Gambler

“ I have condensed into one account the separate parts of this gambling transaction as narrated by each evangelist. How marked in every age is a Gambler's character! The enraged priesthood of ferocious sects taunted Christ's dying agonies; the bewildered multitude, accustomed to cruelty, could shout; but no earthly creature, but a Gambler, could be so lost to all feeling as to sit down coolly under a dying man to wrangle for his garments, and arbitrate their avaricious differences by casting dice for his tunic, with hands spotted with his spattered blood, warm and yet undried upon them. ”

“ For a quarter of a century he has witnessed and practiced every variety of gambling known to the professional. From the shores of the Atlantic to the canons of Colorado, from the frozen lake of the North, drained by the mighty Mississippi, to the sunken bayous that skirt its delta, he has journeyed to and fro, plying his nefarious calling. At times realizing the success of his schemes, at times a penniless wanderer, he has tasted all the joys of a gambler’s career and drained to the dregs the wormwood which lurks at the bottom of the cup of illusive, hollow happiness. ”

“ Had you swallowed corrosive poison, would it ease your convulsions to think there was only one chance in fifty for you? I do not call every man who plays a gambler, but a gambler in embryo. Let me trace your course from the amusement of innocent playing to its almost inevitable end. ”

“ The professional gambler trying to live by his winnings, the fashionable swell finishing his round of excitement, the struggling tradesman hoping to avert impending bankruptcy, the prize-fighter, and, more conspicuous than any, the keen-eyed usurer with his roll of notes and sheaf of bill stamps, were to be found there. ”

“ Three months before, in the same situation, my gambler's instinct would probably have helped me out. For I had not been gambling in the great American Monte Carlo all those years without getting used to the downs as well as to the ups. I had not—and have not—anything of the business man in my composition. To me, it was wholly finance, wholly a game, with excitement the chief factor and the sure winning, whether the little ball rolled my way or not. I was the financier, the gambler and adventurer ”

“ These familiars thrive and fatten on the gamblers; spoils pour in on them, in every conceivable way. One encumbers the successful gambler with obtrusive help about his hat—a florin; another has a bag of old gloves, which he pins down round the table, when the play begins. ”

“ Now, as a game for recreation and pastime, I do not object to it; it is said to possess qualities as an intellectual game, superior even to whist. But when engaged in for the purpose of gambling, I class it with other games in which professional gamblers live and thrive, by cheating and robbing those with whom they play. It has been said there is no such thing as a [10] ‘Square Gambler’; and a well-known Wall Street banker has said: ‘Whoever plays poker will cheat.’ I can not agree with the latter, but, with my definition of a gambler, I fully agree with the former. ”

“ While I was running a saloon in Columbia, Missouri—which was in fact, but a cloak for secret “brace” gambling—I had an apparatus of this sort attached to a peep-hole in such a manner that I could readily signal to my confederate when it was safe for him to bet high. Of all victims in the world the “skin” gambler is especially rejoiced to meet a man who is in the habit of drinking to excess. During my entire career as a gambler I always felt reasonably sure of winning the money of such a man. ”

“ I became known as a gambler, but not as what is understood as a sport, for I never drank, or mixed with fast society. Unless you have been a gambler and a regular frequenter of gambling places, you have no idea of the extraordinary-looking people who seem to have money to risk on the turn of a card or a wheel. ”

“ Besides these, time would fail me to describe the ineffable dignity of a gambling judge; the cautious, phlegmatic lawyer, gambling from sheer avarice; the broken-down and cast-away politician, seeking in the game the needed excitement, and a fair field for all the base tricks he once played off as a patriot; the pert, sharp, keen, jockey-gambler; the soaked, obese, plethoric, wheezing, bacchanal; and a crowd of ignoble worthies, wearing all the badges and titles of vice, throughout its base peerage. ”

“ They are gamblers; they always lose in the long run: we all know that; the copy-books tell us so. If two persons play heads and tails for sovereigns, do they both lose in the long run? If so, who wins? Where does the money go? Even a gambler need not always lose in the long run, as all gamblers know. La veuve Arundel was not in any sense a gambler. ”

“ He thought how the gambler got him to bet that he could find the pea in the shell, and how he had been so confident that he could find it that he had bet his whole month's wages, and when the gambler had taken it, and wound it around a wad he had, and put it in his vest pocket, he remembered, here sitting on the porch with his rheumatic leg, how mad he was when the gambler who had ruined him, shouted, “Next gentleman, now! Roll up, tumble up, any way to get up!” ”

“ A favorite method of “ringing in” these cards—as gamblers term their introduction—is as follows: Two sharpers act in concert. One goes to a town and selects a victim, who is usually a country youth who has money. He tells his dupe that he is “dead broke,” perhaps because of sickness, perhaps for some other reason; that he is a professional gambler and can teach any man how to win at cards. The cupidity of the young man from the rural districts is aroused. The gambler shows him some marked cards and teaches him how to read the backs. Then he sends for his confederate. ”

“ Gambling is the staking or winning of property upon mere hazard. The husbandman renders produce for his gains; the mechanic renders the product of labor and skill for his gains; the gambler renders for his gain the sleights of useless skill, or more often, downright cheating. Betting is gambling; there is no honest equivalent to its gains. Dealings in fancy-stocks are oftentimes sheer gambling, with all its worst evils. Profits so earned are no better than the profits of dice, cards, or hazard. ”

“ A better state of feeling exists; the gambler grows more complacent, and treats oftener. All are anxious to bet, the gambler is considered one of the best of fellows—one of that kind of men who would a little prefer losing money to winning it. Again bets are made and won, and all appear anxious to share the gambler’s money, as it is, doubtless, about to be distributed among the fortunate bystanders. ”

“ The opening and ending are fatally connected, and drawn toward each other with almost irresistible attraction. If gambling is a vortex, playing is the outer ring of the Maelstrom. The thousand pound stake, the whole estate put up on a game—what are these but the instruments of kindling that tremendous excitement which a diseased heart craves? What is the amusement for which you play but the excitement of the game? And for what but this does the jaded gambler play? You differ from him only in the degree of the same feeling. Do not solace yourself that you shall escape because others have ”

“ Taking the gamblers apart, one by one, I lent each one of the four two dollars, with which to sit in a poker game which I told them I was about to open and in which I proposed to take a hand myself. To an old and penniless gambler, the prospect of enjoying all the excitement of poker playing without any risk is an alluring prospect. ”

“ He rents a house, he buys furniture, he eats food, all of which brings profit to house-owners, cabinet-makers, butchers, bakers, etcetera, and is good done to the world by the gambler.”
“Nay, friend Richard, not by the gambler, but by the money which the gambler spends.”
“Isn’t that much the same thing?”
“By no means. The money—or its equivalent—is created by some one else. The gambler merely passes it on. If he had never been born the same money would have been there for some one else to spend. The labour of the gambler has not added one penny to it. ”

“ No matter if he hasn’t won a single bet all day, the gambler is “blooded” and must ride home in a parlor car. There is a group composed of three of the typical Gothamite race gamblers. The car has hardly started from the track before the porter has slipped into its nickel-plated sockets the tidy little table, which may serve either for cards or lunch. ”

“ After what seemed like an hour, Paul turned around.
"Give me an itemised account of your obligations outside of your gambling expenses."
"I don't call it gambling to bet on the races," said Walter half defiantly.
"It make no difference what you call it," said Paul sternly. "What is all betting but trying to get something for nothing, and what is that but gambling? Every boy in Burrton who bet on the race is a gambler?" ”

“ CALLED A GAMBLER. I was coming from New Orleans on the Duke of Orleans at one time, and had won a few hundred dollars from some of the passengers, but had quit playing, and was standing in the hall talking to some gentlemen that had played in the game, when a big fellow stepped up and said he believed we were a set of gamblers, and had divided the money he lost in the game. ”

“ If we contrast Watt, who made the engine, with some gambler, the difference at once appears between the noble callings and the games of chance. The lawyer, the physician, the mechanic, the inventor, the writer can show a reason of existence. With the gambler this is impossible. He has no reason for being in life. ”

“ Too, I may say that I was a born gambler, and what immobility my face may have lacked I painstakingly acquired. The inscrutable face is as essential to a successful gambler as sensitive fingers; there are not, and there never were, honest gamblers who lived by luck alone. ”

“ Professional gamblers, almost without exception, die paupers. Nor is the reason far to seek. The gambler “on the inside,” is likely to win, even if the game is fairly played; and the skin dealer never loses, even by accident. But the curse of Heaven seems to attach to money thus accumulated. The winners rarely keep it long. The terrible fascination of the mania for gaming 212is no less potent with professionals than amateurs. ”

“ Unless you can note the swift touch of the gambler’s foot on the electric button, which drops the little ball into the red hole when you bet on the black, you face ruin every time you face the roulette wheel. ”

“ Today it is the gambler king who at least has an ephemeral show to gain fleeting riches. But in order that these riches shall approach riches as they are measured in other businesses, the man who opens the gambling house must have a fortune for the investment. ”

“ He will first find the gamblers fascinating—rooms handsomely furnished—fine suppers given, and in fact, every temptation may be set out to catch the unwary novice. The gambler will tell him this reform is all priestcraft—you can see for yourself that we (gamblers) are not the assassins which we are represented to be—these reformers don't speak the truth. The young man is blinded—he thinks he knows by this time all about the gamblers—but in fact he knows nothing. ”

“ Added to the uneasiness of the gambler was the uneasiness of the lawbreaker, the two uneasinesses combined making a mental cocktail that, to a large number of the frequenters, had a charm far above anything to be obtained in a legitimate gambling shop on the Continent. ”

“ May he not cheat in dealing, and yet be a welcome gambler?—may he not steal the money from your pile by laying his hands upon it, just as any other thief would, and yet be an approved gambler? May not the whole code be stated thus: Pay what you lose, get what you can, and in any way you can! I am told, perhaps, that there are honest gamblers, gentlemanly gamblers. Certainly; there are always ripe apples before there are rotten. Men always begin before they end; there is always an approximation before there is contact. Players will play truly till they get used to playing untruly ”

“ Some young men render themselves a nuisance at a mess table by their pertinacity in offering bets. I need not say that gambling of all sorts is stringently prohibited by the authorities, and that a fortunate gambler, though a notorious character, is a very unenviable one. ”

“ For all speculation, whether it be in pigs or wheat, [Pg 2] stocks and shares, race-horses or cards, is in essence the same—its main feature being merely the desire to obtain "something for nothing," or in other words to acquire wealth without work. Gambling, of no matter what kind, is thus a conscious and deliberate departure from the general aim of civilised society, which is to obtain proper value for its money. The gambler, on the other hand, receives either a great deal more than he gives or nothing at all. ”

“ It is this fact of the gambler dealing with large masses of money that partly accounts for the strange fascination exercised by gambling. A careful player, who begins with, say, a thousand pounds capital, may have fingered, according to the doctrine of chances, thirty-six thousand pounds before he loses his capital. ”

“ When gamesters play with each other, they are constantly on the lookout for this trick, which is aided by the crimping or denting of important cards. A gambler examines his aces closely to see if his opponent has crimped them. If not, he crimps them. If two gamblers confront each other in a game where “producers” are present, the two gamblers “take the office” and cheat together, dividing stakes after the play.
The palming of cards is practiced where two of the sharpers sit together in a large game. ”