"And it is," pursued Bagarrow, quite glowing with liberality, "just a little pharisaical to object to card tricks. There are quantities of really quite clever and mathematical things that one may do with a chosen card, dealing the pack into heaps and counting slowly. Of course it is not for mere pleasuring that I learn these things. It gives anyone with a little tact an opportunity for stopping card-playing. When the pack is brought in, and all the party are intent upon gaming, you may seize your opportunity and take the cards, saying, 'Let me show you a little trick,' or, 'Have you seen Maskelyne's new trick with the cards?' Before anyone can object you are displaying your skill to their astonished eyes, and in their wonder at your cleverness the objectionable game may be indefinitely postponed."
"Yet so set at times is your gambler upon his abominable pursuit," says Bagarrow, "that in practice even this ingenious expedient has been known to fail." He tried it once, it seems, in a race train to Kempton Park, and afterwards he had to buy a new hat. That incident, indeed, gives you the very essence of Bagarrow in his insidious attacks on evil. I remember that on another occasion he went out of his way to promise a partially intoxicated man a drink; and taking him into a public-house ordered two lemon squashes! Drinks! He liked lemon squash himself and he did not like beer, and he thought he had only to introduce the poor fallen creature to the delights of temperance to ensure his conversion there and then. I think he expected the man to fall upon him, crying "My benefactor!" But he did not say "My benefactor," at anyrate, though he fell upon him, cheerfully enough.
To avoid the appearance of priggishness, which he dreads with some reason, he even went so far as to procure a herb tobacco, which he smokes with the help of frequent sulphur matches. This he recommends to us strongly. "Won't you try it?" he says, with a winning smile. "Just once." And he is the only man I ever met who drinks that facetious fluid, non-alcoholic beer. Once he proposed to wean me upon that from my distinctive vice, which led indeed to our first rupture. "_I_ find it delicious," he said in pathetic surprise.