St. Paul daily globe., 1885-06-21
GAMBLING I'm PARIS.

wise, will lay in the direction OF deliberate
mutilation of the little girls face.
GAMBLING I'm PARIS.
A Glance at the Popular Hclls and
Their Management.
| London Truth
AS there is reason to believe that the
English police contemplate making raid
OH the foreign gambling clubs in London, it
may be of interest at the present time to
consider the management OF similar places
on the other side of the channel. In France
the main difference between the vulgar
tripot and the cercle are these: There is not
in the latter solidly organized conspiracy
against every player, and it is expected that
nervous excitement will not show itself in
foul language and abuse. When resent
ment is violent, the duel is the only chan
mel through which it must flow, unless
player is caught in the act OF cheating. Con-
spiraces, indeed, exist i'll the most gentle
manly clubs between members who are
birds of a feather and the garcons de Jeux.
But they must be conducted with much
tact, and give rise to no crying scandal.
Well-bred men hate noise, however i'm
moral their practice may be. In the
tripot there is no effective committee to
hold in the owner and the rascals who are
in league with them. The police alone can
control them, and [ know, from an official
source, that as it is their habit to receive
hush-money from grecs. their severity is
more apparent than real There are high
officials in the prefecture of police who pro-
tect gangs that operate in Paris. Although
from fifty to sixty inferior hells are yearly
suppressed in the French capital, 1000 dis
guiSed gambling houses are tolerated and
frequented by whole army OF men who
live at once upon their wits and upon the
fat of the land. But leading feverish and
nocturnal life, they soon lose elasticity
and break down. Not less than three
thousand have ''dossiers" at the prefecture
of police. The ''dossier," or record, y
is kept in the archives OF
the department which is especially charged
| to watch men and women of vicious lives,
| who may or may not belong technically to
| the criminal classes. 1t is pigeon-holed in
alphabetical order, in strong blue wrap
per, folding it in all directions, and consists
of reports OF secret police inquiries, cuttings
| from newspapers and letters OF denuncia-
ton, with records of the investigations
which they led to. A card-sharper's dossier
| is sometimes communicated to Scotland
Yard, but in strict confidence; the non
| official mortal who has been allowed to go
over one is rare.
The gamblers who may be counted as be-
| ing shady, and yet have not dossiers, form
a community of about twelve thousand.
They, and gamesters who are not ''blown"
upon, but who are incorrigible in their pas
sion for the tables, might people a large
| city. The number of shop assistants, clerks
| ho,1 fl,a ri, 10
| ious. Artists and students of science and
| literature are less addicted to the vice of
gambling than young men engaged
in commercial pursuits. If the
former have merely bread
and cheese their thoughts do not greatly
turn upon money. The commercial gent,
poor fellow! thinks that wealth and happi-
ness are synonymous. Small master trades
men also steal in crowds to the tripOtS and
rush to boOk-making agencies and race
courses, which last have done more than
anything else to let loose the demon of
gambling. The imagination and all
the higher faculties are bent
on one idea-how to make
money quickly. In this age of sudden
krachs, the situation of a tradesman, is
precarious, and so he tries to force the hand
Of fortune in hell. Zola has yet to write
the monograph of the petit bourgeois who
frequents the tripot. There are hells for
women, which are the most hellish of any.
This is case for saying, ''Glissez, mortel,
n'appuyez pas"
The police know that there is daily cog
nOtte in the interior cercleS of Paris which
probably reaches a total OF 140, 600, 900
francs year. Were the croupiers honest,
this sum, great as it is, would be consider
ably exceeded; and what is lost and won at
the watering place casinos must be pro-
| digiOuS.
The suppression of gambling in Germany
to some extent explains why it RACES with
| so much violence in France. Early in the
last decade new cercles started up to supply
the craving of those gamesters who used to
go to Baden-Baden and Hamburg and run
back when they were cleaned out. The
cOntagion spread. Horse-racing, which De
Morny promoted on the grounds that it i'm
proves horsefesh and circulates money
has steadily fed the fever. So has the
| lottery which government has encouraged
under the pretext of forwarding patriotic
| and charitable enterprises. One CONNER
cial result of the spread of the hells is the
| ruin of the cafeS-reStaurantS. Hardly any
| of the first or even second-claSS restaurants
are now able to make both ends meet. If
| French ladies were not fond of going for a
change to dine in cabinets particulars and
| the demi-mOnde were not still a power,
Bignons, the Cafe Anglaise and Peters
would have to follow the example OF the
Cafe Heider in winding up. The spread
| ing out of Paris to some extent draws the
rush of life from the old boulevards; but the
restaurants could, nevertheless, go on pros
pering were it not for the hells. | know OF
a grandiose hell where dejeuner is pro-
vided at from three to five francs, which
would be charged twenty francs for at Big
mons and could not be furnished
t second-rate house. All the
vices are now and then glorified
| in it's salons, at SoireeS artistiqueS ct DRAM
atiques. At these entertainments special
reviews, charades and comedettas are
played. If not written in Latin, they brave
| Phonnetete. They are not mere risky
gauloiseries, intended just to raise laugh,
but are calculated to unloose the brute
beast which lies hidden in so many civilized
beings These advertisements get to the
head like drugged wine, and attach young
fools, and still more old fools, to the dis
guised hell.
A western Woodsawyer's scheme.
Midland Sun.
1t is related of a certain Clare ''moon-
sinner" that he sold some pine logs last fall
to a Saginaw lumberman, the same being
cut on land owned by the Saginaw man.
Not long after he sawed the ends of the
logs so as to erase the marks and sold the
same logs over agains The thing worked
so well that he tried it again with equal sue
cess and kept on doing so until the logs,
| which were originally sixteen feet long,
We're reduced to twelve feet-then he was
mad because twelve feet was the shortest
| measure taken.