"Roulette" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rooms where the games of chance were in operation, many handsomely gowned women and well-dressed men were moving from place to place conversing in quiet tones, but crowds were centered around the roulette tables, where the chairs were all occupied and many people were standing. We joined the throng around one of these and saw that the table was divided into numbered spaces, some colored red and some black. In the centre of the table was a little ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... 'Do you care to risk twenty thousand francs to buy a secret that may make rich men of you?' Why, the risk usually is in proportion to the profit, gentlemen. You stake twenty thousand francs on your luck. A gambler puts down a louis at roulette for a chance of winning thirty-six, but he knows that the louis is lost. ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... institution, was making his own living, and at the time had about fifteen hundred dollars in the bank, which represented his entire worldly assets. It was late at night, the young men had been to a party and were in rather a hilarious and reckless mood when they started playing roulette. After they used up the money they had with them, they were allowed to continue playing on credit, chips being supplied to them as called for. My friend, after losing more than he could afford, was urged by desperation to keep on trying ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... every pioneer who knew him. He could win or lose with the same perpetual joviality, but he generally won. The principal gambling game in those days was Mexican monte, played with forty cards. Poker was also played a great deal. Keno, faro and roulette were not introduced until later, and the same may be said of ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady
... city of idolaters and opium-eaters. And he took me to the gaming tables of pleasure and the gaming tables of work, and he sought to enchant me with figures and hypnotise me with the gleam of gold. He showed me how fortunes were made in roulette and in commerce, and tried to bring upon me the gambler's madness. And ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... 'Gintlemen,' says he, 'th' game is closed. Business conditions are such,' he says, 'that I will not be able to cash in ye'er checks,' he says. 'Please go out softly, so's not to disturb th' gintlemen at th' roulette wheel,' he says, 'an' come back afther th' iliction, whin confidence is restored an' prosperity returns to th' channels iv thrade an' industhry,' he says. 'Th' exchange 'll be opened promptly; an' th' usual rule iv chips f'r money an' money f'r chips, fifty on cases an' sivinty-five f'r doubles, ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... superstitious as he is fanatic and uncivilized, the Moro is a failure as a member of the human race. Even the children are the incarnation of the fiend. There was that boy at Iligan who worked at the officer's club, and who hung over the roulette-wheel like a perfect devil, crowing with demoniac glee when he was lucky. These are our latest citizens—this batch of serpents' eggs hatched out in human form; and those who have seen the Moro in his native home will tell you that, whatever ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... whom my anecdote is concerned, literature was a game of skill, and skill meant courage, and courage meant honour, and honour meant passion, meant life. The stake on the table was of a different substance, and our roulette was the revolving mind, but we sat round the green board as intently as the grim gamblers at Monte Carlo. Gwendolen Erme, for that matter, with her white face and her fixed eyes, was of the very type of ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... far the most extensive watering place in the Union. Of the effect of such establishments on morals I shall say nothing. The reader will draw his own conclusions, when he understands that the card-table, roulette, wheel of fortune, and dice-box are amongst its principal amusements. Here, not unfrequently, cotton bales, negroes, and even plantations, change owners in a night. The scenery around is highly picturesque and romantic. Declivities ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... in the evening when Glenister entered the Northern and passed idly down the row of games, pausing at the crap-table, where he rolled the dice when his turn came. Moving to the roulette-wheel, he lost a stack of whites, but at the faro "lay- out" his luck was better, and he won a gold coin on the "high- card." Whereupon he promptly ordered a round of drinks for the men grouped about him, a formality always precedent ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... at Gillespie's was at the front of the house. In the rear were the faro and poker tables, the roulette wheels, and the other conveniences for separating hurried patrons from their money. The Bear Cat House did its gambling strictly on the level, but there was the usual percentage ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... time I ever tried to turn it around, and it flew at our lovely rose-garlanded lattice fence at one hundred miles an hour, I christened it "the little fury." I missed the fence by revolving the steering wheel as though I were playing roulette. I almost went round twice, but J—— rescued me by kicking my foot off the throttle. Since then I have sufficiently mastered it to drive to town for the laundry and the newspaper. I am like a child learning to walk by having an orange rolled in front of it. I must know ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... written his Traite des Coniques (Treatise on Conics) and begun to occupy himself with "his arithmetical machine," as his sister, Madame Perier calls it. At twenty-three he had ceased to apply his mind to human sciences; "when he afterwards discovered the roulette (cycloid), it was without thinking," says Madame Perier, "and to distract his attention from a severe tooth-ache he had." He was not twenty-four when anxiety for his salvation and for the glory of God had taken complete possession of his soul. It was to the same ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... his one day in the year an infliction and a sacrifice. Books and pictures he had cared for once, but as he now put it, he had 'no use for them.' It seemed that all his eighty thousand pounds was destined to be flung upon the great roulette table of stock and share speculations. It was not that he was avaricious; few men cared less for money in itself; but he could not live without the excitement of speculation. 'I prefer the air of Throgmorton Street to any air in the world,' ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... wide open for the occasion, was already brisk with an assorted population of many races. Mexicans, Chinese, Indians of various tribes brushed shoulders with miners, tourists and cattlemen. Inside the saloons faro, chuckaluck and roulette attracted ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... blankly at the scenery that fitted past the train winds. (Scenery! There had been two charges for scenery! "Friedmann, Samuel . . . Scenery . . . $3711" and "Unitt and Wickes . . . Scenery . . . $2120"). He was suffering the torments of the ruined gamester at the roulette-table. Thirty-two thousand eight hundred and fifty-nine dollars, sixty-eight cents! And he was out of pocket ten thousand in addition from the check he had handed over two days ago to Uncle Chris as his share of the investment of starting Jill in the motion-pictures. It was ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... us," said Dalrymple, slipping his arm through mine and drawing me towards the roulette table. "She has just told De Simoncourt to take us in hand. I always suspected the ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... wild orgy of stock gambling, grain gambling, cotton gambling, and all the rest of it. There is no more of good in that—in fact, there is far more of harm in it to the country—than there would be if everybody went to betting at roulette or faro. It makes the lucky gamblers rich and the unlucky ones poor, but it produces nothing, even incidentally. This time the gambling is taking a more productive form. Instead of betting on market fluctuations, men are putting ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... elegant supper was served free at midnight. The proprietor was always rather attentive to me, and, to give him the credit due, seemed anxious that I should not play. At supper he always reserved the chair next to himself for me. One night while standing beside the roulette wheel, no one was playing, and the dealer was idly whirling the ball, a sudden impulse seized me, and the ball then rolling, I pulled a $20 bill from my pocket and threw it down on the red remarking, "I'll lose that to pay for my suppers." Unhappily I won, and, laughing, turned to the dealer ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... as he wiped his ear. The fire that burned in his stomach demanded whiskey, and he would brook any insult to get it. He had reached the level of the sodden, and others passed him by. It was yet early in the night, and crowds were gathering in the rear of the large room, about the roulette wheel, the crap tables and faro layout, back of which the lookout was seated on a raised platform. Stacks of coin in gold and silver were on the tables to tempt the players. At other tables men were seated playing cards and smoking. In an adjoining room, cut with ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... lighted anteroom and this, in turn, through a large arch, opened on a large room brilliantly lighted by chandeliers—one in the centre and one near each corner. Around three sides of this room were placed the keno layouts, roulette-wheels, faro-tables, and minor gambling devices. Off the casino itself ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... trees,[A] but before actually coming under musketry fire of the enemy we were moved back again, and swung around nearly a mile to the left to the base of a circular knoll to the left of the Roulette farm-house and the road which leads up to the Sharpsburg pike, near the Dunkard church. The famous "sunken road"—a road which had been cut through the other side of this knoll—extended from the Roulette Lane directly ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... Always movin' me on. Moved me out of India, then Cairo, then they closed Paris, and now they've shut me out of London. I opened a club there, very quiet, very exclusive, smart neighborhood, too—a flat in Berkeley Street—roulette and chemin de fer. I think it was my valet sold me out; anyway, they came in and took us all to Bow Street. So I've plunged on this. ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... gas-jets. In the centre of this apartment was a long table covered with green cloth. The room was crowded with persons busily engaged in gambling. Different games of chance are in vogue in the United States; but the favorite game of European gamblers, roulette, was not tolerated in the establishment we were then visiting. In almost all the States, games of chance, for money, no matter what its amount, are prohibited, and gambling houses, being considered as contrary to good morals, are forbidden. Gambling ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... of revolver shots, of battles fought close and quick and to a finish—wheezy music, click of ivory chips, the clink of glasses, from old Bonanza's and similar rendezvous of hilarity lured to the dance, faro, roulette, the poker table or ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... yet he was not painstakingly thoughtful in the small matters which are supposed to advance the cause of love at a high pace. Nor was he guided by a set of fixed rules such as men are wont to employ at roulette and upon women. ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... many recesses and deep windows, an apartment which took up the whole of one side of the large house, had all the dignity and even splendour of a drawing-room, and yet, with its little palm court, its cosy divans, its bridge tables and roulette board, encouraged an air of freedom which made ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... after he had found No. 192 Layte Street to be a never-failing mint, when Braun became fascinated with the whirr of the roulette ball, the varying chances of the faro box, and, at last, the fine peculiarities of "unlimited poker" swept away his once ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... descended, he never spent more than he had to spend. Perhaps there was but little praise in this, as he could hardly have got beyond his enormous income unless he had thrown it away on race-courses and roulette tables. But it had long been remarked of the Mount Fidgett marquises that they were too wise to gamble. The family had not been an honour to the country, but had nevertheless been honoured by the country. The man who had just died had perhaps been ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... time, shooed them into the plush and crayon-enlargement parlor behind the barroom. His great voice overawed them—and they were cold. Mother secretively looked for evidences of vice, for a roulette-table or a blackjack, but found nothing more sinful than a box of dominoes, so she perched on a cane chair and folded ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... lying in the streets, and certainly there are no weeds in the gardens. The profits of the gambling-tables provide the most efficient municipality in the world, and no one who lives in Monaco is charged any taxes; the revenue derived from roulette covers all that and more besides. At the same time, no actual resident is allowed to stake ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... she exclaimed wearily. "I haven't seen him since morning, and don't expect to see him before breakfast to-morrow. He's at his club or drinking and carousing, or in some gambling house playing roulette. How do I know?" ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... there were charming people, more charming than our friend could recall from any other scene, as the natural train or circle, as he might say, of such a presence. For an instant he thought he had got the face as a specimen of imperturbability watched, with wonder, across the hushed rattle of roulette at Monte-Carlo; but this quickly became as improbable as any question of a vulgar table d'hote, or a steam-boat deck, or a herd of fellow-pilgrims cicerone-led, or even an opera-box serving, during a performance, for frame of a type observed from the stalls. One placed young gods ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... walking slowly, passing about the first poker table, then by the faro table, the roulette wheel, and finally to the table where the Kid sat. Bedloe had not moved again: he had not turned, his cards lay unheeded before him. The other men were silent with a jack pot ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... dangerous moment the man's brow lowered and his heavy face grew blackly menacing. He exchanged a swift look with his friends seated at the disguised roulette table. Kerry's ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... Flemming of the Indians in the frontier villages of America. Near the churchyard-gate was a booth, filled with flaunting calicos; and opposite sat an old woman behind a table, which was loaded with ginger-bread. She had a roulette at her elbow, where the peasants risked a kreutzer for a cake. On other tables, cases of knives, scythes, reaping-hooks, and other implements of ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... sauntered over to the roulette table. A fat man in duck trousers—he was the agent for a firm of rifle manufacturers, Steve learned later—was bucking the wheel hard. In front of him lay a pile of gold-pieces and several stacks of chips. He was very red in the face from excitement and ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... eager to distinguish themselves; as were the multitude of other archers assembled. They were from all neighboring countries—crowds of English, as you may fancy, armed with Murray's guide-books, troops of chattering Frenchmen, Frankfort Jews with roulette-tables, and Tyrolese, with gloves and trinkets—all hied towards the field where the butts were set up, and the archery practice was to be held. The Childe and his brother archers were, it need not be ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... birthright for a mess of pottage. They had conceded the right of gambling to the Casino, the proprietors purchasing the right by certain outlays in the way of improvements, a new public garden, and so on. As yet roulette and rouge-et-noir are not permitted at Nice, the gambling at present carried on being apparently harmless. It is in reality even more insidious, being a stepping-stone to vice, a gradual initiation into desperate play. Just as addiction ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... off on the forlorn hope, and is now, you may perceive, concerting some new scheme with a worthy brother touter,{6} who is on the half pay of the British army, and receives full pay in the service of the Greeks. We must make a descent into hell some night," said Transit, "and sport a few crowns at roulette or rouge et noir, to give Heartly his degree. We shall proceed regularly upon college principles, old fellow: first, we will visit the Little Go in King-street, and then drop into the Great Go, alias Watiers, in Piccadilly; after which we can ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... matter about blood and speed we won't discuss; we understand all that; useful, very,—OF course,—great obligations to the Godolphin "Arabian," and the rest. I say racing horses are essentially gambling implements, as much as roulette tables. Now I am not preaching at this moment; I may read you one of my sermons some other morning; but I maintain that gambling, on the great scale, is not republican. It belongs to two phases of society,—a ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... explosion might leave the ship so weakened that it could not stand the stresses of return through the atmosphere. Firing on the enemy warhead at this range was not much different from playing Russian Roulette ...
— Pushbutton War • Joseph P. Martino
... as the Rue de Quincampoix : from morning to night it presented the appearance of a fair. Booths and tents were erected for the transaction of business and the sale of refreshments, and gamblers with their roulette tables stationed themselves in the very middle of the place, and reaped a golden, or rather a paper, harvest from the throng. The Boulevards and public gardens were forsaken; parties of pleasure took their walks in preference in the Place Vendome, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... run down pretty low," he replied. "The truth is, Mr. Ranger, I blew in all my wages at roulette last week." ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... dressed out the remainder of the steer, and a couple of others that had been killed, and then knocked off for the day. Jurgis went downtown to supper, with three friends who had been on the other trucks, and they exchanged reminiscences on the way. Afterward they drifted into a roulette parlor, and Jurgis, who was never lucky at gambling, dropped about fifteen dollars. To console himself he had to drink a good deal, and he went back to Packingtown about two o'clock in the morning, very much the worse for his excursion, and, it must be confessed, ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... cared for domestic things. I'd rather wear a dinner-gown than an apron; I'd a damn sight rather spin a roulette wheel than rock a cradle. And, perhaps, Peyton wanted a housewife; though heaven knows he hasn't turned to one. It's her blonde, no bland, charm and destructive air of innocence. I've admitted and understood too much; but I couldn't help it—my mother and grandmother, ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... universally played are "rouge et noir" and "roulette," the former also denominated "trente et quarante," though both titles insufficiently explain the tendency of the game, especially as "noir" never has any part or parcel in the affair, all being regulated by "rouge" winning or losing. The appointments are ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... officers, also witnesses at the court-martial, and put in most of my time with them. A postponement of a week gave us an opportunity to "do" Cheyenne. That town furnished abundant opportunities for entertainment, as there was every kind of game in operation, from roulette to horse-racing. I sent for my horse, Tall Bull, and a big race was arranged between him and a Cheyenne favorite called Green's Colt. But before Tall Bull could arrive the court-martial was over ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... their poets, "o chaque feuille qui tombe est une lgie toute faite." Through an avenue of scraggy poplars we approach a dilapidated chteau, whose owner is playing dominoes at the caf of the nearest provincial town, or exhausting the sparse revenues of the estate at the theatres, roulette-tables, or balls of Paris. People leave these for a rural vicinage only to economize, to hide chagrin, or to die. So recognized is this indifference to Nature and inaptitude for rural life in France, that, when we desire to express the opposite of natural tastes, we habitually ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... deuce do I care, sir, how a man like you loses his money, and whether it is at hazard or roulette?" screamed the Baronet, with a multiplicity of oaths, and at the top of his voice. "What I will not have, sir, is that you should use my name, or couple it with yours.—Damn him, Strong, why don't you keep him in better order? I tell you he has gone and used my name again, sir,—drawn a bill ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... down as no good. The man who is habitually broke on the road is generally the man who thinks he has the "gentle finger," and that he can play in better luck than the fellow who rolls the little ivory ball around a roulette wheel. There are not many of this kind, though; they don't last long. It's mostly the new man or the son of the boss who thinks he can pay ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... smarty with the private code to transmit all sorts of dope to the folks, have a care! No matter how the letters pile up, old Base Censor, Inc., is always on the job! Like the roulette wheel at Monte Carlo, he'll get you in the end, no matter how lucky and clever you think yourself. Or, as Indiana's ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... them. For the few persons, at any rate, abnormal or not, with whom my anecdote is concerned, literature was a game of skill, and skill meant courage, and courage meant honour, and honour meant passion, meant life. The stake on the table was of a special substance and our roulette the revolving mind, but we sat round the green board as intently as the grim gamblers at Monte Carlo. Gwendolen Erme, for that matter, with her white face and her fixed eyes, was of the very type of the lean ladies one had met in the temples of chance. I recognised in Corvick's absence ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... considers—and justly I think—that he is a far more important personage than the Plenipotentiary of his Highness of Monaco; a despot who exercises sway over about 20 acres of orange trees, 60 houses, and two roulette tables. The diplomatists are not, however, alone in their protest. Everybody has protested, and is still protesting. If it is a necessity of war to throw shells into a densely populated town like this; it is—to say the least—a barbarous necessity; but it seems to me that it is but waste of ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... matches. He had purchased them for the purpose, from the frugal old woman who month by month and season by season carried on her quiet trade at the foot of the Casino steps, catching, as it were, the tiny drippings from the flaring tapers in that Temple of Gold. And day after day, one turn of the roulette wheel took and gave more money than all her years of frugal ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... look spacious-lookin' suites o' rooms such as were befittin' to senors of wealth and leisure on the floor above. And over these premises I cast one sailor-like view, and through the for'ard gangway of that glass-mounted cantina I hove my clothes-bag and myself followed after. There was also a roulette wheel, which didn't hurt the looks of the ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... of the house, closed now, of course, as the races for the day were run. But I could imagine it doing a fine business in the afternoon. There were many other games now in progress, games of every description, from poker to faro, keno, klondike, and roulette. There was nothing of either high or low degree with which the venturesome might not ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... roulette, and judging by the satisfied expression of his face which the Captain noted in passing, he rightly conjectured that luck ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... failed to attract the slightest attention. Through an opening on the right-hand side of the room, near the top, I looked into a smaller apartment, occupied exclusively by Chinese. They were playing some kind of roulette and another game which seemed wholly to absorb their interest. I ventured no more than a glance, then passed on with ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... not stint himself, drew him into spending more than he intended, and he owed Suvorin a sum which was further increased at Monte Carlo by Chekhov's losing nine hundred roubles at roulette. But this loss was a blessing to him in so far as, for some reason, it made him feel satisfied with himself. At the end of April, 1891, after a stay in Paris, Chekhov returned to Moscow. Except at Vienna and for the first days in Venice and ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... of the Champs-Elysees sellers, who showed me as hunters a fine collection of broken—down skeletons. Average price, three thousand francs. Roulette had treated me badly of late, and I was neither in the humor, nor had I the funds, to spend in that way seven or eight ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy
... my barrack received a miniature billiard-table, which became immensely popular. Cards, roulette, ping-pong and chess greatly assisted in passing the time. We also had quite a good camp library, the books mostly having been received from home. I often heard it remarked that life there was one long queue, and it was not far wrong. Often one passed the morning waiting one's turn for the ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... discourteous remembrance of things pass'd away. 'Twas a sight that was pleasant, indeed, to be seen, These friends exchange greetings;—the men who had been Foes so nearly in days that were past. This, no doubt, Is why, on the night I am speaking about, My Lord Alfred sat down by himself at roulette, Without one suspicion his bosom to fret, Although he had left, with his pleasant French friend, Matilda, half vex'd, at the ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... Coast mining towns, Carson had an immense saloon, with all the sporting attachments, such as billiards, roulette, faro, poker, etc., and at all times of the day and night it was frequented by hundreds of men, who amused themselves talking, drinking, gambling and reading their letters, as most of them received their correspondence at these headquarters. It was called the "Magnolia," and was kept by Pete Hopkins, ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... elderly woman? And it was only putting off discovery anyhow. Sooner or later, she would learn of the divorce, and—Just at that instant my eyes fell on Mr. Harbison—Tom Harbison, as Anne called him. He was looking on with an amused, half-puzzled smile, while people were rushing around hiding the roulette wheel and things of which Miss Caruthers might disapprove, and Betty Mercer was on her knees winding up a toy bear that Max had brought her. What would he think? It was evident that he thought badly of us already—that he was contemptuously ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... strolled through the lane which composes the town, and is occupied by a succession of bar-rooms, dancing-shops, and faro-banks or roulette-tables: they were each in full operation, although it was not yet ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... Frontignac gets mixed up in some banking scandals,—he would, like a fool, play roulette—baccarat was always his strong game,—disappears from Vienna, is arrested at the frontier, escapes, and is found the next morning under a brush-heap with a bullet through his head. This ends the search. Two years later—this is now Act ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... O." was another name for roulette, and forms the subject of one of Rowlandson's early and ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... charms of chocolate, established a corner or "Bank" in the commodity. "The Bank," by barter and usurious methods, amassed a great heap of well-thumbed squares, and, when accused of rapacity, invented a scheme for the common good known as "Huntoylette." This was a game of chance similar to roulette, and for a while it completely gulfed the trusting public. In the reaction which followed, there was a rush on "The Bank," and the concern was wound up, but the promoters escaped with a large profit in candles ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... on the following day, and then I went to see Jack Ward. My opinion of him had been changing all day, and as I went to his room I felt that whatever Foster and Murray said about him, he was at bottom a splendid sort. Roulette was going on in his rooms, and the usual crowd were playing. Ward was banker, and he did not even ask me to play, but roulette is a very difficult game to watch without playing, and after black had come up six times consecutively, I thought ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... violet eyes as she smiled and said more quietly, "Then you are in even worse trouble than I thought. I hear a lot about what happens to these strange people who never lose at cards or at dice or at roulette. Aren't you afraid of winding up in the gutter with your throat slit? Isn't that what happens to people with psi powers who gamble?" she insisted. "What's your trick, Tex? Do you stack the deck with telekinesis, or does precognition tell you ...
— Card Trick • Walter Bupp AKA Randall Garrett
... was good enough to consider me eminently respectable, while the signorina was graciousness itself. I was even admitted to the select circle at the dinner party which, as a rule, preceded her Wednesday evening reception, and I was a constant figure round the little roulette board, which, of all forms of gaming, was our hostess' favorite delectation. The colonel was, not to my pleasure, an equally invariable guest, and the President himself would often honor the party with his presence, an honor we found rather expensive, for ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope
... varied and turbulent life of the border country. Dark-skinned Mexicans rubbed shoulders with range riders baked almost as brown by the relentless sun. Pima Indians and Chinamen and negroes crowded round the faro and dice tables. Games of monte and chuckaluck had their devotees, as had also roulette ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... "that gambling is one of the wants of civilized men. The 'rouge-et-noir' and 'roulette' tables are forbidden; the hells closed: but the passion for making money without working for it must have its vent, and that vent is the Bourse. As instead of a hundred wax-lights you now have one jet of gas, so instead of a hundred hells you have now one Bourse, and—it is exceedingly convenient; ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... room from the bar, roulette and faro tables, bright with varnish and gaudy with nickel trimmings, were waiting with invitations to feverish excitement. The room was a modern presentation of Scylla and Charybdis. Scylla, the bar, stimulated to the ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... heard of any suicide on account of them. Neither can I recall any quarrel or murder directly attributable to this kind of gambling. It must be remembered that these public games were chiefly rouge et noir, monte, faro, or roulette, in which the antagonist was Fate, Chance, Method, or the impersonal "bank," which was supposed to represent them all; there was no individual opposition or rivalry; nobody challenged the decision ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... to stay; hasn't he, Dolly?—Oh, I forgot—Miss Wilming, Mr. Hamil, who's doing the new park, you know. All kinds of genius buzzes in his head—roulette wheels buzz in mine. Hamil, you remember Miss Wilming in the 'Motor Girl.' She was one of the acetylenes. Come on; we'll all light up later. Make him ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... good-looking she's sure to succeed. I expect to know everybody smart at Monte. That's what I've been promised, and Lady Dauntrey'll entertain a good deal. If that doesn't amuse her husband he can shoot pigeons, and gamble at the Casino. He's got a system at roulette that works splendidly on his little wheel. We were playing it this evening. But I expect I'm boring you. You look sleepy. I'll turn in, ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... killed thirteen million people by accident or by an extraordinary succession of chances. Admit there is such an element as chance, and between it and Fate is room for a thousand doubts. It is natural enough for men who deal with the tiny, circling ball of a roulette wheel or with the turn of playing cards to deny any power higher than chance; but how of Napoleon, dicing for empires without end?—and how of Columbus, sailing indomitably westward into the wheel of the sun?—how of Shan Tung, surveying the rotting corpses of seven times seven cities of Chinamen ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... men—to their insensate fervor over a childish game under the stimulation of the raucous, sweating barker. Of gambling devices, in the open of the street, there was no end. My conductors appeared to have the passion, for our course led from one method of hazard to another—roulette, chuck-a-luck where the patrons cast dice for prizes of money and valuables arrayed upon numbered squares of an oilcloth covered board, keno where numbered balls were decanted one at a time from a bottle-shaped ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... venerable Graustarkian's heroic face was a study. He had just concluded a confidential hour in a remote corner of the library with the millionaire while the younger people were engaged in a noisy though temperate encounter with the roulette wheel at the opposite end of the room. "I've never met any one like him, Mr. King." He mopped his brow, and still looked a ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... gamblers, who told me that this game was particularly pleasing because you did not see from whom you were winning, as is the case in other games; a lackey brought, not money, but chips; each man lost a little stake, and his disappointment was not visible . . . It is the same with roulette, which is everywhere ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... beautiful when there is water!" They breakfasted at the Tete-Noir, where Castaing had not yet been; they treated themselves to a game of ring-throwing under the quincunx of trees of the grand fountain; they ascended Diogenes' lantern, they gambled for macaroons at the roulette establishment of the Pont de Sevres, picked bouquets at Pateaux, bought reed-pipes at Neuilly, ate apple tarts ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... intoxication as an excuse for his riding down a child on his way to the hunt. Later, during the winter just past, we had been hearing from Monte Carlo of his disastrous plunges at that most imbecile of all games, roulette. ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... Genoese, the gambling instinct? For he is an authority on stocks and shares, and a passionate card-player into the bargain. Gambling and religion go hand-in-hand —they are but two forms of the same speculative spirit. Think of the Poles, an entire nation of pious roulette-lovers! I have yet to meet a full-blown agnostic who relished these hazards. The unbeliever is not adventurous on such lines; he knows the odds against backing a winner in ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... only strikingly resembled some one I knew. But who in the world was it he resembled? The ladies went off to their lodgings, which were near by, and I turned into the gaming-rooms and hovered about the circle at roulette. Gradually I filtered through to the inner edge, near the table, and, looking round, saw my puzzling friend stationed opposite to me. He was watching the game, with his hands in his pockets; but singularly enough, now that I observed him at my leisure, ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James
... later, and there sat, side by side, at the roulette table, two fair-haired English girls, as they seemed to be, and nobody suspected the truth, or dreamed of the ruse which had succeeded admirably and admitted to forbidden ground young Lord Hardy, who, in the new dress which fitted him perfectly, and with Daisy's ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... spectator there is a certain mystification about this drawing of the jury from the wooden drum with the handle for turning. To the initiated it may seem rather humorous, like the shuffling of the cards of justice, the drawing from a hat, or the turning of a roulette wheel. It is, however, significant of one of the great principles of Anglo-Saxon law, and that is a trial by a court of average men selected from among the ordinary citizens and drawn on ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... try to describe one of these gambling resorts. A long, low room, probably a saloon, with the pretentious bar in front; tables on either side of the room, and an eager group round each one, the game being roulette, faro, highball, poker, crapps or monte. The dealers, or professional gamblers, are easily distinguished. Their dress consists invariably of a well-laundered "biled" (white) shirt, huge diamond stud in front, no collar or tie, perhaps a silk handkerchief tied loosely round the neck, and an ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... lofty and beautiful hallway of the Empire Building, those stupendous heights of stone and glass which confront him in solid squares are evidently not the creations of the baccarat table and the roulette wheel. The most dignified temples of chance are designed to shelter pleasure and frivolity. These huge homes of the corporation and the bank, with entrances as sternly embellished as palaces of justice, ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... That the roulette wheel at Monte Carlo is controlled by a wire as thin as a hair which is controlled in turn by a button hidden beneath the rug near the operator's ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... of wood with false fronts. The sidewalks were cement instead of boards. The main street was even paved. A sort of New England respectability and quietness hung over it. There was not a single saloon, and the drone of the little marble in the roulette wheel was gone from the land. Even the horses, hitched by drooping heads to racks, were scarce, and their place was taken by numerous tin automobiles of popular make and ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... here when they play; it is not at all a joke as the roulette used to be at Nazeby; and they do put a lot on, although counters don't seem to be much to look at. It is not at all a difficult game, Mamma, and some of the people were so lucky turning up "naturels," but we lost in spite of them at our side of the table, and Lord Doraine said at last, that it ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... and on the shelf in front of them glittered crystal glasses of all shapes and sizes, arranged in pyramids and cubes. The whole of the main floor was carpeted heavily. Down the centre were stationed two rows of gambling tables, where various games could be played—faro, keeno, roulette, stud poker, dice. Beyond these gambling tables, on the other side of the room from the bar, were small tables, easy chairs of ample proportions, lounges, and a fireplace. Everything was most ornate. The ceilings and walls were ivory white and much gilt. Heavy chandeliers, ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... was engaged in watching had been playing at roulette with five-franc pieces, and the woman was now counting her gains and laughing gaily with her husband as she slowly sipped her tea flavoured with orange-flower water. They were in ignorance of the presence of that lynx-eyed man ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... and in goat skin bottles. I hung about the market place and watched the opening of jars full of stewed pears, the setting out of baskets of grapes, an almost unknown fruit, the object of eager covetousness. I stood and gazed in admiration at the roulette board on which, for a sou, according to the spot at which its needle stopped on a circular row of nails, you won a pink poodle made of barley sugar, or a round jar of aniseed sweets, or, much oftener, nothing ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... his cigar, which had gone out during Herzog's explanation—for "Tiger" Waldron, though he could drop thousands at roulette without turning a hair, never yet had been known to throw away a cigar less than half smoked. Flint, meanwhile, took out a little morocco-covered note book and made a few notes. In this book he had kept an outline of his ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... the tale's a myth, Chloe danced mid rustic song Indefatigably with Amorous Damon all day long. This was all the joy she knew (Quite enough, no doubt), and yet, Phyllis, when you gambol, you Rather gamble at roulette. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various
... twenty-four hours in making all arrangements for their flight together. He raised as much money as he could, even stooping to try his luck at roulette to increase his hoard. The appointed moment of their departure approached. As he waited impatiently in the hotel hall, a letter was brought him. It was a ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... Yorkshire, our proceedings being shrouded in serio-comic secrecy. In order that we might perfect ourselves in the use of our mathematical weapons, each day after breakfast the dining-room table was cleared and covered with a large green cloth divided into numbered spaces, like the green roulette board at Monte Carlo. In the middle of this was placed a large roulette. Rakes were provided of the true Monte Carlo pattern. One of us played the part of croupier, while to each of the others was allotted a certain number of counters indistinguishable in aspect from twenty-franc gold pieces. ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... "Not ponies, Henry dear, roulette," replied Jimmy, pleasantly. "Me and Mrs. Van are going to get spliced just as soon as the Ouija board ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... glanced toward Mose. The woman bowed and drove on, and Mose walked slowly up the street, lonely and irresolute. At the door of a gambling house he halted and looked in. A young lad and an old man were seated together at a roulette table, and around them a ring of excited and amused spectators stood. Mose entered and took a place in the circle. The boy wore a look of excitement quite painful to see, and he placed his red and white chips with nervous, blundering, and ineffectual ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... lyrical artist drummed with his fingers on the mahogany arm of the sofa. "My goodness, child—what a long column there was of words rhyming with 'ette.'" He laughed to himself as he mused: "You know, my dear, I had to let 'brevet' and 'fret' and 'roulette' go, because I couldn't think of anything to say about them. You don't know how that worries a poet." He looked at the verses in the book before him and then shook his head sadly: "I was young then—it seems strange to think I could write that. Youth, youth," he sighed ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... went stale and in the club tournament put up the worst game of his life. That evening, in disgust, he boarded the train for Monte Carlo, and before eleven o'clock had lost five thousand francs at roulette—which was more than even he could afford for an evening's entertainment that did not entertain. Without waiting for the croupier to rake in his last note, Monte hurried out and, to clear his head, walked all the way back to Nice along the Cornice Road. Above ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... wheel—an' say: I got a hunch! I played every number on that wheel except the thirteen—judgin' it to be onlucky." The forlorn one grinned his understanding, and clutching the piece of silver, elbowed into the group that crowded the roulette wheel. The cowpuncher turned once ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... a cleared space in the corner by the roulette table, and here, his chair tipped back against the wall and a glass of whisky in front of him, sat a sufficiently strange specimen of humanity. He was a man of about fifty years, large boned and gaunt. Dressed in fringed buckskin trousers and a silver-laced Mexican sombrero, he affected ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... of the elite of Tucson in the dance-hall the evenin' I has in mind. The bar is busy; while up an' down each side sech refreshin' pastimes as farobank, monte an' roulette holds prosperous sway. Thar's no quadrille goin' at the moment, an' a lady to the r'ar is ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... a modest simper. He felt like a gambler who has placed his all on a number at roulette and sees the white ball tumble into the ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... anyone else. As they say of marriage, it's a lottery. They might have roulette, or a spiritual seance, or Kubelik, or fancy ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... conclusion that an experienced gambler was in their midst—one who had spared the soldier and his scanty pay that he might feed fat, eventually, on the officer. Rumor had it that Case's trunk contained a roulette wheel and faro "layout." In fine, long before orderly call at noon, in the whimsical humor of the garrison, he was no longer Case, the bookkeeper, but "Book, the Case Keeper," and every frontiersman, civil or military, in those days knew ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... just finished a nocturnal tour of Santa Fe and felt somewhat peevish and dull in consequence, not to mention the sadness occasioned by the expenditure of the greater part of their combined capital on such foolishness as faro, roulette and wet-goods. ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... where a devotion to hazard fully as meek as theirs. In England there has been a wonderful revival of cards. Baccarat may rival dead faro in the tale of her devotees. We have all seen the sweet English chatelaine at her roulette wheel, and ere long it may be that tender parents will be writing to complain of the compulsory baccarat in our ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... apparent that he played too well at these amusements also, so then he showed them a game at which everybody might win, except himself. Where it was all chance, and skill could not interfere. Roulette, in short. The room in which Professor Wobbler had given his boxing lessons had a table fitted up in it, and on this table the wheel-of-fortune, with its black and red compartments, and its little ivory ball ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... one of them. The biggest boy holds the blades between the fingers and thumb of his closed hand, and whoever draws the blade with the knot has to act as herdsman" (543. 221). Nowadays, children are employed to turn roulette-wheels, sort cards, pick out lottery-tickets, select lucky numbers, set machinery going for the first time, and perform other like actions; for, though men are all "children of fortune," there is something about ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... Municipal Ownership of Petty and Grand Larceny. The only gambling houses left were under the direct supervision of the Mayor acting ex-officio and the Chairman of the Aldermanic Committee on Faro and Roulette. The Game of Bunco became a duly authorised official diversion under control of the Tax Assessors, and the Town Toper, being elected by popular vote, could get as leery as he pleased by public consent. Life Insurance Agents became likewise Public Servants under the General Ordinance ...
— Alice in Blunderland - An Iridescent Dream • John Kendrick Bangs
... said, "never. Too much fag. I played squash and roulette. You look like a newly risen moon in her first quarter. Where would you ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... see the town. I didn't know much about a city then; I had grown up over in the sage-brush country, and I never had heard of a highball. To start with I had two, then I got interested in a game of roulette, and the last I remember I was learning to play poker. But I must have had more high-balls; the boys said afterwards they left me early in the evening with a new acquaintance; they couldn't get me to go home. I never knew how I got back to the dorm, ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... darkness. He took off his shoes and went into a room on the first floor. Striking a match, he saw only ordinary furniture. The room back of it revealed to his failing match a roulette table. He went out into the hall and up the stairs with the utmost caution to avoid noise. On the second floor the door of the front room was ajar. They must be careless and confident, he reflected as he entered. ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... wath a fool. Got himself mixthed up with the crookth. Thet up a roulette table in the thellar and let 'em come and gamble away their thwag. Thtoopid thing to do, though, mind you, he did a rare good line while it lathted. Got the sthuff for nothing, you thee.' His tone at ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... from Coldriver for the event, opened Brill's roulette layout in one corner, a game he usually operated himself on the occasions when his patrons chose to try their fortune against the bank. The rattle of chips, the whir of the ivory ball and the professional chant of lookout and croupier ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... of every known vice. On the west, the "Adelphi" towers, with its grand gambling saloon, its splendid "salle a manger," and cosey nooks presided over by attractive Frenchwomen. Long tables, under crystal chandeliers, offer a choice of roads to ruin. Monte, faro, rouge et noir, roulette, rondo and every gambling device are here, to lure the unwary. Dark-eyed subtle attendants lurk, ready to "preserve order," in gambling parlance. At night, blazing with lights, the superb erotic ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... has come prepared to witness, there is not a sign. The games strike the bystander as singularly dull and uninteresting; one wearies of the perpetual deal and turn-up of the cards at rouge-et-noir, of the rattle of the ball as it dances into its pigeonhole at roulette, of the monotonous chant of "Make your game, gentlemen," or "The game is made." The croupiers rake in their gains or poke out the winnings with the passive regularity of machines; the gamblers sit round the table with the vacant solemnity of undertakers. The general air of the ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... outstretched clutching arms, then all at once thrusts his lipless face through the fork of his thighs) Il vient! C'est moi! L'homme qui rit! L'homme primigene! (He whirls round and round with dervish howls) Sieurs et dames, faites vos jeux! (He crouches juggling. Tiny roulette planets fly from his hands.) Les jeux sont faits! (The planets rush together, uttering crepitant cracks) Rien va plus! (The planets, buoyant balloons, sail swollen up and away. He springs off ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Virginia in his veins, and just so much of the gambler's spirit as cannot be divided from a certain recklessness in a man with a temperament. He had seen plenty of life in his own country, in the nine years since he was twenty, and he knew all about roulette and trente et quarante, among other things ...
— Rosemary - A Christmas story • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... "deal" according to the whim or superstition of the players, who may add to or take from the pile prior to the beginning of the count. It is fortunate for the millions of the conservative Far East that their principal gambling game is not a quick one, like roulette, for the player of fan-tan gets "action" only about once in every ten minutes. At roulette and most other games favored by white men a gambler knows ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... going to have a little roulette in my rooms to-night," he said, as we walked across the quad. "Will ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... and who will have died? Millions of mothers so anxious at home, Who will wear crepe for loved ones, alone? Millions of sweethearts who'll weep o'er the "lists," Which lovers the lips ne'er more to be kissed? All is a Gamble—this War-Game of Chance— The life of a Conscript over in France. The "Roulette of Life" is spinning so fast, The "red ball of Death" must drop in at last; Which numbers will win, which numbers will lose, The "odds" or the "evens," the "reds" or the "blues"? Yet Hope is the "Banker" and He will repay The chances ...
— Rhymes of the Rookies • W. E. Christian
... of the front was open to enfilade. Stuart and his artillery, withdrawn to a more favourable position, secured the left. D.H. Hill on the right, though part of his force had given way, still held the Roulette House and the sunken road, and the troops in the West Wood were well protected from the Northern batteries. The one weak point was the gap occupied by Greene's Federals, which lay between Grigsby's regiments in the ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... enter, willy-nilly. But the words rolled no farther than the tongue's edge. She turned obediently back, re-entering the car and taking the first seat by the door. For this her memory was responsible. It had spun the day's events before her like a roulette wheel, stopping precisely at the remark of Marjorie Schuyler's concerning William Burgeman: "He's the most conventional young gentleman I ever saw in my life. ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... the roulette tables," corrected Meakim. "Of course," he continued, grinning, "if you're fond of the game, Mr. Holcombe, it's handy having them in the same house, but I can steer you against a better one back of the French Consulate. Those ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... theater and supper party. The programme was to hear a reigning farce at Hooley's, then to sup at the Richelieu, and finally to visit a certain exclusive gambling-parlor which then flourished on the South Side—the resort of actors, society gamblers, and the like—where roulette, trente-et-quarante, baccarat, and the honest game of poker, to say nothing of various other games of chance, could be played amid exceedingly ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... Luke Ravel. Both men were as nervy as they make 'em and several nicks in the butts of their revolvers testified mutely as to their prowess. Their place was like all other dens, and consisted of the usual bar and lunch counter in one room, while in the adjoining one was the hall of gaming. Faro, roulette, hazard, monte, and the great national game, poker, held high carnival there nightly. Next to the "Goose" was a long narrow room used as a shooting gallery. The place was only a few doors around the corner from my office, and many a night on my way home I would stop at the lunch ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... bright, the music cheery, the landscape fresh and pleasant, and it was always amusing to see the vast varieties of our human species that congregated at the Springs, and trudged up and down the green allees. One of the gambling conspirators of the roulette-table it was good to see here, in his private character, drinking down pints of salts like any other sinner, having a homely wife on his arm, and between them a poodle on which they lavished their tenderest affection. You see these people care for other things besides trumps; ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... cigarettes in their mouths. Keeping my eyes and ears on the alert, I saw an innocent-looking table, with a surface of rosewood, suddenly develop a substance of green cloth. At the same time, a neat little roulette-table made its appearance from a hiding-place in a sofa. Passing near the venerable landlady, I heard her ask the servant, in a whisper, "if the dogs were loose?" After what I had observed, I could only conclude that the dogs were used as a patrol, to give the alarm in case of a descent of the police. ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... seductive spot; but, as a point of fact, the operators on that night were almost exclusively Italians. The sailor, take him in the bulk, is a tolerable fool all the world over; but the northerner has some grains of sense though he is a sportsman, and roulette with twenty-six numbers and a zero is a trifle too strong an order even ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... Paris Qui fait tout les mouls et les vauls. Il va a cheval sans chevauls. Il fait et defait tout ensemble. Il vit, il meurt, il sue, il tremble. Il pleure, il rit, il veille, et dort. Il est jeune et vieux, foible et fort. Il fait d'un coq une poulette. Il joue des arts de roulette, Ou je ne ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Teutonic race to whom sea-bathing once a year happens to be indispensable. However, if dull, it must at least be economical, I thought; but this illusion was dispelled when I found that there was a roulette-table in the dingy little Conversations-Haus, and when my landlord handed me in a bill which would not have disgraced any hotel in Bond Street or ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... glimpse of another large room where the crowd was even denser. From this room, in the lulls in the music, came the pop of corks and the clink of glasses, and as an undertone the steady click and clatter of chips and roulette balls. ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... then became the Saint Vincent de Paul of these grown-up children, these suffering toilers. The transformation was not immediately complete. Beneficence has its temptations as vice has. Charity consumes a saint's purse, as roulette consumes the possessions of a gambler, quite gradually. Popinot went from misery to misery, from charity to charity; then, by the time he had lifted all the rags which cover public pauperism, like ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... proceeded. The roulette board was set going again in one corner of the hut and a crowd hung about it, while the two operators of it, "Diamond" Jack and his partner, strangers to the place, raked in their harvest. The air was thick with ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... send a troop of cavalry to clear the street at night. Gamblers posted themselves with their implements among the speculators, who gambled harder than the gamblers, and took an occasional turn at roulette by way of slackening the excitement; as people go to sleep, or go into the country. A hunchback fellow made a good deal of money by letting people write on his back. When Law had moved into the Hotel de Soissons, ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... several following weeks, the two partners played at cross purposes. Smoke was bent on spending his time watching the roulette game in the Elkhorn, while Shorty was equally bent on travelling trail. At last Smoke put his foot down when a stampede was proposed for two ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... but deeper in the town there was light and life and merry, evil industry,—screened, but strong to last until morning; there were haunts of haggard merriment in plenty: surreptitious chambers where roulette-wheels swam beneath dizzied eyes; ill-favored bars, reached by devious ways, where quavering voices offered song and were harshly checked; and through the burdened air of this Canaan wandered heavy smells of musk like that upon Happy Fear's wife, who must now be so pale beneath ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... very keen interest in your career, you decided that you couldn't afford to stop in the Guards, so you cut the Army. This year I advised you not to play that system of yours and Raleigh's at Monte Carlo, or if you must have a go at it, to stick to roulette and five franc stakes. Instead of listening to me, you listened to ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... magnificent gilt roulette tables and sedan-chairs of the very best make. There were elegant stalls at which trinkets were distributed to the guests,—note-books, pocket-mirrors, gloves, knives, scissors, purses, fans, sweetmeats, scents, pastilles, ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... it all back,' she said optimistically; 'but not here. These silly little horses are no good. I shall go somewhere where one can play comfortably at roulette. You needn't look so shocked. I've always felt that, given the opportunity, I should be an inveterate gambler, and now you darlings have put the opportunity in my way. I must drink your very good healths. Waiter, ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... averted. The polished manner of the salon was dropped. A wife spoke, a woman listened. The visit was already a long one when Jean Palliot took charge of the equipage, and, on leaving, it was into his hand the gentleman thrust a roulette of Napoleons. ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... of Donnegan tapped across the floor of Lebrun's. A murmur went before him whenever he appeared now, and a way opened for him. At the roulette wheel he stopped, placed fifty on red, and watched it double three times. George, at a signal from the master, raked in the winnings. And Donnegan sat at a faro table and won again, and again rose ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... the tiger," and soon lost nearly all of it. To see if his luck would not change, he gave up the game, and started at "roulette." Here he steadily won, and soon had over seven hundred dollars in his possession. He was now all excitement, and jumped with many a "whoop-la" around the table, to the great amusement of the spectators. He was about ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... soft invitations of some of the masks. Though he was so handsome as to rank among those exceptional persons who come to an opera ball in search of an adventure, and who expect it as confidently as men looked for a lucky coup at roulette in Frascati's day, he seemed quite philosophically sure of his evening; he must be the hero of one of those mysteries with three actors which constitute an opera ball, and are known only to those who play a part in them; for, to young ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... Pharo-banks, roulette-tables, and gambling of all kinds, are publicly permitted; but the proprietor of each establishment pays a tax of 5000 dollars per annum. The theatre d'Orleans on Sunday evenings, is generally crowded with beautiful French women. Every night during the winter season there is a bal ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... of him. "Haney's" was both saloon and gambling hall. In the front, on the right, ran the long bar with its shining brass and polished mahogany (he prided himself on having the best bar west of Denver), and in the rear, occupying both sides of the room, stood two long rows of faro and roulette outfits, together with card-tables and dice-boards. It was the largest and most prosperous gambling hall in the camps, and always of an evening was crowded with gamesters and those ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... of pleasure, as he called it. With small success. Gaming soon ceased to attract him, for at the roulette table in Monaco he loathed the companionship of old professional gamblers with their gallows-bird faces, and of bedizened Paris courtesans, and at his club in Berlin or Baden, where he played only with respectable people, the stakes were never high ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... the people were looking at the beautiful scene outside. Instead, each group was intent on the table, and on the game being played thereon—a game, it may be mentioned, which has a certain affinity with Roulette and Petits Chevaux, though it is neither ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... quiet place and the festivities have made it like a child at a fiesta. One hears only 'Long live the King—the Queen!' There are to be illuminations to-night, and music, and the limit will be taken off the roulette wheels at the Strangers' Club. Bah! One could have read it in the papers without ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... energy of the globe, Jack never saw, nor, for that matter, did nine-tenths of the occupants of the chairs. To them its spoken word was the dictum of fate. Success meant debts paid, a balance in the bank, houses, horses, even yachts and estates—failure meant obscurity and suffering. The turn of the roulette wheel or the roll of a cube of ivory they well knew brought the same results, but these turnings they also knew were attended with a certain loss of prestige. Taking a flier in the Street was altogether different—great financiers were behind the fluctuations of values told by the tongue ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... when he lost as when he won Even the reserved proprietor, accustomed as he was to a wealthy and careless clientele, treated Percival with marked consideration after a night when the young man persuaded him to withdraw the limit at roulette, and spent a large sum in testing a system for breaking the wheel, given to him by a friend ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... thereto, it does not explain the vital problem, the source of capitalist income. The chances of gain, as a premium for the risks involved, explain satisfactorily enough the action of the gambler when he enters into a game of roulette or faro. It cannot be said, however, that the aggregate wealth of the gamblers is increased by playing roulette or faro. Then, too, the risks of the laborers are vastly more vital than those of the capitalist. Yet the premium for their risks of ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... up and down by grooms. Comes a broken-winded tootle on a coach-horn and the black-and- scarlet drag of the local garrison trundles into view. The unsophisticated gun-horses in the lead shy violently at the flapping canvas of an orange-stall and swerve to the left into a roulette-booth presided over by a vociferous ancient in a tattered overcoat and blue spectacles. The gamblers scatter like flushed partridges and the ancient bites the turf beneath his upturned board amid a shower ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 21, 1920 • Various
... Sister Anne, wasn't it, who anxiously mounted the tower to search for the first sign of deliverance? At any rate I felt like Luck—now before the Relief, or a prisoner waiting for the jury to file in, or a gambler standing over an invisible roulette-table and his last throw, wondering into what groove the little ivory ball was to run. And when Whinnie finally appeared his seamed old face wore such a look of dour satisfaction that for a weak flutter or two of the heart I thought he'd brought Dinky-Dunk ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer |
