And do not imagine that the proprietors and dealers of the games were low-browed, ugly ruffians. Smooth, sleek and handsome were the nimble fingered gentry who attended to the wants of the fever-stricken fools who had more ounces in their pockets than in their brain-pans--until the fever was cured, when the loss of balance was in the other direction. Many a college education was wasted--or utilized, if you please--on the dealer’s side of a “sweat-cloth” in some of those dens. My fine gentleman would not swing a pick--unless it were an ivory one with which he could take away a sturdy miner’s golden ounces much more quickly than the hapless fool had dug them with the implements of honest toil. But the scene was an alluring one, nevertheless. The rattle of chips and dice; the ringing of silver and the clink of gold; the thud of the buckskin bags of gold dust as they were recklessly thrown upon the table; the duller, yet more portentous, shuffling of the cards; the whir of the wheel where _rouge et noir_ was being played, were entertaining to my ear, untrained as it was to such sounds. “Come up and make your bets, gentlemen! The game is made! Five -- eleven -- eighteen -- twenty -- twenty-two -- twenty-four -- twenty-eight -- thirty-one. Red wins!”--and the never ending procession of excited fools stepped up to diversion and disaster. There was one thing the proprietors of those gambling houses forgot--they should have had a suicide room and an undertaking department. It would have saved the city fathers a deal of trouble in the disposal of the large crop of unknown remains that the morning light disclosed in obscure corners of the city--poor fugitives from self; victims of dens where Venus, Momus, Terpsichore and Bacchus grovelled in the dirt yet held undisputed sway. There was a grim irony, and yet, withal, a tinge of comedy, in the farewell treat of fiery liquor with which the management bowed out its ruined guests--bowed them out of the den of iniquity and into a slough of despond from which they oft-times never emerged--on this side of eternity. I was standing one evening in “The Palace”--a gambling den with the usual appurtenances of tributary and dependent vice--curiously watching the movements of the dealer at one of the numerous faro games. Every table was crowded with players and surrounded by spectators, some of whom, like myself, were mere curiosity seekers, but most of them being devotees of the shrine of the goddess, Chance, who were impatiently awaiting the occurrence of a vacancy at the table--when a bankrupt player should make way for fatter victims. Sitting just opposite the dealer was a young lad, who could not have been more than seventeen years of age, betting away with a recklessness that would have done credit to a millionaire. The youngster was evidently flushed with liquor and laboring under the highest degree of excitement.