The Little Lady of Lagunitas: A Franco-Californian RomanceSavage, Richard
General
The Little Lady of Lagunitas: A Franco-Californian Romance
Savage, Richard
California -- Fiction
The plaza with impartial liberality yields up its frontages to saloon,
palace of play, and hotels for the fair ministers of His Satanic
Majesty. It is the pride of the enterprising "sports" and "sharpers,"
who represent the baccalaureate degree of every known vice. On the
west, the "Adelphi" towers, with its grand gambling saloon, its
splendid "salle a manger," and cosey nooks presided over by attractive
Frenchwomen. Long tables, under crystal chandeliers, offer a choice of
roads to ruin. Monte, faro, rouge et noir, roulette, rondo and
every gambling device are here, to lure the unwary. Dark-eyed subtle
attendants lurk, ready to "preserve order," in gambling parlance. At
night, blazing with lights, the superb erotic pictures on the walls
look down on a mad crowd of desperate gamesters. Paris has sent its
most suggestive pictures here, to inflame the wildest of human passions.
Nymph and satyr gleam from glittering walls; Venus approves with melting
glances, from costliest frames, the self-immolation of these dupes of
fortune. Every wanton grace of the artist throws a luxurious refinement
of the ideal over the palace of sin and shame.
Long counters, with splendid mirrors, display richest plate. They groan
with costliest glass, and every dark beverage from hell's hottest
brew. Card tables, and quiet recesses, richly curtained, invite to
self-surrender and seclusion. The softest music breathes from a full
orchestra. Gold is everywhere, in slugs, doubloons, and heaps of
nuggets. Gold reigns here. Silver is a meaner metal hardly attainable.
Bank notes are a flimsy possibility of the future. Piles of yellow
sovereigns and the coinage of every land load the tables. Sallow,
glittering-eyed croupiers sweep in, with affected nonchalance, this
easy-gained harvest of chance or fraud.
As the evening wears on, these halls fill up with young and old. The
bright face of youth is seen, inflamed with every burning passion, let
loose in the wild uncontrolled West. It is side by side with the haggard
visage of the veteran gamester. Every race has its representatives.
The possession of gold is the cachet of good-fellowship. Anxious crowds
criticise rapid and dashing play. The rattle of dice, calls of the
dealers, shouts of the attendants ring out. The sharp, hard, ringing
voices of the fallen goddesses of the tables rise on the stifling air,
reeking of smoke and wine. Dressed with the spoils of the East, bare of
bosom, bright of eye, hard of heart, glittering in flashing gems, and
nerved with drink, are these women. The painted sirens of the Adelphi
smile, with curled carmine lips which give the lie to the bold glances
of the wary eyes of those she-devils.
With a hideous past thrown far behind them, they fear no future.
Desperate as to the present, ministering to sin, inciting to violence,
conspiring to destroy body and soul, these beautiful annihilators of all
decency vie in deviltry only with each other.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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