Page:Old Westland (1939).pdf/264

238 excitement; it was a commonplace occurrence, just an incident in the daily routine.

At night, when the diggers working nearby returned to town, the scene almost baffled description, for then the streets were thronged with people, and the places of amusement, ablaze with light, came into their own. Then the hotels, the skittle alleys, and the gambling dens, where foregathered immaculately attired, soft-voiced spielers, adept at working a crooked roulette wheel, a crown and anchor outfit, or the elusive thimble and pea illusion, “Now you see it—and now you don’t,” were going at top, and diggers were simply throwing away their easily gotten gold.

The casinos, too, where the ladies de ballet displayed less of their charms than do sunbathing girls of to-day, were most popular. In the beginning these “dancing girls” were attached to the hotels; later it was deemed necessary to add the following clause to the Licensing Act: “Whereas a practice exists in certain parts of the Colony of hiring women and young girls to dance in rooms or places where liquors are sold, any contract by which any females shall be hired to dance in any such room or place shall be null and void; any room or place in which females shall be so employed, or permitted, whether by contract or by a share of the produce of the sale of tickets, or in any way, shall be taken to be