The Evansville journal. [volume] (Evansville, Ind.) 1866-1870, 1867-07-25
DAY GAMBLING IN NEW YORK.
George Alfred Townsend Describes
Faro by Sunlight.

We copy the following from the
Troy Times, to which paper George
Alfred Townsend is contributing a
series of articles:
If you will stand before the Astor
House at high noon, you will see a
picture of metropolitan energy; a o
currence of wheels and mul.itudes,
the hurry of ten thousand individual
purposes beneath achievements in
marble and iron that make the sky
seem only a structure of cause, the
impressment of beast and steam to
industry, the methodizing and e%lectri-
flying of life, fifty years of Europe in
a winkful! You have no nobler pur-
pose than to look, feel a sense Of ply
steal danger out of your own inertia.
This is a giants nightmare to your
best dream of ambition. Insensibly
you exclaim:
Marvellous city and men!"
Now, turn short around, and walk
down Barclay Street. One half min
mute from Broadway finds you in the
second story of a handsome building
where the furniture is of walnut and
velvet, massive and armorial, repro
duced in mirrors which might be
priced like diamonds, by their carats.
The gas is burning as if it were mid
night; the heavy curtains are folded
close; the sunshine world of business
might be twenty miles away, yet here
is business of its kind, grave and
anxious, which we may look upon.
A table, narrow and long, reaches
across the place. Upon its green sur
face there are embroidered the thir-
teen cards that make up a suite. At
each end is a space, colored respect
lively red and black. Between these
spaces, opposite the thirteen embroid-
cred cards, sits a man shutting a pack
of ifty-two cards, supported by a
second man, who keeps a tally and
takes in and out checks and money.
There are chairs facing. and on either
side of the dealer. and these are filed
by men who place money or ivory
blocks upon the fifteen spaces and the
spots of red and black.
When the man in the middle has
shufled and cut the cards, he places
them with their faces up, in a silver
box that exactly contains them.
Now, gentlemen" cries the dealer
briskly, make your BETS"
This, then, is the day gambling
house. and the game to be begun is
called faro.
If you are not familiar with cards,
you may like to know that a pack is
composed of ffty-two, divided into
four kinds of suits, of thirteen cards
apiece. Two of the suites are red;
two black. The philosophy of Faro,
which is supposed to be the fairest
gambling game, is, that the host or
banker bets against his guests pro-
~miscuously. upon either the denomi-
nation or the color of the alternate
cards, as they are successfully pushed
up by a spring at the bottom of the
box. To compensate for the cost of
the entertainment, rather more than
an equal chance is accorded him, and
this is variously estimated at from
three to fifteen per cent.
You will see at this raidday game
strange people around the board.
Here, bending with a laugh
ing face over his cheque, is
the chief salesman of a great mer-
camille house neal by, who has come
to saunter into Delmonico's for his
lunch, and trade being quiet, has
stepped here to try his stake. Be
side him is the customer whose note
he took yesterday for twenty thous-
and dollars at six months. Speaking
to both familiarity the man who has
worn the uniform of Sing Sing, and
can, if he dare, tell how for the one
time he suffered shame; there we're a
hundred that he escaped it. Here is Il
boy, cigar between his teeth, known by
his fathers name among these aban-
doned ones, while the old nan in
Wall Street holds his gray hairs high
In the conscientious satisfaction that
his home life is without a spot.