The judge smiled with the rest. But Sturgis
maintained a countenance whose earnestness was even severe. The opposite
counsel tried to ridicule him out of his position, and did not succeed.
The judge jested in a ponderous judicial way about the thing, but did not
move him. The matter was becoming grave. The judge lost a little of his
patience, and said the joke had gone far enough. Jim Sturgis said he
knew of no joke in the matter--his clients could not be punished for
indulging in what some people chose to consider a game of chance until it
was proven that it was a game of chance. Judge and counsel said that
would be an easy matter, and forthwith called Deacons Job, Peters, Burke,
and Johnson, and Dominies Wirt and Miggles, to testify; and they
unanimously and with strong feeling put down the legal quibble of Sturgis
by pronouncing that old sledge was a game of chance.
"What do you call it now?" said the judge.
"I call it a game of science!" retorted Sturgis; "and I'll prove it,
too!"
They saw his little game.
He brought in a cloud of witnesses, and produced an overwhelming mass of
testimony, to show that old sledge was not a game of chance but a game of
science.
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