"Roulette" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 to rattle round and finally fall ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... the table, and ears open for every remark, of the players and the croupier, he took his first lesson in roulette. He saw a mere youth win fifteen thousand francs, which were stolen in the most barefaced mariner by a rouged girl scarcely older than the youth; he saw two old gamesters stake their coins, and lose, and walk quietly out of the place; he saw the ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... anyone else. As they say of marriage, it's a lottery. They might have roulette, or a spiritual seance, or Kubelik, ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... 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 ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... first time I had a chance to use it." The 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 ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... "buck 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 to give up play, but they urged him on, saying he had a run of luck, ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... just like Quisante. Like that strange, intolerable, vulgar, attractive, intermittently inspired creature, who presented himself at life's roulette-table, not less various in his own person than were the varying turns he courted, unaccountable as chance, baffling as fate, changeable as luck. Indeed he was like life itself, a thing you loved and hated, grew weary of and embraced, shrank from ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... into a dimly 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 small ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... from this. He had the warm blood of 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 ...
— Rosemary - A Christmas story • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... to and fro with fruits and goblets of champagne. The company was perhaps sixteen in number, all men, few beyond the prime of life, and with hardly an exception, of a dashing and capable exterior. They were divided into two groups, one about a roulette board, and the other surrounding a table at which one of their number held a ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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
... estimated their long struggles, compassion filled his soul. The judge 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 a bandage under which an inflamed wound lies festering, at the end of a year he had become the ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... 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 ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... 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 Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... service, are unexceptionable; and there are always plenty of associates as idle and thoughtless, and as good-natured, as himself, to make a jest of domestic life and domestic virtues. And, by-and-by, there is a stronger stimulus wanted, and the jest becomes more wanton over the roulette table or the keenly contested rubber; and the wine circulates more freely as the fire of youth goes out and leaves the ashes of mental and moral desolation. Ah no! the club-house is no conservator of the purity of social ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... the men were playing faro, roulette or keno, and the others sat in softly upholstered chairs and talked. Liquors were served from a bar in the corner, where dozens of brightly polished glasses of all shapes and sizes glittered on marble and reflected the light of ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... down the steep track, half path, half stairway, by which I had ascended. It had been loosened by the foot of a descending wayfarer, in whom, as he picked his way slowly downward, I recognized a middle-aged German (that I supposed to be his nationality) who had been very assiduous at the roulette-tables of the Casino for some days past. There was nothing remarkable in his appearance, his spectacled eyes, squat nose, and square-cropped bristling beard being simply characteristic of his class and country. He did not notice me as he went by, being too intent on his footing to look ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... they are kept mainly as gambling implements. All that 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 cankered over- civilization, such as exists in rich aristocracies, and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... did 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 at Nice, it had rained ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... of the streets, the land baron turned into a well-lighted entrance, passing into a large, luxuriously furnished saloon, at one end of which stood a table somewhat resembling a roulette board. Seated on one side was the phlegmatic cashier, and, opposite him, the dealer, equally impassive. Unlike faro—the popular New Orleans game—no deal box was needed, the dealer holding the cards in his hand, while a cavity in the center of the table contained a basket, where the cards, once ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... 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 ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... 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 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 the lean ladies ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... were playing roulette. I looked in as I went back, and Judson had a gun in his hand. He said; 'I found it, Jack.' I saw he was very drunk, and I told him to put it up, I'd got mine. It had occurred to me that I'd better warn Haggerty to be careful, and I started along ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... 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 gestures, ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... red to the elbow, were cutting up the carcases of goats hanging from hooks... In one corner, in a tent repaired in a thousand different colours, was a Moorish official with a big book and spectacles. Over there is a crowd. There are cries of rage. It is a roulette game that has been set up on a corn bin and the tribesmen gathered about it have started fighting with knives. Elsewhere, there are cheers, laughter and stamping of feet, a merchant and his mule have fallen into the river and ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... 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 ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... did not notice all this at first. What I did notice, however, was a faro-layout and a hazard-board, but as no one was playing at either, my eye quickly traveled to a roulette-table which stretched along the middle of the room. Some ten or a dozen men in evening clothes were gathered watching with intent faces the spinning wheel. There was no money on the table, nothing but piles of chips of various denominations. Another thing that surprised me as I looked was ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... a group of men together at one place, and especially such a remote place, was surprising. A score or more of booted-and-spurred loungers were at the bar and at the gambling tables. A roulette wheel was spinning at full clip, its little ivory ball dancing merrily, and at other tables were layouts of faro and various games of chance. Cards were being riffled briskly at a poker game near the door, and ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... remember; it was last fall, when I had lost all my money playing roulette. Some one stood behind me, and it was you. I was afraid when I turned and saw you, because I fancied I had seen you a moment before, beside the croupier, grinning at me as my gold pieces were swept away. But when I ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien
... rescued with difficulty from a street mob that unreasonably refused to accept 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
... stiver. And he could not borrow from Stuler, whose law was only to trust. Johann gambled, and wine always brought back the mad fever for play. The night before he had lost rather heavily, and he wanted to recover his losses. Rouge-et-noir had pinched him; he would be revenged on the roulette. All day long combinations and numbers danced before his eyes. He had devised several plans by which to raise money, but these had fallen through. Suddenly he smiled, and beckoned ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... disease. The municipal council of this beautiful city, like Esau, had just sold their 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 to absinthe is imbibed by potions quite innocuous in the beginning, ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... 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 American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... have happened if it had not been for cards and roulette and the perpetual desire of increasing their capital— for the worthy couple fell into the hands of a talented company, whose agents robbed them at Frascati's in Paris, and again in Hamburg and various health resorts, so ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... ahead in checks, put him 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
... "isn't a gambler in the ordinary sense. He never plays cards. Little pictures on paste-board fidget him, he says; he loathes Monte Carlo because it's vulgar, and he dislikes roulette and bridge. He's only a gambler in the best sense of the word—and ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... 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 ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... 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 money into factories, mines, mills, and ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... innocent; his parents were in Society, but they never gave him a moment's anxiety from his infancy. He believed in company prospectuses, and in the purity of elections, and in women marrying for love, and even in a system for winning at roulette. He never quite lost his faith in it, but he dropped more money than his employers could afford to lose. When last I heard of him, he was believing in his innocence; the jury weren't. All the same, I really am innocent just ...
— Reginald • Saki
... forefinger. Lungs! The second finger. Not being a fright! The fourth. How rich she was! But was there not something else? Oh, yes! Sadly she smiled. A clear conscience! She had forgotten that and that came first. Youth, health, lungs, looks, these were gamblers' tokens in the great roulette of life. In the hazards of chance at any moment she might lose one or all, as eventually she must lose them and remain no poorer than before. But her first asset which she had counted last, that was her fortune, the estate she held by virtue of a trust so guardedly created that if she lost one ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... take flutters at roulette; While at eighty hope I'll make good at poker yet; And in fashionable togs to the races go, Gayest of the gay old dogs, ninety years ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... squeaking, kangaroohopping with 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 ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... 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 ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... both day and night. When at last a shipping point was reached, the cattle marketed or loaded on the cars, the cowboys were paid off. It is not surprising that the consequent relaxation led to reckless deeds. The music, the dancing, the click of the roulette ball in the saloons, invited; the lure of crimson lights was irresistible. Drunken orgies, reactions from months of toil, deprivation, and loneliness on the ranch and on the trail, brought to death many a temporarily crazed buckaroo. To match this dare-deviltry, ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... a big chair in the darkest corner and relaxed until the coolness had worked through his skin and into his blood. Presently he looked about him to find something to do, and his eye dropped naturally on the first thing that made a noise—roulette. For a moment he watched the spinning disk. The man behind the table on his high stool was whirling the thing for his own amusement, it seemed. Terry walked over and ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... billiard-tables, there are other gambling-tables for Rouge et Noir, Trente et Quarante, Faro, La Roulette, Birribi, and other games of hazard. The bankers are young men from Corsica, to whom Joseph, who advances the money, allows all the gain, while he alone suffers the loss. Those who are inclined may play from morning ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... 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
... 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, a bottle of PONTET CANET. Ah, it's number seven on the wine list; ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... public most everywhere. Faro tables, the great American gambling game, Monte, the Mexican and Roulette. The Eldorado, on the corner of the plaza, was the most celebrated gambling house of that time. There had been a great deal of money expended in fitting it up. It had an orchestra of fifteen persons. It was run all night and day, with two sets of ...
— The Adventures of a Forty-niner • Daniel Knower
... 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 one ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... the country, and counted 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,' he observed. 'I am unhappy if I leave it for a day.' ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... 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 ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... 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 that Conscripts must take in the fray; And Fate's a Good sport, ...
— Rhymes of the Rookies • W. E. Christian
... 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.
... Tommy Ryan, the roulette-dealer. Mr. Ryan was a pale-faced person whose addiction to harmful drugs was notorious; his extreme pallor and his nervous lack of repose had gained for him the title of "Snowbird." Tommy's hollow eyes were glowing, his colorless lips were parted in an engaging ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... disappeared from view round the corner. In a moment the hand returned with the catalogue. The pair sped on to Messrs. Sotheby's auction-rooms in Wellington Street. Every one knows the appearance of a great book-sale. The long table, surrounded by eager bidders, resembles from a little distance a roulette table, and communicates the same sort of excitement. The amateur is at a loss to know how to conduct himself. If he bids in his own person some bookseller will outbid him, partly because the bookseller knows, after all, he knows little about books, and ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... Wunpost. "You're the crookedest dog that ever drew up a contract—and then talk to me about principle! Why don't you say what you mean and call it your system—like they use trying to break the roulette wheel? But I'm telling you your system is played out. I'll never locate another claim as long as I live, unless I'm released from that contract; so where do you figure on any more Willie Meenas? All you'll get ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... went straight into the gaming-rooms; he was curious to see whether his friend, being fond of experiments, was trying combinations at roulette. But he was not to be found in any of the gilded chambers, among the crowd that pressed in silence about the tables; so that Bernard presently came and began to wander about the lamp-lit terrace, where innumerable groups, seated ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... about his brother Abe. Does a gent mention that he brands eight hundred calves that spring round-up, Vance cuts in with the bluff that his brother Abe brands twelve hundred; does a sport su'gest that he sees a party win four thousand dollars ag'in monte or roulette or faro or some sech amoosement, Vance gets thar prompt with some ranikaboo relations of a time when his brother Abe goes ag'inst Whitey Bob at Wichita, makes a killin' of over sixty thousand dollars, an' breaks ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... thought to be wrong in one country will be the accepted practice just over the border line. It's all in the viewpoint. I not only go into saloons with men friends of mine, but sometimes I play poker or roulette or faro just to please them. And listen: Never in all my rough-and-ready life in railroad camps have I been insulted by regular stiffs, as the laborers are called. Certain outsiders have misunderstood my freedom from conventionality on several occasions, but always to their sorrow. Understand, I ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... been driven. The line, no longer presenting a weak angle, was almost straight, and no part 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 northern angle of the West Wood and ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... their daily life are sufficient stimuli for the beneficial excitement of their nerve centers. It has remained for civilized man, protected in a measure from the natural dangers of existence, to invent artificial stimulants in the form of cards and dice and roulette wheels. Yet when necessity bids there are no greater gamblers than the savage denizens of the jungle, the forest, and the hills, for as lightly as you roll the ivory cubes upon the green cloth they will gamble with death—their ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... 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 said, early on ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... devil's yeast all around the central pillar of flame, until its depths seemed to be churned up in frothy masses and the movement extended almost to the circumference. Then the whole surface of the water began to tilt and sway with a slow, shimmering, undulatory movement, as if it was a giant roulette wheel in rotation. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... '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' ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... understand? 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 ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... 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 hundred louis in ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy
... Parisian life, just now told me with what horror the things she sees here inspire her:—these vile posters, these "yellow" journals, these women with bleached hair, this crowd rushing to the races, to dance-halls, to roulette tables, to corruption—the whole flood of superficial and mundane life. She did not speak the word Babylon, but doubtless it was out of pity for one of the inhabitants of ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... exclamations of admiration, the genuine appreciation, the biting gibes, the 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 ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... rather comforted us than offended. At any rate, I am sure of the superiority of our own morals in visiting Monte Carlo after we left Genoa. If we did not look forward with our Englishman's complacency to the nice little church there, we certainly did not mean to risk our money at the tables of Roulette, nor yet at the tables of Trente et Quarante, in the Casino. What we really wished to do was to look on in the spiritual security of saints while the sinners of both sexes lost and gained to the equal hurt ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... his fortune, already much impaired, hung on chances as uncertain as those in a game of roulette? What nonsense! The failure of a great financial company had brought about a crisis on the Bourse. The news of the inability of Wermant, the 'agent de change', to meet his engagements, had completed the downfall of M. de Nailles. ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... too, and before long Gray found himself in a superheated, overcrowded back room with a stack of silver dollars which he scattered carelessly upon the numbers of a roulette table. Roulette was much like the oil game. This was a good way in which to kill ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... office on West Forty-second Street, with gold lettering on the door, a staff of stenographers, and a private branch exchange, and the New York police didn't pay no more attention to them than if they would of been running a poolroom with a roulette-wheel in the rear office. The consequence was that when them Bolshevists finally got pulled, Abe, they beefed so terrible about how they were being prosecuted in violation of the Constitution and the Code of Civil Procedure, y'understand, that you would think the bombs which Mr. Palmer and them ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass
... 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
... any sense an attractive type. The Wall Street men are lilies that toil and spin ("tiger" lilies, one might term them, in remembrance of the old gambler-slang about faro and roulette); but their industries, however distinct, are what the political economists would call those of non-productive consumers. They are active drones, to speak with paradox, in the great hive of human energy. Like all gamesters, all men who live by the turning of the dice-box, they have ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... out incredibly complex directions for getting around in the quasi-city that was the Great Universal. At one point he thought he caught the man saying that an elephant ramp took guests past the resplendent glass rest rooms to the roots of the roulette wheel, but that didn't sound even remotely plausible when he considered it. At ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... ROULETTE, a game of chance, very popular in France last century, now at Monaco; played with a revolving disc ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Drones (METHUEN), but that, I feel, is a charitable understatement. There was Eric Wanstanley, rising young sculptor, who, because he didn't rise quickly enough, was capable of borrowing the savings of his friend's parlourmaid to work a system at roulette. The friend, Austin Jenner, was also an artist and also rising. His little failing was concealment of the fact that he was almost wholly supported by remittances furnished by his hard-working brother. Incidentally he was engaged to Eric's sister, but abandoned ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 12, 1917 • Various
... need to speak in detail. The visitors find at its Casino all the best newspapers and magazines of civilization laid out for their amusement, to which are added an excellent theatre, an unsurpassed orchestra, and—'pour comble de malheur'—open tables at which any stranger can play at roulette, or at trente-et-quarante, upon presentation of a card of address. Mentone, says M. Planchut, which is the nearest resort to Monte Carlo, is neither rich, populous, nor luxurious. 'While there has been a surprising increase in the population of Ems, Wiesbaden, ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... throughout Europe by her passion for gambling; indeed there were few gaming-tables in Europe at which the "jolly fast Marchioness" was not a familiar and notorious figure. And his father, the Marquess, was as devoted to horses and turf-gambling as his wife to her cards and roulette. That the child of such parents should inherit their depraved tastes is not to be marvelled at. And it was not long before they manifested themselves in a ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... this: '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. ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... to 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, and the next day, when I ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... it be the commercial 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 ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... 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 ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... 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 pictures on the walls look down ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... 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, entirely deserving ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... going to have a little roulette in my rooms to-night," he said, as we walked across the ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... the entire lower floor. A bar ran the length of the room from front to rear. In the center of the room was a roulette wheel; near it was a faro table; and scattered in various places were other tables. Some oil-lamps in clusters provided light for the card and gambling tables; and behind the bar ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... 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 at the ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... Edouard Marigny with "Jimmy" Devar caused him to regard this unknown Frenchman with a suspicion that was already active enough so far as Mrs. Devar was concerned. And the Marchioness of Belfort, too! A decrepit old cadger with an infallible system for roulette! ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... 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, ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... the romance with which he had invested the idea of his suicide now vanished, leaving bare the stern and ignoble reality. He must kill himself, not like the gay gamester who voluntarily leaves upon the roulette table the remains of his fortune, but like the Greek, who surprised and hunted, knows that every door will be shut upon him. His death would not be voluntary; he could neither hesitate nor choose the fatal hour; he ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... least was picturesque. Flickering lights, gay laughter—sometimes curses and the sounds 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 ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... exclaimed, warming up with the notion of doing detective work. "I was playing roulette—but, pardon me, you ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... run down pretty low," he replied. "The truth is, Mr. Ranger, I blew in all my wages at roulette ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... from across the table. But I must get on with the evening. Octavia and I wanted to see everything, gambling saloons, dance halls, fights, whatever was going, and as Lola has done it all before, she said she would stay with the girls, and have a little mild flutter in the saloon of the hotel at roulette while our stalwart cavaliers escorted us "around." Gaston, too, remained behind with them; the Senator manoeuvred this, because he said, it was not wise to be with people who were quarrelsome, and Gaston is that now and then with his ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... description, peals forth from the open windows and doors. Numbers of young gaudily-dressed negresses line the path to the church doors with stands of liqueurs, sweetmeats, and cigarettes, which they sell to the outsiders. A short distance off is heard the rattle of dice-boxes and roulette at the open-air gambling- stalls. When the festival happens on moonlit nights, the whole scene is very striking to a newcomer. Around the square are groups of tall palm trees, and beyond it, over ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... hour or two at chemin-de-fer, baccarat, or roulette," remarked Sengoun, "I am not averse ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... be fussy, and he after bringing bankrupt ruin on the roulette man, and the trick-o'-the-loop man, and breaking the nose of the cockshot-man, and winning all in the sports below, racing, lepping, dancing, and the Lord knows what! He's ...
— The Playboy of the Western World • J. M. Synge
... affairs who will not play poker at home, and are shocked at the mention of faro and roulette, which any old-timer will tell you are easier to beat than the stock market, think they are using business judgment when they try to make money on stock market 'tips'. Anyone with common sense can see that a 10% margin has no more ...
— Successful Stock Speculation • John James Butler
... 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 fellow was ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... They were roulette players. They noticed nothing but the table and the wheel. Malone wondered what they were thinking about, decided to ask Queen Elizabeth, and then decided against it. He felt it would make him ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... love-making, and gambling. Homburg was not then what it has since become. That great house of cards, the new Cursaal, had not yet arisen; and its table-d'hote, reading-room, and profane mysteries of roulette and rouge-et-noir, found temporary domicile in a narrow, disreputable-looking den in the main street, where accommodation of all kinds, but especially for dinner, was scanty in the extreme. The public tables ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... dissipations, of which gambling now formed the chief. Dawn after dawn saw him leaving the green tables of either the "Nobility" or the Yacht clubs; and, as if to applaud his defection, fate decreed that Ivan could not lose. Baccarat, roulette, piquet, even whist,—Ivan won at them all, till one drawer in his escritoire was stuffed full of lightly ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... they tied me to a beam in the kitchen. They drew the cord tight with all their strength and asked me, 'Does it hurt you?' and then they discharged their fury upon me, exclaiming as they struck me, 'Pray now to your God.' It was the Roulette woman who held this language. But at this moment I received the greatest consolation that I can ever receive in my life, since I had the honor of being whipped for the name of Christ, and in addition of being crowned with his mercy and his consolations. ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... respectability attached itself to the "wheel" itself which revolved in a corner of the barroom night after night, whirling into opulence or penury, such as entrusted their fortunes to its revolutions. Despite its high-toned patronage, however, the terms "roulette" and "croupier" found small favor with the devotees at that particular shrine of the fickle goddess, and Dabney Dirke, its presiding genius, was familiarly known among "the boys," as "the boss of the wheel." "Waxey" Smithers,—he who ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... impromptu ball followed, the ladies dancing with their 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 ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... 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 ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... refuse are 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 his money ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... brilliant player I call him, and he permits me to contribute his experiences, as mine are short and simple. To my mind, Whist would not be a bad game, if the element of skill were excluded; but give me Roulette. If foreign ladies would not snatch up my winnings, I should be a master at Roulette, where genius is really served, for I play on inspiration merely. But let me turn to the confessions of my friend, my Mentor, I may call him, a man ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 12, 1892 • Various
... months ago, when the metal was being unloaded from a German steamer at Southampton, and my dear friend Spenser Hale ran down the thieves very cleverly as they were trying to dissolve the marks off the bars with acid. Now crimes do not run in series, like the numbers in roulette at Monte Carlo. The thieves are men of brains. They say to themselves, "What chance is there successfully to steal bars of silver while Mr. Hale is at Scotland Yard?" Eh, ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... were the regularly appointed official safecrackers representing the 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 ...
— Alice in Blunderland - An Iridescent Dream • John Kendrick Bangs
... Jose was playing roulette, and judging by the satisfied expression of his face which the Captain noted in passing, he rightly conjectured that luck was ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... 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
... Imperial bastard. Who was Morny? We will say, "A noted wit, an intriguer, but in no way austere, a friend of Romieu, and a supporter of Guizot possessing the manners of the world, and the habits of the roulette table, self-satisfied, clever, combining a certain liberality of ideas with a readiness to accept useful crimes, finding means to wear a gracious smile with bad teeth, leading a life of pleasure, dissipated but reserved, ugly, good-tempered, fierce, well-dressed, intrepid, ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... 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 hundred miles ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... passions and the most lasting. In some, happily, the serpent sleeps for ever, the fire is for ever banked. But it needs only the opportunity to rouse the dull ember into flame, to stir the venom of the serpent. It seems a simple thing to toss a coin on the roulette boards. Sometimes the act is done contemptuously, sometimes indifferently, sometimes in the spirit of fun and curiosity; but the result is ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... 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 ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... 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 ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Mary's Market now stands, and one could walk a mile, it is said, over the tops of these boats without going ashore. No doubt Lincoln went, too, to live in the boatmen's rendezvous, called the "Swamp," a wild, rough quarter, where roulette, whiskey, ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... 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, ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... 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 his luck at all games of ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope
... the two men landed, but the town was awake. The recent railway and mining activity in the neighborhood had brought a considerable influx of people to King Phillip Sound, and the strains of music from dance-hall doors, the click of checks and roulette balls from the saloons, gave ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... she said, pointing to a miniature roulette board, which stood in the middle, beyond the ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... ball to rolling for that," he instructed the roulette man, tossing down a bill. "Dropped again!" he lamented humorously. "Can't seem to ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... 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 ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... Harwell discovered an old acquaintance in the person of a notorious gambler,—a class of persons who congregate on Mississippi steamers, and practise their arts upon the unwary traveller. This person, who went by the name of Vernon, was well known at the faro and roulette boards in New Orleans. He was an accomplished swindler. In the winter season, when the city is crowded with the elite of the state, and with strangers from all parts of the Union, Vernon found abundant exercise for his professional ability at the hells of the city, in the employment of their ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... 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 it ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 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
... 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, are ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... an atmosphere opaque with smoke, he hung for ten minutes above a roulette wheel. Then downstairs he crept, and was out-sped by the important negro, jingling in his pocket the 40 cents in silver that remained to him of his five-dollar capital. At the corner ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... 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
... had been doing an increasing business. Now there was desultory playing at several tables where men were placing their bets at poker, at seven-and-a-half and at roulette; the faro layout would be offering its invitation in a moment; there was a game of dice ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... evening the tiger was out with all its claws. Rouge et noir, roulette, faro, keno, and stud-poker were going in full blast. The proprietor, his elegant diamonds flashing in the light, was seated on a raised platform from whence he could survey the entire company—his face, impassive as marble and unreadable as the sphinx, was turned toward ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... them sang, or a Spanish dancer pirouetted, clicking her castanets and casting languishing glances at the ring of auditors about her. These performers were invariably showered with coins. Tables of all sizes filled the center of the room from the long roulette board to the little round ones where drinks were served. Faro, monte, roulette, rouge et noir, vingt-un, chuck-a-luck and poker: each found its disciples; now and then a man went quietly out and another took ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... that Pony Rowell had penetrated, a roulette table was at its whirling work and faro was going on in another spot. At small tables various visitors were ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... dizzy round; coriolus force. [things that go around] carousel, merry-go-round; Ferris wheel; top, dreidel^, teetotum; gyroscope; turntable, lazy suzan; screw, whirligig, rollingstone^, water wheel, windmill; wheel, pulley wheel, roulette wheel, potter's wheel, pinwheel, gear; roller; flywheel; jack; caster; centrifuge, ultracentrifuge, bench centrifuge, refrigerated centrifuge, gas centrifuge, microfuge; drill, augur, oil rig; wagon wheel, wheel, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the turbulent life that drifts to every wild frontier on the boom. Faro dealers from the Klondike, poker dealers from Nome, roulette croupiers from Leadville, were all here to reap the rich harvest to be made from investors, field workers, and operators. Smooth grafters with stock in worthless companies for sale circulated in and out with blue-prints and ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... formed into line of battle and moved forward through a grove of 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 in front of our line towards Sharpsburg. I had ridden ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... varying with every "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 his fate ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... "isn't a gambler in the ordinary sense. He never plays cards. Little pictures on paste-board fidget him, he says; he loathes Monte Carlo because it's vulgar, and he dislikes roulette and bridge. He's only a gambler in the best sense of the word—and ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... in good men's ears; but always, too, there were good wages and jolly hoodlums and unchecked wassail of Saturday nights. Gamblers, big and little, rioted in East St. Louis. The little gamblers used cards and roulette wheels and filched the weekly wage of the workers. The greater gamblers used meat and iron and undid the foundations of the world. All the gods of chance flaunted their wild raiment here, above the brown flood of ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... end of 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 real children that brings luck and prospers ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... the blue of the sky is so still and clear It seems it was rubbed above them By the swipe of a giant thumb. And beyond these the little Traverse Bay Where the roar of the breeze goes round Like a roulette ball in the groove of the wheel, Circling the bay, And beyond these Mackinac and the Cheneaux Islands— And beyond ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... inquired if he wouldn't like a chance to earn some money easily, he very readily answered yes, and the man was overjoyed to find so willing a victim. Then, of course, Archie was introduced to the mysteries of the famous roulette wheel, of which he had read so much. Archie was interested in everything, and didn't mind losing four dollars in learning so much that was new. He succeeded in getting away when he had lost this sum, though ...
— The Adventures of a Boy Reporter • Harry Steele Morrison
... passing, I saw that my young man had departed; I concluded that he 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, the ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James
... a 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 ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck |
