And while you are strolling along the Bowery you may come across an oldish-looking man with a dyed or gray mustache and a suggestion of former rakishness in his seedy clothes and well-preserved silk hat--a man who seems to have outlived his calling, whatever it may have been, and to have been left high and dry with no intimate companionship save that of his own thoughts. It will pay you to get acquainted with this old man, for he belongs to a race which is fast disappearing, the race of old-time American gamblers, of which Bret Harte’s John Oakhurst is the best type to be found in our national fiction. He still survives in the West and South, but here in New York his place has been taken by the new brood of race-track plungers and Hebrew book-makers; and the faro-box from which he used to deal with deft fingers, and the lookout chair from which he was wont in the olden times to watch the progress of the game with quick, searching eyes and impassive face, know him no more. If you are studying the different dialects of the town, you should make careful notes of this old man’s speech and of the peculiar way in which he uses the present tense in describing bygone happenings. Mr. H. L. Wilson has given us, in his excellent book of stories called _Zig-zag Tales_, the following delicious bit of dialect, which I quote because it well illustrates what I have said. The words are taken from the lips of the “lookout,” and are addressed in a cautious undertone to the faro-dealer: “See his nobs there with the moniment of azures? I’m bettin’ chips to coppers that’s Short-card Pete. He’s had his mustache cut off, ’n’ he’s heavier ’n he was ten years ago. He tends bar in Noorleans, in ’68, fer Doc Nagle--ole Doc, you rec’lect--’n’ he works the boats a spell after that. See ’im one night play’n’ bank at Alf Hennesey’s, an’ he pulls out thirty-two solid thousan’; Slab McGarr was dealin’, ’nis duck here makes him turn over the box. See ’im ’nother time at San’tone, ’na little geeser works a sleeve holdout on ’im--one a these here ole-time tin businesses; you never see a purtier gun play ’n he makes--it goes, too; mebbe it was n’swif’! He’s a-pullin’ on that gang; get onto that chump shuffle, will you? Ain’t that a play fer yer life? He ain’t overlookin’ any bets.” “What are you giving us?” is the contemptuous cry of my young friend from Park Row who has done me the honor to read what I have written. “I know all that about Chinatown and the politicians as well as you do.”