table, the manager by word of mouth announces the name of the card she has selected and declares it to be the winning card for the occasion. The hongs are then opened and the cards (or the symbols standing for them), compared: the winning packets are put in one heap and the losing packets in another. Ten dollars are paid to winners in return for every dollar staked. Each collector settles with the manager in turn; $1 being paid by the staker to the collector for every ten dollars won. Before the police began to hustle and drive these private lottery card parties, the manager or her husband used to carry the "Bann" to the place fixed on for declaring the lottery. The money in notes and silver would be done up neatly in paper and put in a small tiffin basket, ladies' satchel, or needlework box ready for use. After several prosecutions, however, this practice was given up, and the managers took to paying all the winnings they could with the money actually brought to the meeting as stakes and settled any balance due afterwards, with the collectors' in their husbands, shops. Finally the company breaks up and goes home one by one, so as not to attract notice. Special rickshaw coolies and gharry wallahs were engaged by the collectors to take them about. The manager usually employed a private carriage.
The lotteries were usually opened once or twice a day, once at about mid-day, and once at 8.30 p.m., or 9.30 p.m.,
In some of the lotteries, the amount of each stake was limited to $25 or $50, in other that would be staked was unlimited.
The manager has always one or two partners amongst the collectors. On each occasion a lottery is held these partners are told beforehand where the next place of meeting will be; the other collectors then go next day to the residence of the ladies in partnership with the manager and find out where they are all to assemble for the day's gambling. Sometimes when the police are particularly active the manager will not even tell the partners where the lottery is to be opened. She merely tells the collectors to meet at one of her partner's houses. In such cases the manager later on will go to the place where all the collectors have slowly assembled, and call in on the way and tell them to follow in small groups to such and such a place. The manager then leads the way to the place selected. One
