I have suffered from that knowledge as it is obviously
quite beyond your power to comprehend. I say obviously, because no men
with decency or the most ordinary imagination would have dared to
harrow a man's secret soul as you harrowed mine. Even in my many
battles with Tammany, my unfortunate birth has been respected. It
remained for you to write the unwriteable.
"As for my gambling, that too is true, to a certain extent. I have
played cards perhaps half a dozen times in as many years. I was taught
to play by the Luigi whom you interviewed. I have a gambler's
instinct, but since I was fourteen I have fought as men can fight and
latterly I have been winning the battle.
"Your insinuations as to my adult relationship to the underworld and to
women are lies. And your dragging Miss Allen into the dirty tale was a
gratuitous insult which it is fortunate for both of you, her father has
not yet seen. It happened that while I was on the vacation recently in
which you have taken so impertinent an interest, that I joined the camp
of two miners. One of them, Curly Field, told me an interesting story.
He probably would not have told me had I not been calling myself Smith
and had he not discovered that I am a lawyer.
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