He condescended no more, and the Cash Customer disbursed his dollar and departed, all the grandchildren gathering on the bank to give him three cheers as a parting salute. CHAPTER XV. How the “Individual” calls on Madame Clifton, of No. 185 Orchard Street, and how that amiable and gifted “Seventh daughter of a seventh daughter,” prophesies his speedy death and destruction, together with all about the “Chinese Ruling Planet Charm.” CHAPTER XV. MADAME CLIFTON, 185 ORCHARD STREET. Perhaps there is no class of men brought constantly and prominently before the public eye, that is so great a puzzle to that public, as the class popularly denominated “sporting men.” There is not a corner on Broadway where they do not congregate; there is not a theatre where they do not abound, and there is not a concert-room that does not overrun with them. There is a uniformity in their appearance that makes them easily recognised, for they all affect the ultra stylish in costume, even to the extreme of light kid gloves in the street; they all have the crisp moustache, the smooth-shaven cheeks, and the same keen, ever-watchful eye, constantly on the look-out for a “customer,” that respectable word meaning, in their slang, a person to be victimized and swindled. Every lady who walks the street has to run the gauntlet of their insolent glances, and not unfrequently to hear their vulgar and offensive criticisms on her personal appearance; and every gentleman whose business calls him into Broadway of a pleasant day, has seen these persons grouped on the corner leisurely surveying the passers-by, or gathered into a little knot before some favorite rum-shop, discussing what is, to them, the absorbing topic of the day—probably the “good strike” Blobbsby made, “fighting the tiger,” the night before; the “heavy run” a favorite billiard-player made on a certain occasion, or the respective chances of success of the two distinguished gentlemen who may chance at that time to be in training with a view of battering each other’s heads until one concedes his claim to the brutal “honors” of the prize ring. No gentlemen of fashion and fortune are more expensively dressed than these men; no class of people wear more finely stitched and embroidered linen, more costly broadcloth, more showy golden ornaments, or more brilliant diamonds; but for all, the man is yet to be found who has ever seen one of them put his hand or his brain to one single hour’s honest work. Unsophisticated persons are often puzzled to account for the apparently irreconcilable circumstances of no work, and plenty of money, and in their endeavors to invent a plausible hypothesis on the basis of honesty, must ever be bewildered. The city man knows them at a glance to be “sporting men.”