Bucket shops have nearly disappeared from the public gaze. They are, nevertheless, still carried on in secret, for the purpose of enabling men and women to gratify their natural propensity for gambling. The active efforts of one man, having the courage of his convictions and with the support of a commercial organization, which is the only competitor of these gambling concerns, have kept them in comparative subjection. Yet, such is the resistance made by them, that this man, aiding also in the discovery and punishment of gambling in general, ran the risk of the destruction of his life, his home, and the loss of the lives of his family, by the explosion of a bomb thrown at night into, or against, his house, by some miscreant or miscreants, with the evident intent of "removing" him as an impediment to the transactions of their murderous employers. The police, after much effort to discover the perpetrators of the outrage, finally dismissed it from further examination, upon the theory that this man had himself "put up the job," to accomplish the destruction of his wife and children, and of his own life. Through this heroic man's efforts, together with those of a fearless and outspoken clergyman, as in New York, and not by reason of police assistance, but in spite of police resistance, the convictions in the criminal court, in the past year for gambling, are wholly due. The latest accessible reports show that in the year 1897 the number of places closed during the two preceding years was one hundred and forty-six, and that at the end of 1897 there were twenty-nine still in existence, including tape games and fraudulent brokers' haunts. These institutions possess a peculiar fascination for women. Three of them, patronized wholly by the female sex, were found under one roof. Of the leading one, a writer in a city daily newspaper, in a vivid description of its general surroundings, said: "The atmosphere of the rooms is stifling and poisonous. The odor is rank with the effluvia of bodies, which, in many cases, present the appearance that would justify the belief that they have been strangers to the bath for weeks. To go into these rooms out of the fresh outdoor world is to almost suffocate at first. * * * The effects are plainly visible in the faces of the women. They had, with few exceptions, leathery, sallow skins, drawn and tense features, hard lines about the mouth, and wrinkles between the eyes, while the eyes themselves had acquired a restless, half cunning expression, composed of cupidity and uncertainty. As for their nervous systems they are wrecks. Take the hand of any woman in those rooms, especially if she has just made an investment, and the nervous vibration is plain--her hand quivers, her whole body is tense, her bulging eyes fix themselves on the board."