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Show SARATOGA HIGH LIFE JULIAN RALPH DESCRIBES AMERICA'S AMER-ICA'S MONTE CARLO. Wall Street Magnates and Professional Profes-sional Gamblers Woo the Goddess of Chance Together Immense Sums Won and Lost. The faro games attracted the great players and the high play. It was difficult for an ordinary man who t,a.rns his living by the sweat of his hands or his brow to comprehend what sims of money were represented represent-ed by the chips iipon these tables. A great Wall street, operator sat in a Napoleonic attitude, with head down on his breast, hands folded on his stomach, and hat titled over his eyes, at the head of Hie table with half a dozen idlers behind and beside him one an employe of the place, on a high stool, watching all that went on. And this stock exchange nabob was one of the men who were playing. The stacks of ivory lozenges in front of him represented $1,000 for each pile. The casekeeper, with his little Chinese frame of ivory markers, tallied tal-lied each card played by the dealer opposite, who dealt in the most leisurely leis-urely manner, stopping to rake in or pay off the bets, and taking, sometimes, some-times, seven minutes between deals. There comes a stage in faro when two similar cards cannot or are not likely to be played one after another, and then the strong play begins. This stage had been reached, and all the players were betting heavily, putting $500 here, $1,000 there, $250 elsewhere else-where and topping a pile of chips with a button now and then, to bet against instead of on a card. The stock exchange nabob was on the other side of the casekeeper, and a veteran gambler was on the other side betting hundreds where Wall street staked thousands. A long, lean, thin-faced young man, evidently from the west, wearing a lounging suit of blue flannel lightly striped with white, lounged along, sat down by the Napoleonic onlooker, and pulled from a trousers pocket a thick, fiat pancake of bank notes. Every note was a $100 bill. He threw out five of these, received twenty chips, lost them with promptness and dis-patch.and dis-patch.and then threw upon the green cloth $100 more. "Who?" I asked. "Johnny : of Denver, a book- maker. "Geting rid of his day's winnings at the races?" I ventured. "No; he was hard hit at the races to-day. He always has stacks of money." What an enviable man! What a delightful reputation and condition! May he come to no grief, and may the last man to whom he tosses a $100 bill be a stone-cutter, who shall grave upon his headstone: "Here lies Johnnie John-nie Dash of Denver. He always had stacks of money." I do not understand faro. I cannot master it "on the salary I get," as Frederic Remington, the artist, would say. I saw so much money paid out aud paid in and moved about in little ivory columns of so many colors all without the faintest idea of how or why it came and went or why so much of It dwadled Idly on the board as in no other game I ever saw, where quick and agile croupiers knew their business that I camo away hopelessly hopeless-ly befogged. I paused a moment by a roulette wheel. A mere boy with the touch of a mother's caresses still on his chubby cheeks, came by my side, and, rolling up a $100 bill into a pellet, pel-let, flung it on a number. The croupier crou-pier knew his calling and gathered it In. The youth crumpled up another yellow rag and tossed It after the first. His aim was true, and It followed fol-lowed Its mate, nimbly, Into the till. Five times he did this, and then, having hav-ing made his sacrifice upon the altar of the ruling deity of the village, he lighted a cigarette with a match not a bank note and wont beside me into the street. Julian Ralph In the New York Times. |