Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 03.pdf/435

It is interesting to observe what is con nothing. The jurymen knew euchre when sidered a "public place" within the mean they saw it, and they considered bone-plated ing of such laws. A definition has been pieces of wood with spots and blanks as given by the highest courts in many dangerous to the welfare of the community states; and it would seem that they have as pasteboards with pips and pictures. been careful to preserve their own liberties The defendant paid his fine, and forever and to protect the rights and privileges of after shunned the back-room of the grocery. lawyers and court officials; for they have de A review of our daily literature shows cided that a lawyer's office is not a public the prominence of the game of poker, and place, and the same privacy is attributed to even the sedate judge upon the bench cannot the offices of the clerk of the court and to avoid testifying to its rank. When euchre, the jury-rooms. ramps, faro, or some other unusual game If one does not have access to these is involved in the case on trial, the court privileged localities, it is held that he may frequently admits the testimony of an ex safely tempt fortune in his room in a hotel pert to prove the method of playing the provided the door is locked; or if he has not game. For example, in St. Louis four or registered at a hotel, he may retire to a con five years ago, a learned judge of the city venient patch of woods and deal the cards on court was obliged to confess that he could a stump or on a stone; but beware the con not take judicial notice of the fact that stable if he plays in the back-room of a corner " the so-called game of seven-up is a game grocery, or on the railroad train, or on the of chance." But when the game of poker is at issue, the court is fully informed of his beach at the sea-shore. Card-players frequently seek to evade the own experience. As a Montana judge says, law against playing cards in public places " The word ' poker ' as applied to a game of by using dominoes; but sooner or later they cards, so far as we know, has but one In Oregon the court knows come to grief, for judges as well as juries know meaning." well enough that vingt-et-un, ramps, and that "stud-poker" is the usual game; and last year a learned ornament of the bench euchre may be played as well with dom inoes as with cards; and if the identity in Alabama went so far as to instruct of the game actually played is denied, the the jury that "rattling of chips" heard on prosecution calls upon the town gamester to the other side of a locked door is prima play the game with each, thus demonstrating facie proof that a game of poker is there to the jury that euchre is euchre, however in progress. We may be consoled by the belief that the court had paid for his in played. A moral and a warning may here be drawn timate knowledge of the game. from the unfortunate experience of a stanch Playing at cards, so far as the law is and pious churchwarden in Arkansas, who concerned, is governed by essentially the happened into the back-room of the corner same statutes now as three hundred store of a small village, and was initiated into years ago; and the decisions here referred a game played with dominoes. He was not to are making rules of law by which the told that he was playing euchre, and was enforcement of those statutes will doubt horrified when arrested by a vigilant police- less be regulated for a century more. If officer, and charged with playing a card endowed with the power of speech, playinggame in a public place. His protestations cards might complain to our courts now that he never touched a card and knew in the same words attributed to the knave nothing of euchre, and that he supposed of hearts in " His supplication to the carddominoes to be an innocent diversion like makers" in 1612: "Yet wee ... must wear mumblety-peg or jack-stones, availed him the suites in which wee first were made."