An Eccentric Gambler.

Te Aroha News, Volume I, Issue 40, 8 March 1884, Page 5

An Eccentric Gambler.

Monte Carlo has had another victim. As a matter of fact, the usual winding up of a gambler's career there is the pistol or poison. Of the two methods of shuttling off this mortal coil the directors of the establishment prefer the latter, as it does not make such a mess in the place and causes much less fuss. A Frenchman, however, made a departure from the ordinary method and struck out a new line for himself in flying from ruin and despair, which is thus described by an Italian paper : " A few days ago the guards of a railway train, soon after passing the frontier, had their attention called to a disturbancein one of the carriages. On going to the scene of the disturbance, they found a Frenchman who had evidently taken leave of his senses. He had on not the slightest particle of clothing, and was jumping about the compartment. Inquiries elicted the fact that the man had lost all he possessed— -90,000 francs— at the gaming-table"; that he had then entered a train and had pitched his garments out of the window one after another, and these were found upon the line. The stationmaster rigged up the luckless individual with a suit of clothes, and in this way the broken-down speculator was convoyed to a lunatic asylum — a badly-singed moth in the fatal flame which has lured so many to destruction."