est workingman. Although the latter, in every blow he strikes, not knowing the outcome of it whether it shall prosper or not, makes a direct appeal to the goddess Fortune ; but having honestly struck the blow, he feels he has a right in thus making the appeal. But the shaved and white-shirted faro-dealer is not Fortuna, but rather a money-demon, a soul-subduer, an emissary of Satan, a commercial traveller in the interests of hell. May he then be honest ? Why yes, if he does not cheat. Is not Satan honest ? And are not his agents to be trusted as fully as those of his enemies, nine-tenths of whom, by their own showing, each measuring another, are not what they seem.
There is no excuse for crime or wrong doing; but I have yet to find the man, or class of men or women without much that is good as well as much that is evil in them. The murderer and the harlot did not become such because they were utterly depraved, but because they were overtaken by some evil more tlic fault of their environment than of their origfinal nature. The honest and the chaste may thank for their untempted virtue conditions void of the allurements which otherwise mig^ht have made them the thino; they so contemptuously scorn. Thousands who walk the street with head erect, honored and respected, would long since have met the felon's fate, had their courage been equal to their desires.
During the flush times games were employed to suit all tastes. There were the purely games of chance, as faro, monte, dice; games partly of chance and partly of skill, as whist, euchre, poker, backgammon; games of skill, as chess, checkers, billiards. Games which require much thought or skill are never resorted to for popular heavy gambling. They are too slow and there is too much labor connected with tiiem. Something more quick and soul-stirring is what is wanted. Next to the pleasure of winning is the pleasure of losing : stagnation is unendurable.
The term gambler, in California, refers only to the
