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Gambling-dens and other "resorts" paid large sums to "sub-bosses," who become rich, and if the full history of some of the "bosses" of New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, or any great American city could be exposed, it would show a state of affairs that would display the American politician in a dark light.
Doubtless Father Martin did not wish that his followers should be distinguished by Christian meekness, and he appointed a bully whom people called "Driveller" Juan warden of the Benevolent Society. This Juan was a lad who lived without working; his mother and his sisters were dressmakers, and he bled them for money, and spent his life in taverns and gambling-dens. Dr.
Here I stayed six months, making acquaintances and listening to others' experiences. Las Vegas was then a true frontier town. It was "booming," full of life and all kinds of people, money plentiful, saloons, gambling-dens and dance-halls "wide open." Real Estate was moving freely, prices advancing, speculation rife, and I caught the infection!
It was one of the many curious fashions which have now died out, that men who were blase from luxury and high living seemed to find a fresh piquancy in life by descending to the lowest resorts, so that the night-houses and gambling-dens in Covent Garden or the Haymarket often gathered illustrious company under their smoke-blackened ceilings.
They are a singularly poisonous by-product of Empire, all the more poisonous for their brag; and though they belong to the class whom their relations gladly contribute to emigrate, they are far worse employed in debauching and plundering our so-called fellow-subjects in Africa than they would be in the public-houses, gambling-dens, pigeon-shooting enclosures, workhouses, and jails of their native land.
The police, being extremely vigilant in respect to all violations of law by the Chinese, have sought out their gambling-dens with great diligence, and made many arrests.
The eye of any chance passer would have been at once drawn to a broad, heavy, white brick edifice on the lower side of the way, with a flag-pole standing out like a bowsprit from one of its great windows, and a pair of lamps hanging before a large closed entrance. It was a theatre, honey-combed with gambling-dens.
If one's wrong habits are not corrected by one sentence, let the next be longer, or till thoroughly reformed, reform being the object aimed at. Then should we take the keepers of these rum-shops, billiard-saloons, gambling-dens and houses of ill-fame, with those of their frequenters that need be, and put them here at work, too. This would be a wonderful purifier of society.
For they, too, had their motor-cars from France and England; they, too, had their gambling-dens secreted in private houses of high repute, they, too, had their country-seats specially indicated as free to such house-parties as wished to indulge in low intrigue and unbridled licentiousness; they, too, weary of simple Christianity, had their own special 'religions' of palmistry, crystal-gazing, fortune-telling by cards, and Esoteric 'faith-healing. The days were passing with them as it passes with many of their 'set' in other countries, in complete forgetfulness of all the nobler ambitions and emotions which lift Man above the level of his companion Beast.
Mercier, in sharp, almost indignant language, gives us a vivid picture of the famous resort. Gambling-dens, dance-halls, shops devoted to the sale of the most reckless and infamous productions, restaurants and wine-shops were to be seen on every side. The spirit of speculation and gambling raged with inconceivable violence.
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