Page:California Inter Pocula.djvu/717

 professional, not being used in the abstract sense of one who gambles. The grocer deals out sugar and the gambler cards; he who buys a pound of sugar does not thereby become a grocer; neither is he who bets upon the cards, in California, called a gambler, that term being applied to a class sui generis. Whereever found, in the city or in the mines, one can almost always pick them out in a crowd. They are the best dressed men one meets; their pale, careworn, imperturbable faces wear an absent but by no means greedy air, and as they stand listlessly on the corner, cr slowly and carelessly walk the street, by no mctins indifferent to a pretty female ankle, their calmly observant eyes, which are somewhat sunken in their sockets, seem to possess the faculty of looking through people while not looking at them, which habit was contracted at the o-amino' table.

The character of the typical gambler of the flush times is one of the queerest mixtures in hum^an nature. His temperament is mercurial but non-volatilized; like quicksilver in cinnabar, its subtle vivacity is crystalized or massed in sulphur. Supreme self-command is his cardinal quality; yet, except when immersed in the intricacies of a game, his actions appear to be governed only by impulse and fancy. On the other hand his swiftest vengeance and cruellest butchery seem rather the result of policy than passion. His crimes are his profession's rather than his own. Confident with women, he is audacious with men. Prompt in action, expert, he is as ready to attack a dozen as one. He is never known to steal except at cards; and if caught cheating he either fights or blandly smiles his sin away, suffers the stakes to be raked down without a murmur, treats good-humoredly, and resumes the game unruffled. United with the coolest cunning is the coolest courage. He is as ready with his pistol as with his toothpick, but he never uses it unless he is right; then, he will kill a man as mercilessly as he would brush a fly