Five years later, C. C. Jordan gambled on the boom caused by World War I and opened the Treasure State Bank.

But, in both World War I and World War II, Germany successfully gambled on making a rapid passage through the Ardennes to attack a relatively lightly defended part of France.

I was a fresh new journalist, and needed a nom de guerre ; so I confiscated the ancient mariner's discarded one, and have done my best to make it remain what it was in his hands – a sign and symbol and warrant that whatever is found in its company may be gambled on as being the petrified truth ; how I have succeeded, it would not be modest in me to say.

I had a free hand so I gambled ".

I guess you'd better go on in the morning ''.

`` I've been mucking in a mine in the San Juan, but I used to work on a ranch.

I just can't take any chances on getting her pregnant, and if we were sleeping together ''

In the brief moment I had to talk to them before I took my post on the ring of defenses, I indicated I was sickened by the methods men employed to live and trade on the river.

`` That quirt -- I ought to use it on you, where it would do the most good.

I don't know what goes on around here, and I don't care.

I went to the hall in the afternoons only, on these preliminary matters.

When one of the men in the hall behind us spat on the floor and scraped his boot over the gob of spittle I noticed how the clerk winced.

) hung on a hook on the wall, and underneath it I could see his tie, knotted, ready to be slipped over his head, a black badge of frayed respectability that ought never to have left his neck.

Once, pressing him, I learned that his job was only part-time, in the afternoons when nothing went on in the hall.

They, and the two large fans which I could dimly see as daylight filtered through their vents, down at the far end of the hall, could be turned on by a master switch situated inside the office.

For although I had crossed a corner of the hall on my way to the toilet I still could not tell for sure how far to the rear the darkness extended.

This light did not penetrate very far back into the hall, and my eyes were hindered rather than aided by the dim daylight entering through the fan vents when I tried to pick out whatever might be lying, or squatting, on the floor below.

And I had hardly finished my business in the toilet on the aforementioned occasion when the lights in that place, like the hall lights controlled from the switch in the office, flicked off and on impatiently.

It's not much of a meal, but it's what I eat ''.

`` I made you what you are '', Gavin whispered.

As I dug in behind one of the bales we were using as protection, I grudgingly found myself agreeing with Oso's logic, especially when I imagined what would have happened to Missy if Old Knife's large party of screeching warriors had overrun our company.

Now under me I could see him for what he really was, a boy dressed up in streaks of paint.

I meant what I said about that fire.

I don't know what makes you think you can get away with this kind of business, and I don't care about that, either.

Later I would remember what this pompous little man had told me about the worth of a ticket.

I knew that three or four of them were almost always present in the hall, but what they were doing, and exactly where, I could not tell.

My future lay solely with the hall, yet what did I know about the hall at this point??

I wished to prepare myself but did not even know what sort of clothes I ought to be wearing.

When I asked him what, if anything, I could do about it, he surprised me by referring me to the director of the hall.

I was at once disappointed, although just what I had expected him to look like I could not have explained.

As he lowered himself on the chair behind his desk I wondered what this dapper, slightly ridiculous man could possibly have to do with the workings of the hall.

Was I sure, he asked, that I knew what I was applying for??

At least I wasn't convinced, even as a graduate student that it mattered very much.

But what I would like to emphasize once more is that compassion and commiseration were at first of very little importance in attracting me to the representation of proletarian life ; what mattered was simply that I found it beautiful.

" I agreed immediately ( not that it mattered ) and that's how it was.

I didn't try to say the words for him because I knew how much they mattered.

" Producer-director Bert I. Gordon said he did not care whether reviews were bad ; what mattered was whether people went to see the film: " The movie audience these days consists almost entirely of teenagers.

The lesser commercial success of the album, according to a Rolling Stone November 1989 article, hardly mattered to Browne: " I like this album as much as any I've ever done ," Browne said.

But, being a gay man, it was just impossible to proceed further, within the conditions of the Anglican set-up, because I was determined that I would make no bones about who I was ; I was brought up to be truthful, and truth has always mattered to me.

I couldn't think of an alternative and I didn't think the name mattered.

I don't think it particularly mattered that none of us Jackson kids looked like each other because all our characters had different dads!