[PW] Finger in the dike

[Fuller, Thomas (US - Washington D.C.)]

John, I'm surprised you missed "coppering a bet".  Don't they play faro
in your parts any more?  It means to put a copper penny on a bet or card
to wager that it will lose.

Noted card expert John Scarne, in his 1949 book SCARNE ON CARDS,
described this as an "immortal" phrase.  I doubt you could find 1000
people in the whole country today who know what it means -- excluding,
perhaps, Civil War re-enactors, who hardly count as living in this
century.  (The same for his other "immortal" faro phrase, "calling the
turn".)  So much for immortality.

-- Tom

P.S. re "leading a horse" -- I never could understand why a lead balloon
was any more likely to fail than any of its followers. 

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