LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume IX, Issue 1240, 26 February 1878, Page 3

LITERATURE.

A CALIFORNIA!* CONJURING TRICK[AII the Year Bound,'] Night and day, for seven days and nights in every week, and fifty-two weeks in every year—that was the way that the gaming, houses carried on their business in California in the good old times, some thirty years or so ago. Latterly, on the Ellin*—even before victorious and pious Berlin had finally decided that the Berlin royal lotteries were the only form in which gambling could be tolerated —Sunday closing was enforced with very impartial rigour. And even now in the pleasant lit'le principality where the black and red have found their last public European refuge, and which nature seems to have thoughtfully constructed of the exact size required to hold the tables and their staff without further room for any disturbing influence, the cards cease to fall and the little ball to roll every night at twelve o'clock, and for one whole day in every year. We were not so particular in 'Frisco by any means. When it grew dark we lighted the lamps. When we happened to look up for a moment from onr game, and found that they were no longer required, we put them out again That was the only difference ever made by the flight of time at the El Dorado. I think it was the very first time I ever set foot in the El Dorado, that I was an eyewitness of the strange scene which I am about to describe. There was one man among the players that evening who had attracted my attention from the first. He was a tall, powerful fellow, standing in his mud-soiled, horseskin boots, a full head higher than almost anyone in the room, and with a full blue eye and broad open face, with very much more of the Englishman about it than the Yankee. His once scarlet shirt was decidedly ragged, and stained to almost every tint not to be found in the rainbow; his face, so much of it at least as wa<* not hidden under a mighty light brown beard, was bur/ied almost to a brick colour, aa were also his hands, torn and scarred by rough and reckless toil. But the big bio>vn beard was carefully combed, the curly hair cropped short, the scarred hands not small indeed, but almost aristocratically well shaped. Altogether, despite a trim amazingly like that of the ruffian of some Adelphi melodrama, the big digger looked strangely like a gentleman, and attracted my observation f om the first. He came lounging up the room, a short black pipe tucked away in the corrter of his mouth, his hands stuck carelessly in his broad gold-belt, where ihe polished butt of his Colt peeped significantly out above the bulging pockets, crammed to bursting with

nuggets and dust, and on his head a threehundred dollar Panama hat, brand-new, and forming a quaint contrast to the rest of his costume. In 'Frisco, in those day, your Panama hat was the one infallible mark of your dandy. 1 hence downwards you might get up in any fashion you might think becoming, or find advantageous to your comfort or your purse. So Ions; as you had a first-class Panama hat you were all right. Our tall friend's Panama was a real beauty, and, for the rest, he certainly had an air of doing as he darned pleased, with as eisy a disrega d for anything but his own pleasure as you could wish a big, burly, good-natured man to possess. For that he was a thoroughly good natured fellow was beyond all question. It was ' writ lar^e' all over him. As he took his way calmly through the thickest of the throng, his jovial face and beaming smile seemed to smo'-th his passage quite as effectually as his big should«rs forced it. He had a word and a jest for everyone, and when anything was said that tickled his risible faculties not difficult of tickling—the great broad smile would break all over the sunburnt features, and the blue eyes would dance as merrily as any schoolboy's. Yet for all the transparent bonhomie of the man's face, there was a strange resolution about it too—it was a face that one could adiiy fancy growing on good occasion very hard and stern. 'Good bird to pluck,' ob»erved a Yankee at my elbow to a friend standing by, jerking his head in the direction of the stranger, and squirting ha'f a-pint or so of tobacco juice into the nearest spittoon by way of emphasis to the remark. The other followed the direction of the speaket's eye, looked at the newcomer carelessly for a moment or two with both eyes open, looked at him for another moment or two inte tly with one eye half shut, turned a mighty quid in one hollow cheek, added his contribution of tobacco juice to the common stock, and replied with sententious gravity—'Bad bird to peck.'

Much to my satisfaction, the 'bird' in question made his way, as though of set purpose, straight to the table by which I was standing. By this time his pipe was out, and without removing it from the corner of his mouth, where it seemed as much a fixture as any of his teeth, he took a cake of tobacco from the breast of his red shirt, drew the ivory-handled bowie from its convenient resting-place in the top of his right boot, and began cutting up and rubbing a fresh supply, intently regarding the players the while.

Euchre is a rapid game, or was, as played out West in tbose days. Tap—tap—tap tap ; four little knuckle raps upon the table, so closely following upon each other that they might have be?-n given by a single overzeaious postman, and a 1 four players hav expressed their determination that clubs, at all events, shall not be the trump suit this deal. Before the dealer and he is quick enough in hia movements, too—has had time to turn the seven of clubs, whose pretensions to govern the deal have been thus summarily rejected, a brief nasal grunt of 'next' has proclaimed the eldest hand s exercise of his privilege in promoting spades to the vacant throne. As tie speaks, he plays; as he plays -almost before his card has touched the board—the second follows suit. And so card follows card as swiftly as from the dealer's hands, and the game is over, and the cards swept together again and deftly shuffled (I never saw real artistic shuffling anywhere but in the West; no, not even inßhineland) —cut, dealt, and the game under way again in little more time than a deliberative player at home might take over a single card at whist, even without arousing the impatience of his fellow-sufferers.

Our new friend was evidently a connoisseur in euchre, and as he thrust the ivory bowie back into his boot, and rubbed the rich black shreds round and round in his horny palm, I could see the blue eyes twiukle, and the great wavy masses of hair about the mouth just stirred by the faint suggestion of a smila. And our friend was right. The ' team' brfore us was a good one, about as good as I have often seen. I rather ' fancied myself ' at euchre in those days, and could appreciate first-class play when I saw it; but had I been invited to ' cut in' among such very ' straight, squinting gunners' as these, I shouldn't, in the words of a lamented Yankee friend afterwards, I regret to say, ' spoilt' by Mr Justice Lynch for playing euohre a little too well —' I shouldn't have thought twice about it. No, sirree! I should ha' clar'd right out, fust time o' asking.' Our new friend was less diffident. As he stuffd the fresh supply into his pipe—without the least thiuking it necassary to remove the latter from bis mouth for the purpose—l could see that the very fingers thus agreeably employed were itching t be at the good work. >or was it long before they were gratified, flay was even enough, but the cards had been running crookedly, and, as luck would have it, altogether against the weaker purse. The newly filled pipe was hardly well alight before the player nearest to us had 'had (.nough,' and retired with his empty gold belt from the contest. His late partner looked up in search of a new ally, naught the eye of my big friend, recognised him as a kindred spirit, and was content

* In, old hoss ?' was the brief question that promptly followed. (To be Continued.)