machine, and he searched pa and found a lot more bronchial trochees, and
pa was in for it on a charge of malpractice, for giving cough medicine
for the stomach trouble of the slot machine, instead of pepsin tablets.

They took pa in a back room and searched him some more, and found his
roll, and then a man who said he was a lawyer offered to help pa, and
keep him out of the penitentiary. He told pa the law of Kentucky made
the crime of trifling with a slot machine the same as breach of promise,
or arson, and that he would be lucky if he got off with ten years in the
pen, with 30 days' solitary confinement in a Turkish bath cell, with
niggers for companions.

Pa turned blue and asked the lawyer if there was no way out of it, and
the lawyer told him that for $120 in spot cash he would let him go, and
fight the case after the show had got out of the state. A hundred and
twenty-five dollars was the amount they found on pa, and he told them
that inasmuch as they already had it, they better keep the money and let
him go, and he would be always a living example of the terrors of
gambling.

So they let pa go, and all the way to the train he told us he hoped this
experience would be a lesson to us not to covet the money of the rich,
and as far as he was concerned, John D. Rockefeller could go plum to
thunder with his money after this.

Then we got to the car, and found about a dozens of the circus men who
had been out to beat the slot machines, broke flat, and I had to divide
my shot bag of nickels with them, that I had won before I let them into
the game, before they would let me go to bed.