University of Virginia Library

GAMBLERS.

Crowds of professional gamblers
from New York gather in knots on the
deck of the St. John, on their way to
visit the “gilt-edged hells” in Saratoga.
They are a handsome set of rascals, but the gambler sticks out
in every feature. Who could fail to recognize the profession in
the long, dyed mustache of that handsome scamp Johnnie Lynch?
The observant eye can pick them out of a crowd of Christians
as it can separate the Cyprians on Broadway from the innocent
children of virtue. It is always a mystery how these fellows
make and spend so much money. They cannot make it out of
the faro-banks, for the banks must make enough themselves to
pay expenses. In this quandery I questioned a friend who knows
all their ways and “tricks which are vain.”

“Make it by legitimate gambling!” he exclaimed. “No, sir!
They are `ropers-in-men.' They bring others to play, and when
they have lost fortunes they receive a percentage as their commission
from the owner of the bank. These fellows are brokers
—faro-bank brokers, and though they play and lose ever so
much, it is only done to crowd the tables and create an interest.
The keeper pays back their losses.”

---

4

On the boat were groups of
laughing, banjo-playing negroes
—men and brothers and the connecting
links in the great Darwinian
theory. Where would Darwin's nice talk be without the
darkey? No one would think of jumping from the monkey to
5th Avenue. First we commence with the ape, then the Hottentot,
then the Sandwich Islander who loves and eats the tender
missionary who taught him to love his fellow man, then the
Chinese, then the darkey, then the voters in the shanties on the
rocks around Central Park,—then the 5th Avenue belles and swells
in fly-away bonnets and dashy tandems.