Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1867-08-07

walking nervously, calculating chances,
exulting over gains, bewailing losses. The
doors of this magnificent suite of rooms
are open to everybody. The gambling is
conducted on a democratic plan; prince
and peasant, countess and courtezan-all
may enter and roam at will through the
gilded halls, play if they please, provided
they have guilder forty cents American
currency That man yonder, who has pale
and sunken cheeks and dreamy eyes, who
wears an old threadbare coat, who convul-
sively clutches his last piece of silver, who,
if he loses it, will 60 to bed suppcrless,
may win thousand dollars, may ere day
light have his pockets with handfulls of
gold or that portly dame in chair upon
the other side of the table wearing a white
satin robe covered with gold spangles,
with a great pile of gold before her, may
90 from hence without a penny in her
purse. Be it one way or the other, the
men who whirl the wheel and roll the ball
will be utterly Indifferent. They are as
remorseless as fate. They work for the
bank, and the bank has no soul. Come
not here for soul, or heart, or conscience.
They are extinct-burned up. These men
and women are animate forms only-hesh
and blood, bones, cords, muscles-destitute
utterly devoid of soul, of conscience to
be quickened or animated by moral con-
siderations.
At the first table is Il gray-haired man
with a white moustache and smoothly
shaved cheeks. He has forid counte-
nance. He must be at least sixty years
old, for time is multip wing and deepening
the furrows. He is not desperate game
ster-perhaps plays for. the fun of it. He
stakes but dollar at time-loses. gains,
loses, and after while leaves the table.
4 young man with a tuft of hair on his
chin and thin side-whiskers, hollow cheeks,
sunkeu eyes, wearing threadbare coat
and dirty linen, takes the vacant seat pulls
lean portmonnaie from his pocket, laws a
dollar on the green cloth and watches with
intense eagerness the rolliug ball Hesis
poor and this is the way he has taken to
increase his fortune Luck is on his side.
He clutches the shining silver, turns it
| over goats upon it with miserly salts fac
ton; he lays another. Nineteen, says
the man at the wheel, and the dollar is
scooped away. The next time he will win
again. He Is mistaken ; the bank takes
it. He tries once more; sees second
dollar disappear /; then quits his seat crest
fallen, looking longingly at the growing
heap of gold and silver beneath the hands
of the raker.
At the other side of the table sits lady
in the bloom Of early womanhood, of fair
countenance, and large, lustrous eyes She
was here yesterday evening with pile of
gold before her and was playing twenty
francs at a time. She wears a jockey hat
with a superb ostrich plume, and her rich
silk lilac-colored robe lies at her feet in
wavy folds When she walks it is with
the air of queen, and she sits there SEEM
ingly Indifferent whether twenty frame
pieces are won or lost, and yet when four
successive stakes have been swept away a
slight flush overspreads her face ; She bites
her under-lip; smooths the wavy hair upon
her forehead, and with an air of brayado
lays another piece and wins. \ litle later
every one of the shining pieces of metal
have disappeared-al gone into the bank.
Standing behind the lady is young
man, dressed with taste and elegance, who
has well-trimmed beard smoothly brushed
hair, who plays but a dollar at time, but
he lays it down with an air of one who ex-
poets to win. He goes from the table
richer than he came. AT the end of the
table is a fellow with hard, cold face
an eye of the color of steel, who looks not
to the right or to the left, but only upon
! the table He lays down thousand francs
in gold 1t is raked into the bank, and
not muscle Of his eountenance moves.
He lays a second thousand, and sees il
drawn away with as much unconcern as if
it were but 4 half-dime True it is not a
great amount, but the wheel is all the
while turning and there are not many men
who can afford to lose 5000 every minute.
\ tall -broad-shouldered, with a
bald crown, thin locks of hair about his
ears, great, shaggy eyebrows, rough
features, wearing a dark suit, with a heavy
gold chain to his watch, lays half dozen
Napoleons-scattering them all over the
table, to divide his risks. He loses, then
wins-loses and wins again. Some are
intently watching the playing-marking
the numbers to see if there is any lucky
figure. Among them is women wearing
a black bonnet and faded black silk dress.
She has long row of figures, and is en-
gagged in mathematical calculation to find
out the ratio between gains and losses.
Look at her face narrowly. 1t is as cold
and passionless as that of yonder marble
statue in the park She could see man
step upon the fatal drop and swing into
eternity without raising her fan to shut
out even for a second the horrid sight No
scene of suffering can change for an instant
the rigidity of that corrugated countenance
AS hard as the hardest steel She has
finished her calculations, folds her paper
slowly, puts up her pencil deliberately,
watches the table, lays double guilder on
number twelve, sees it swept away lays
another-a fourth all are gone
but the fifth wins-the sixth loses, yet
there is no change of feature in that me-
| tallic countenance.
There is another woman clothed in
black-bonnet, dress all black-mourning
raiment, perhaps, for some friend gone to
the future life. Fifty years ago she was a
child, but Time has changed her once raven
hair to iron-gray. Her cheeks were
blooming once, but now they are bleached
to ashy whiteness. Her lips are thin and
at times they are drawn tightly across the
teeth She is restless. There is a con-
slant movement of hands and arms, turn
ing of the head a quick glance upon the
throng, now to the right, now the left, a
constant readjustment of her shawl, a
twitching of the muscles of the face, and
when the dollar which she has laid disap-
pears, there is gasp and an involuntary
reachiug forth of the hand to save it, She
had pile of dollars short time since,
but they have disappeared She turns