Page:California Inter Pocula.djvu/710

 meeting of the council the law was repealed, leaving everythmg lovely in this respect for the great Inferno now so near at hand.

Some were of the opinion that gambling should not be interfered with by law any more than interest on money or the sale of intoxicating liquors. To extinguish this vice, said they, was impossible; the passion appears to be deep-seated in man's nature, alike in high and low, civilized and savage. The principle is one with that of speculation, and tinges even commercial ventures. As is often claimed for religion, there never has been known a nation without its gambling games of some sort. So, continued these reasoners, it is better to license the vice, give the state the revenue, and not make it a crime, than to drive it into dark corners and guarded club-rooms, for it is not that which is done in public that does the most harm. Men will not voluntarily exhibit their w^orst side to the world. He who ruins himself and family at the gaming-table does it generally in private. Then, too, the opportunities for practising the arts and devices of the trade are much greater than at a table in a public room, surrounded by scores of eyes as keen and as watchful as those of the dealer.

Gambling in San Francisco was tolerated for the revenue that was derived from it, long after public opinion was against it.

In due time the saloons, those impious, blazing landmarks, had to give way before a revised public sentiment. The old El Dorado, corner of Dupont and Washington streets, was one of the last to succumb. In full blast from 1850 till 1856, there were nightly collected the largjest crowds of the worst of all classes, all who had a few dollars to gamble—that is, until public gaming was prohibited—or an hour's time to while away, gazing at the people coming and going, at the nude pictures on the walls, and the movements of the barkeepers, and listening to the chink of coin, and the really fine music of the band. About the time