Englishman, and in endeavouring to graduate in it, lost several large sums of money. The three played until Herr Schwatka protested that he was no match for the other two, and withdrew from the game.

The Yankee Doctor soon began to exhibit signs of having known--perhaps in some pre-historic existence which he was just beginning to remember-- something of how the game should be played himself.

"Doctor," said Schwatka, "if I could develop so great a talent as you have, in so short a time, at a game you seemed to know but little of, I should stop giving medicine for a living."

"Ah! would you," replied the doctor. "I rarely do give medicine. Five out of every ten physicians give their patients medicine simply to follow traditions. The friend of my boyhood, old Dr Snow, used to say, that giving medicine to a patient, is like going into a dark room where your friend is in mortal combat with an enemy. All is dark, not a ray of light to distinguish friend from foe. You raise a club and strike in the location of the struggle. If you miss your friend and hit his foe, your friend is saved!"

"The deal is with you, Doctor."

"Excuse me for talking shop, though you'll have to charge that to Herr Schwatka," said the doctor, dealing. "How many cards, Major?"

"Two."

"I'll chance one."

"What is it that makes people sick?" continued Schwatka.

"It is often fear that makes people ill. They fear this and fear that; their thoughts dwell upon a dread disease, or they apprehend some danger in business affairs, until their thoughts are so saturated with the dread, that it is impossible to escape from it."

"This looks good for a pound," put in the major.

"I'll see that and raise you five," said the doctor.

"I'll see that five and go you five better," said Kildare.

"I'll see that and raise you ten," returned the doctor.

"Call you, Doctor. You can't scare me with a bob-tail flush." The doctor threw his cards in the pack. The major smiled as he raked in the stakes, and asked the doctor to continue on his theory.

"Many men," he observed, "of supposed integrity on the Fields, are illicit diamond buyers. They are constantly haunted by the fear of detection, and they will try to deceive themselves into the belief that the dread that is eating them up is some liver or stomach trouble, and they come to the doctor for relief. That they are tracked by this invisible foe no further proof is needed than the fact that last year six of our leading business men committed suicide. Fear is a ghost which stalks to and fro over the earth, forever haunting the imaginations of men."

"Raise you a fiver," called the major.

"See that, and ten better," replied the doctor.

"Call you, doctor."

"Queens."

"Never bet on the women, Doctor; Kings."

"Heavy betting for so light a hand," remarked Herr Schwatka.

"I've won a thousand with a smaller. It's sand, not cards, that wins at Poker. Half past ten!--as I have to be present at an interesting surgical operation, within the next hour, I think we had better discontinue our game."