poker story

An amusing 1860's poker story from History of Wyandotte County Kansas and its people:

A history of Wyandotte, in speaking of Judge John Pettit, the second judge of the Wyandotte district court, says: "Pettit was ill-natured, petulant, high-tempered, profane, tyrannical and abusive, but withal as clear-headed and able a jurist as ever donned the judicial ermine of Kansas. It was nothing unusual for him to go to Kansas City and play poker and drink whisky all night. The bar generally had to suffer for it the next day. In this connection we cannot refrain from giving an incident that occurred at the Garno House during one of his terms of court. S. L. Norris, a young man from Vermont, who lived by his wits, brought out a carpet sack of bank notes on the St. Albans Bank, which had burst in the crash of 1857. Judge James, Colonel Weir, Norris and one or two other parties, set up a job on Pettit and got him to playing poker. The old man was permitted to win nearly every game, and every time he won the boys put out a $20 bill on the broken bank of St. Albans, Pettit making the change in good money. At the close of the term the old judge was in high glee, as his capacious wallet was filled with $20 bills. But when he came to pay Mrs. Halford his hotel bill and presented one of his $20 notes, he learned the bank was broken; a second and third tender meeting a refusal on the same grounds, he saw that he had been sold. He returned to Leavenworth minus about $300 in cash, with about $1,000 in worthless money, a sadder but wiser man."

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