GAMBLERS.

The great English carnival of gamblers is over for a month or two; the bookmakers have retired to winter quarters after having waxed fat during the year on the money risked by arrant simpletons.  The bookmaker’s habits are peculiar; he cannot do without gambling, and he contrives to indulge himself all the year round in some way or other.  When the Newmarket Houghton meeting is over, Mr. Bookmaker bethinks him of billiards, and he goes daily and nightly among interesting gatherings of his brotherhood.  Handicaps are arranged day by day and week by week, and the luxurious, loud, vulgar crew contrive to pass away the time pleasantly until the spring race meetings begin.  But hundreds of the sporting gentry have souls above the British billiard-room, and for them a veritable paradise is ready.  The Mediterranean laps the beautiful shore at Monte Carlo and all along the exquisite Eiviera—­the palms and ferns are lovely—­the air is soft and exhilarating, and the gambler pursues his pleasing pastime amid the sweetest spots on earth.  From every country in the world the flights of restless gamblers come like strange flocks of migrant birds.  The Russian gentleman escapes from the desolate plains of his native land and luxuriates in the beautiful garden of Europe; the queer inflections of the American’s quiet drawl are heard everywhere as he strolls round the tables; Roumanian boyards, Parisian swindlers, Austrian soldiers, Hungarian plutocrats, flashy and foolish young Englishmen—­all gather in a motley crowd; and the British bookmaker’s interesting presence is obtrusive.  His very accent—­strident, coarse, impudent, unspeakably low—­gives a kind of ground-note to the hum of talk that rises in all places of public resort, and he recruits his delicate health in anticipation of the time when he will be able to howl once more in English betting-rings.

But I am not so much concerned with the personality of the various sorts of gamblers, and I assuredly have no pity to spare for the gentry who lose their money.  A great deal of good useful compassion is wasted on the victims who are fleeced in the gambling places.  Victims!  What do they go to the rooms for?  Is it not to amuse themselves and to pass away time amid false exhilaration?  Is it not to gain money without working for it?  The dupe has in him all the raw material of a scoundrel; and even when he blows his stupid brains out I cannot pity him so much as I pity the dogged labourer who toils on and starves until his time comes for going to the workhouse.  I am rather more inclined to study the general manifestations of the gambling spirit.  I have in my mind’s eye vivid images of the faces, the figures, the gestures of hundreds of gamblers, and I might make an appalling picture-gallery if I chose; but such a nightmare in prose would not do much good to any one, and I prefer to proceed in a less exciting but more profitable manner.  We please ourselves by calling to mind the days when