Page:Our Sister Republic - Mexico.djvu/479

Rh collectors go around and collect in the rials for a new one. Each game costs each player a rial, or two rials if it is a "double up," and the bank gets nothing but a percentage on the amount paid in, for doing the business. This place is filled every night, and much of the day, by people of all classes; ladies and gentlemen of the best families making little parties at the tables, and enjoying the sport as heartily as anybody. I went there with a party of ladies and gentlemen, played half a dozen games without winning one, then went to a roulette table, bet twice on the red and twice on the black, won all four bets, and quit gambling. It is not a first-rate business to follow, even in Mexico, where it is regarded, generally, as quite legitimate, and in a very different light from that in which we see it in the United States.

The most singular thing about this wholesale gambling is the perfect good order which prevails in the crowd. I did not see a drunken man, nor hear an angry word or an oath among all the thousands of players. When you remember, that to four-fifths of these players the loss of a single dollar is of greater moment than the loss of one hundred to the average American patron of the gaming table, you can readily understand what an event it is in their lives. Yet courtesy and forbearance are displayed upon all sides, and the losers never give vent to audible grumbling, while the winners—what there are of them—pocket their gains without a sign of exultation. Men who have lost their last medio will sit down by your side, and keep the account of the game for you, condoling with you when you lose, and congratulating you when you win, with as much earnestness as if they had known you for years