Pool-rooms flourished all over the city in the same way. Large sums were extorted from their proprietors by the police, and they were permitted to remain unmolested, openly and publicly running, until a private citizen, Richard Croker, after a conference with a police commissioner, enforced their cessation practically in a single day. This is one of the most remarkable circumstances testified to before your Committee. And yet nothing was done or attempted to be done until the private citizen aforesaid commanded that they be closed, and they were closed, and closed without criminal prosecution. It appeared subsequently in evidence that these pool-rooms, while running, had been assessed and had paid for police protection as high as 300 dollars a month.--Vol. i., p. 3,637. We have too much betting in England--betting carried on with the active co-operation of the press--for any English journalist to be able to throw a stone at New York or Chicago, for the extent to which gambling is carried on in policy-shops or pool-rooms. The Turf is the great gaming hell of the Old Country, and nearly every newspaper in the land plays the part of a tout and tempter to those who wish to gamble. In New York, while there is betting enough among certain classes, the masses of the people seem to prefer other forms of risking their money. A very curious picture is given in the evidence taken by the Lexow Committee of the prevalence of the gaming habit among all classes of the population, especially in the poorer districts. After making one or two ineffectual attempts, I have given up all hope of understanding, much less of explaining, the precise way in which gambling goes on in pool-rooms. From the explanations of the witness, the uninitiated outsider can only discern vaguely that policy is much more akin to the Italian lottery system than anything which prevails in this country. Any sum can be staked, from one cent upwards. The gambler chooses a number or concatenation of numbers. What is called a “saddle” consists of two sets of numbers, while a “gig” is composed of three. There are many kinds of “gigs,” which were duly described for the edification of the Committee, the “police gig” being one of those most in vogue. In the choice of “saddles” or “gigs”--or, in other words, in the selection of numbers on which to put his money--the New York gambler is exactly like a Neapolitan, and in nothing is the resemblance more remarkable than in the respect paid to dreams. Nearly every policeman, it was declared, had a dream book, and according as he dreamed, so he would put his money upon the number indicated by the dream in his pocket oracle. I made a small collection of dream books when I was in Chicago, and came to the conclusion that the dream book was much more constantly consulted in that city than the Old or New Testament. Judging from the evidence before the Committee, dream books