Taking Chances

The talk of the racetrack, the poolroom and the saloon, taken down by a man who spent his working life listening to it: touts, bookmakers, gamblers who cannot stop, and the philosophy each has worked out to explain why he is not a fool. Cullen wrote for the New York Sun and made these sketches out of overheard speech; the slang is the real record, and nobody else preserved it this exactly.