St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1885-05-19
sDoT TERRIBLE BLUFF.
The Poker Mania i'm Washing tom.
Breaks the Diplomatic
Corps all up.
Washington Letter.

Corps all up.
Washington Letter.
What fascination the great American
game of poker has for the foreigner. The
chief, and about the only, business of the
American secretaries of the foreign diplo-
matte delegations in Washington is to teach
them poker and play with them. Turks,
Franks, Spaniards, Indians, Philippians,
Dutch, Italians, Muscovites, Mongolians,
all yield to the destinations of the American
game, and the poker playing among the
foreign legations is high and fast and flu
rious. They are made to pay pretty dearly
for their experience, and some of the smart
American officials pluck the gentle foreign
ers most numerically. The head of a
government bureau showed me big roll of
bills the other night, and said, ''There's
$500 I win tonight from, 'So-and-sO. -
naming a moon-faced Monaghan minister,
who goes about the streets in flowing robes
of peacock blue and royal purple. The ter
rible thing about this soul-destroying game
for the unsophisticated foreigners is the
''bluff.'
Baron de Strive, who, like all others, is a
tireless devote Of the game, went on for
some months in happy ignorance Of the bluff
and supposing himself to be a pretty ex-
pert poker player. But one evening in a
little game with a mischievous young
cabinet officer, he went his whole heart,
soul and pocket ON three aces and was
bluffed by his opponent with pair of trays.
1t was new development of the great
American game and it's sublime possibilities
dazed and bewildered the baron and, as he
expressed it in good Omitted States lam
guage, ''brol1e him all up.'
He said: ''Oh, dis fearful, fearful Amer
lean game and dot terrible bluff. I did not
know dot bluff and what do with it."
The baron concentrated all his time and
intellect upon the bluff" for several days,
and then tried it on his wife. He and the
madame have a little private game, and
keep very strict account. The wicked
baron bluffed the unsuspecting partner OF
his bosom numerically, and there was a lit
tie GOODNESS in the De Strive family for
half an hour, the first in many years of
happy married life.
Poker playing is the rage in all circles in
Washington, high and low. There are
scores of poker organizations among the at
taches Of the government. In the rooms of
the clerks and in the hundreds of lodging
houses the game goes on. One game at
Chamberlain'S last week, in which were two
United States senators, lasted twenty-six
hours without ceasing. A party OF
Southerners not long ago, in rear room OF
the National hotel, played game lasting
from Friday evening at 9 o'clock until
Monday morning at o'clock.
During that time the game never ceased,
cat-naps were caught in the chairs as the
players sat, luncheon served regularly and
the amount Of whisky drunk and tobacco
smoked and chewed to keep awake on was
something awful to contemplate. Once
the poker mania takes hold of person it
rarely lets go, and is as persistent and
ruinous as the morphine habit. Many of
the break-downs in health and character
are attributable to intemperance in poker
playing.