Attracted by a concourse of children in another spot, I soon found myself standing close to an old woman who was dealing out small thin cakes in a curious kind of manner. Before her was placed what appeared to be a small round table, but with an index, which, after being set in motion by a boy, stopped suddenly, and pointed like the hand of a clock to one of twelve numbers described in a circle. The perpetual invitation was, “Play, play! twelve cakes for a halfpenny;” and the little urchins, preferring the chance of twelve cakes for a halfpenny to the certainty of perhaps only three or four from a regular vender elsewhere, came up in rapid succession and with eager eyes to the game. Joy sparkled in the countenance of the juvenile speculator if the hand pointed to a high number; disappointment lowered upon his brow if a unit or two was the number which fortune assigned to him, while the hearty laugh of the spectators increased the acrimony of his temper. I tried my own luck, and had one cake for my share, to the unrestrained delight of the little folk. “Cakes for a halfpenny!” said I to myself. “What a good subject for a moral reflection!” Here we have the seeds of gambling sown at an early season in the lively soil, and the systematic culture of this baneful and vivacious principle subsequently ensures its establishment in the human heart through the length and breadth of the land; it finds its congenial bed every where, from the child of the poorest mechanic to the grey-headed gamester in the polished societies of higher life. The avaricious principle thus precociously introduced into the youthful heart among the many natural weeds which are but too ready to spring up there, has its own distinctive fruits; and though it may be urged by those who think not deeply on the effects of early impressions on the ductile mind of childhood, that the disappointment which the little gamester experiences in his play of “twelve cakes for a halfpenny” counterbalances (as a trial of temper) the evils arising on the other hand from success in his object, this defence is really untenable in its general points. In the little party before me I saw the willing and prepared pupils of a higher order of play--of rouge-et-noir, and hazard, and ecarté--by which so many of our own countrymen are infatuated, and sometimes ruined, when they take up their residence in France, heedless of the value of that time and those opportunities for the right use of which they are responsible to the bountiful Giver of them. We now entered a low kind of café, in which the next scene of the serious drama of “twelve cakes for a sous” was exhibited. In one room was a billiard-table, at which two common-looking fellows were playing, at the rate of threepence an hour for the tables, for a cup of coffee and a glass of brandy. In a corner sat a bloated, half-drunken looking old man in a blouse and nightcap, while his bustling wife discharged all the labours of the establishment.