Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 27, 2025
He was found where prize-fighters brawled, and card-sharpers cajoled; where hall singers fed on truffled dishes, and courtesans laughed and called for champagne. He was seen in Lubini's sprawling over luncheon tables till late in the afternoon, and at nightfall lingering about the corners of the streets, talking to the women that passed. In such low form of vice he sought escape.
There are men who possess a peculiarly strong visual memory, sharpness and accuracy of eye, presence of mind, dexterity of hand, and above all a subtle sense of touch, who are as it were born into God's world for the sole and special purpose of becoming distinguished card-sharpers.
He told me that Tomatis, the manager of the comic opera, had made a fortune, and had in his company a Milanese dancer named Catai, who enchanted all the town by her charms rather than her talent. Games of chance were permitted, but he warned me that Warsaw was full of card-sharpers.
For five years she traveled about all over the Continent with these card-sharpers in high life, and she might have been among them at this moment, for anything I know to the contrary, if the baroness had not caught a Tartar at Naples, in the shape of a rich traveling Englishman, named Waldron. Aha! that name startles you, does it? You've read the Trial of the famous Mrs.
Loose women, treating him as a friend, told him the troubles, difficulties, and successes of their lives; and card-sharpers, respecting his impecuniosity, stood him dinners and lent him five-pound notes.
So it happened that when all his money was played away, which came to pass in a month or two, the higher and cleverer class of rascals began to look uncommonly cold upon him. At first poor crushed Mary used to entertain of an evening some of the ELITE among the card-sharpers of London men who actually could have spoken to a gentleman in a public place, and not have got kicked.
There are dwarfs, fat women, giants, and the renowned ubiquitous Punch and Judy, merry-go-rounds, card-sharpers, cheap-jacks, and a medley crowd of men and women all catering for the roubles of the crowd. What are termed the "ice-hills" are perhaps the most attractive feature of the gathering. In the city feasting and visiting are the order of the day.
The Renaissance took up the old epic-romantic materials and made out of them works of art; but works of art which, as I said before, were playthings gets written for its delectation the comic-tragic novels of rapscallions, panders, prostitutes, and card-sharpers, which, from "Lazarillo de Tormes" to "Gil Bias," and from "Gil Bias" to "Tom Jones," finally replace the romances of the Launcelots, Galahads, Rinaldos, and Orlandos.
For some time he had been connected with a gang of card-sharpers, living under an alias, and depending for his food and drink upon the small wits which Providence had vouchsafed him. It was during a dispute in one of the lowest doss-houses in the place that he met his death.
I am not intrusive; I used to get on all right with card-sharpers, and I never bored Prince Svirbey, a great personage who is a distant relation of mine, and I could write about Raphael's Madonna in Madam Prilukov's album, and I never left Marfa Petrovna's side for seven years, and I used to stay the night at Viazemsky's house in the Hay Market in the old days, and I may go up in a balloon with Berg, perhaps."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking