g takes a variety of forms. First of all is the professional
gambler. He has no other business. His investment is a "pack of cards"
and a box of "dice. See him with his long, slender fingers; with his
shaggy, unkempt hair; with keen eyes, and a sordid countenance. He is
prepared to "rake in" a thousand dollars a night, and would not hesitate
to strip any man of his fortune. The professional is found at county
fairs, on railway trains, in gilded dens, and at public resorts. Being a
professional outlaw, and subject at any time to arrest and imprisonment,
usually he has an accomplice. Sometimes a gang work together, so that
it is with perfect ease they may relieve any unwary novice of his money.
They know human nature on its low, mercenary side, and soon can find
their man in a crowd. But few persons have started out in life having
it for their aim to get something for nothing who, sooner or later, have
not been "taken in" by this gang of swindlers. They know their kind.
The end of the professional gambler is final loss and ruin. He will make
$100, he will make $500, he will make $1,000, he will make $2,000; then
he will lose all. Then he will borrow some money and start anew. And
again he will make $200, he will make $600, he will make $1,200, and he
will lose all. Like the winebibber and the professional murderer, the
professional gambler has his den. Not a large city in the world is
without these haunts of vice. Who is it that feeds and supports them?
The novice at cards and dice, husbands and sons of respectable families,
just as the occasional dram-taker supports the saloon. As one has asked:

"Could fools to keep their own contrive,
On whom, on what could gamesters thrive?"
--GAY.

The penny novice seeks the penny gambling den. The aristocratic
speculator seeks the gilded gambling den. The expert trickster of large
luck and large fortune makes his way to Monte Carlo, the gambling Mecca
of the world. Monte Carlo is a famous resort situated in the northwest
part of Italy. It is notorious for its gambling saloon. This city of
nearly four thousand inhabitants is located in Monaco, the smallest
independent country in the world. Monaco is about eight miles square,
and lies on a "barren, rocky ridge between the sea and lofty, almost
inaccessible rocks." The soil is barren, except in small tracts
which are used for fruit-gardens. For centuries the inhabitants, the
Monagasques, live