noble hall called the Conversations House, decorated with frescoes and fitted up most handsomely. This building stands in a fine ornamental garden, with green lawns and fine avenues of tall trees; and all this has been paid for by the profits of _roulette_ and _rouge et noir_. Seeing this, it may cause surprise that people play at all; yet the fascination is so great that, once within its influence, good resolutions and common sense seem alike unequal to resistance. All seems fair enough, and some appear to win, and then self-love suggests, "Oh, my luck will surely carry me through!" The game is so arranged that some win and some lose every game, the table having, it is said, only a small percentage of chance in its favor. These chances are avowedly greater at _roulette_ than at _rouge et noir_, but at both it is practically shown that the player, in the long run, always loses. It is whispered that, contrary to the schoolboy maxim, cheating _does_ thrive at German baths; and those who have watched the matter closely, say a Dutch banker won every season by following a certain plan. He waited till he saw a heavy stake upon the table, and then backed the other side. He always won. Go into one of the rooms at any of these places, and whom do you see? The off-scourings of European cities--professional gamblers, ex-officers of all sorts of armies; portionless younger brothers; pensioners; old men and old women who have outlived all other excitements; a multitude of silly gulls, attracted by the waters, or the music, or the fascination of play; and a sprinkling of passing tourists, who come--"just look in on their way," generally to be disappointed--often to be fleeced. Young and handsome women are not very often seen playing. Gaming is a vice reserved for middle age. While hearts are to be won, dollars are not worth playing for. Cards, and rouge, and dyspepsy seem to be nearly allied, if we may judge by the specimens of humanity seen at the baths of Wiesbaden, Homburg, and Baden. The players--and player and loser are almost synonymous terms--are generally thin and anxious; the bankers, fat and stolid. As the brass whirls round, the table-keeper has the look of a quiet bloated spider, seemingly passionless, but with an eye that glances over every chance on the board. At his side see an elderly man, pale and thin, the muscles of whose lower jaw are twitching spasmodically, yet with jaded, forced resignation, he loses his last five pounds. Next him is a woman highly dressed, with false hair and teeth, and a great deal of paint. She has a card in her hand, on which she pricks the numbers played, and thus flatters herself she learns the best chances to take. Next to her see one of the most painful sights these places display. A father, mother, and young girl are all trying their fortune; the parents giving money to the child that they "may have her good luck," reckless of the fatal taste they are implanting in her mind.