It only remains to point out that the Americans as a people are frantic gamblers, and that they are infatuated enough to regard gambling as a form of sport. Probably more gambling at cards goes on in the United States than in the whole of the countries of Europe put together. The proper American is everlastingly playing at poker, which is a bluffing game, and which he will assure you trains him for his business. The American card-sharper has been famous in song and story time out of mind. For sheer coolness, audacity, and skill at the job, he has never had an equal. Occasionally he lands on these shores, with a picturesque entourage, takes a flat in the West End of London, and relieves the adolescent gentry of the neighbourhood of their little alls. Then he is up and off, on the wings of the morning. Among themselves, too, the Americans play a great deal of roulette, petit chevaux, and kindred fascinations. They count also amongst the most enthusiastic patrons of Monte Carlo, where season after season many of them turn up with very little money and make a fat thing of it. Last season a long-haired gentleman from Kansas City scooped up between two and three hundred louis a night for twenty nights running by the simple process of walking from table to table and backing 17. He told me that he and his wife were there for a little trip, and that he had hit on the 17 idea because 17 was the number of their cabin on the liner which brought them over. Of course 17 can refuse to come up at Monte Carlo for hours at a time. But whenever this raw-boned large-handed citizen of Kansas chose to put money on it, up it came inside two or three spins. There are American gamblers at Monte Carlo, however, who are not by any means so consistently lucky as my friend. The money some of them get through when they are having a bad time would probably astonish the old folks at home. But it is only fair to them to say that they take their losses with an unruffled, if rather moist, brow and go off solemnly to cable for further supplies. When a certain sort of American millionaire turns up in the Mediterranean paradise there are sure to be merry doings. I have seen such a one mop his wet face after handing the bank a bundle of notes that would have made a tidy year’s income for a man with a large family, and remark, a little feebly, “Gee whizz!” Then he was led gently away by a number of pretty ladies. It is in what one may term hard gambles such as he gets at Monte Carlo that the American shows his most sportsmanlike qualities. At roulette, or trente et quarente, it is almost impossible for him to cheat, and consequently he wins or loses more or less calmly and with perfect honour. But at poker—tut—tut! [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER XI HOGS