CHEVALIERS D'INDUSTRIE, OR POLITE SHARPERS. The gaming table : its votaries and victims, in all times and countries,
especially in England and in France. Vol. 2 | ||
SKITTLE SHARPERS.
`I know a respectable tradesman,' says a writer in Cassell's Magazine — `I know him now, for he lives in the house he occupied at the time of my tale — who was sent for to see a French gentleman at a tavern, on business connected with the removal of this gentleman's property from one of the London docks. The business, as explained by the messenger, promising to be profitable, he of course promptly obeyed the summons, and during his walk found that his conductor had once been in service in France. This delighted Mr Chase — the name by which I signify the tradesman — for he, too, had once so lived in France; and by the time he reached the tavern he had talked himself into a very good opinion of his new patron. The French gentleman was very
`As he insisted on paying Mr Chase for all the time consumed with him, and as his servant, of course, could not object, the party adjourned to the "Select Subscription Ground'' at once. In the ground there was a quiet, insignificant-looking little man, smoking a cigar; and as they were
`By a strange concurrence of events, it so happened that by random throws the Frenchman sometimes knocked all the pins down at a single swoop, though he clearly could not play — Mr Chase was sure of that — while the skilful player made every now and then one of the blunders to which the best players are liable. That the tradesman lost forty sovereigns will be easily understood; and did his tale end here it would have differed so little from a hundred others as scarcely to deserve telling; but it will surprise many, as
`It was the only case in my experience of the work going on smoothly after such a break. I never could account for it, nor could Mr Chase. Great was the latter's disgust, on setting the police to work, to find that the French nobleman, his servant, and the quiet stranger, were all dwellers within half a mile or so of his own house, and slightly known to him — men who had trusted, and very successfully, to great audacity and well — arranged disguise.'
A vast deal of gambling still goes on with skittles all over the country. At a place not ten miles from London, I am told that as much as two thousand pounds has been seen upon the table in a single `alley,' or place of play. The bets were, accordingly, very high. The instances revealed by exposure at the police-courts give but a faint idea of the extent of skittle sharping.
Amidst such abuses of the game, it can scarcely
CHEVALIERS D'INDUSTRIE, OR POLITE SHARPERS. The gaming table : its votaries and victims, in all times and countries,
especially in England and in France. Vol. 2 | ||