The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1869-07-03
THE KURSAAL.


1t is Saturday EVENING" calm and quiet
night. Thousands of pleasure seekers are
walking i'll the grounds around the Kur-
saal or public gaming house. We steal
across the square, planted with magnificent
lindens where are fountains playing, and
enter the building beneath an imposing
portico. If we wish to play at hazard,
there are men in gorgeous livery ready to
take our hat and cane. We enter a spa
cioils, lofty hall, the roof supported by tiuted
columns, its ceiling ornate with stucco, in
golden panels, with frescoed walls, damask
divans, oaken floors, waNed and polished
This is the great dancing saloon, where,
from nine o'clock this Saturday evening
till the break of day on Sunday morning,
the waltz and the quadrille will be kept
up. There are coffee-rooms and restau-
rants, and two or three thousand persons
are sitting beneath the trees in the park,
listening to the music of the band, slipping
coffee and eating ices, supplied from these
rooms.
Turning to our right hand we enter the
gaming rooms-four in number-large and
lofty. Pendant from the gilded ceiling in
each room are five great chandeliers-their
thousand prisms of clear cut glass sparkling
without rainbow hues. The walls are hung
with damask. There are luxurious lounges,
and in the corridors we find coy retreats
for conversation, while reaching from floor
to ceiling are pier glasses in gilded frames,
rejecting all the scene. In the centre of
the room is a roulette table, around which
are thirty OF more chairs. | know nothing
of the game, only that in the centre of the
table a horizontal wheel, shaped like dish,
is slowly turning, and that a marble is set
spinning in an opposite direction inside the
wltrel, and that when the projectile force
of the marble is gone, it will settle in one
of the many cells at the bottom of the
wkeel-may be in No. 7, or II, or 29-just
as it happens. The table is covered with
green cloth, which is divided into squares,
as if it was multiplication table-as it is
to the managers of the concern-but TIA
their luc k at the wheel. Besides the squares
which are numbered there are diamond
shaped figures, triangles and lines, but what
| thew all mean do not know, except that
| risks and chances are greater i'll some places
than in others. Eight men are required tc
manage the bank-that is to keep the vince
| and ball in motion-rake in the money, ant
pay it out when the bank happens to lose
They have little rakes with ebony handles
and before them are piles of bank-notes
and heaps of silver and gold.
They are very bland and corteous in man
ncr, faultlessly dressed, with nice regar,
to taste and elegance. No teller in 4 Stat
street bank can handle notes more adroitly
OF toss out gold with greater facility. Al
the seats are occupied, and there are hun
dreds of visitors who would sit down i
they coubl-old men and womell-middle
aged-botli sexcs-young men and girls
some are only lookers-on. You hear a con
slant ciink, clink, clink of silver and gold
and rustic of bank-noteS The wheel i
always i'll motion, turning at moderat
speed. The ball is set rolling it glide
round the concave, dropping nearer AM
nearer to the centre but before it reache
the cell at the bottom, there has been lai,
upon every square of the green cloth
piece of money-a guilder, a dollar, Ma
poleon, or Il thousand francs, perhaps.
"Twenty- iveH y says one of the conduc
tors Of the bank. The ball has stopped i
that cell. The ebony handled rakes &
out, and silver gold, and paper are rake
: in from those which have lost, and guilders
dollars, and Napoleons tossed to those VIII
! have won. 1t is the work of thirty seconds
Then another whirl of the wheel and ro
of the ball--repeated-ke up from moo
till midnight-from midnight till morning
l The bank men, when exhausted give plac
to others-working and resting like opera
tives i'll mandatory when business drives
Clink-clink- clink-without cessation
sound like a hammer on an anvil-dul
metallic, hardening in its influence, blunt
ing all the susceptibilities of the heart.
In the adjoining rooms the other table
are also surrounded by players, those VIII
cannot find seats reaching over the head
of the sitters to Law their stakes. Fee