"Roulette" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... looks very anxious 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 ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... system experienced the joys of reform. A "New Nationalism" was established in the brewery down by the railway station and a reciprocity treaty was negotiated between the Casino and Vanity Fair, witnessing the introduction of two roulette tables and an ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... made on the 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
... been invited to add his signature to the protest. He 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
... quiet of 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 ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... representatives of "the enemy" complained that they could not endure to be hopelessly beaten night after night. Their expostulation was unpatriotic; but it was natural. For "supers" have their feelings, moral as well as physical. At one of our own theatres a roulette-table was introduced in a scene portraying the salon at Homburg, or Baden-Baden. Certain of the "supers" petitioned that they should not always appear as the losing gamesters. They desired sometimes to figure among the winners. It need hardly be said that the money that changed ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... dead, whose guardians are remote, and whose instincts are vicious. At nineteen he had commenced one of those careers attractive and inexplicable to ordinary mortals for whom a single bankruptcy is good as a feast. Already famous for having the only roulette table then to be found in Oxford, he was anticipating his expectations at a dazzling rate. He out-crummed Crum, though of a sanguine and rather beefy type which lacked the latter's fascinating languor. For Val it had been in the nature of baptism to be taken ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... "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 that's ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... they were from each other. Decorations were simple. Drapes of velvety synthetic, dyed the deep green that Martian colonists like, covered the walls. Indirect lighting gave a pretty gleam to the metal gadgets on the tables. Because they used a heavier ball, roulette looked about the same as on Earth, and the same went ...
— Fee of the Frontier • Horace Brown Fyfe
... any under the sun; a perfect Ghetto or cursed place; in fact, it is the rendezvous of renegades of all nations, and hordes of negro traders and planters are to be seen flocking round the hotels. These are extensive patrons of the gambling-houses; and the faro, rouge-et-noir, roulette, and other establishments, fitted up with gorgeous saloons, are generally crowded with them. As you pass, you may observe the frequenters of such places in dozens, deeply engaged in play, while the teller of the establishment ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... 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 plan from the very first; and now with pleasure ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... unnatural calm, was broken one night by Mink himself, who shot and all but killed the livery-stable keeper in a dispute over roulette. Knowing that his deed would bring the new marshal down upon him at once, the gambler ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... on Lazy Lou, Lazy Susan's big twin brother, a giant roulette wheel of cheese, every number a winner. A second Lazy Lou will bear the savories and go-withs. For these tidbits the English have a divine genius; think of the deviled shrimps, smoked oysters, herring roe on toast, snips of broiled sausage ... But we will ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... going to have a little roulette in my rooms to-night," he said, as we walked across the ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... flight, and then another. The card-rooms, the faro, stud, and roulette layouts were deserted, save for policemen here and there on guard. Carruthers led the way to a room at the back of the hall, whose door was open and from which issued a hubbub of voices—one voice rose above the others, ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... in the watch tower—no, it was her 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 ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... Grande Rue de Pera there was a cafe chantant which was run by one Napoleon Flam. There was a little silver hell attached to it where there was a roulette table with twenty-four numbers and a double zero. There were always plenty of flying strangers who were prepared to throw away their money here, and I fancy that the fat Greek who presided over the table made a fat thing of it. ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... 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 ...
— Rhymes of the Rookies • W. E. Christian
... 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
... instead 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
... The roulette table pays nobody except him that keeps it. Nevertheless a passion for gaming is common, though a passion for keeping ...
— Maxims for Revolutionists • George Bernard Shaw
... bracketing of Count 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
... night. As 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 his latent possibilities may be, ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... 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 ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... 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 said, early ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... hall in the place, a heavy gambling game was going on. There was roulette, faro, and monte, all ...
— Wild Bill's Last Trail • Ned Buntline
... a tour 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
... whom the usual silent decorum of the play-table seemed held in but small respect, for every instant some burst of hearty laughter, or some open expression of joy or anger burst forth, by which I immediately perceived that they were the votaries of the roulette table, a game at which the strict propriety and etiquette ever maintained at rouge et noir, are never exacted. As I pressed nearer, to discover the cause of the mirth, which every moment seemed to augment, guess my surprise to perceive among the foremost rank of the players, my acquaintance, Mr. ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... Charlevoix the sudden quaintness Of an old-world place by the sea. There are the hills around Elk Lake Where 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 ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... "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 ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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 ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... she said cordially. "You'll find the whole works going; monte, Fairbank, stud and blackjack. There's roulette and craps, too, but it's mostly the women who go ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... 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
... 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 one had met in the temples of ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... of dirty paper or 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
... 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 favorite poet might ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... 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 ...
— The Adventures of a Forty-niner • Daniel Knower
... 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, ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... the open door into the gambling-house. It was a large hall, in the front part of which was the saloon. In the back the side wall to the next building had been ripped out to give more room. There was a space for dancing, as well as roulette, faro, chuckaluck, and poker tables. In one corner a raised stand for the musicians had ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... roulette," replied Jimmy, pleasantly. "Me and Mrs. Van are going to get spliced just as soon as the Ouija board tells her the ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... 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 ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Roulette and Rouge et Noir tables were and are so arranged as always to make the bank win at the will of the attendant, ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... followed him. That spacious square soon became as thronged 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 ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... in 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
... 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 ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... 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, tire, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... 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 ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... could remember, Berry had had a weakness for Roulette. For Baccarat, Petits Chevaux, and the rest he cared nothing: fifty pounds a year would have covered his racing bets: if he played Bridge, it was by request. My brother-in-law was no gambler. There was something, however, ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... 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 ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... a sprinklin' 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 carollin' ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... 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 ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... Burglars left in town 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 ...
— Alice in Blunderland - An Iridescent Dream • John Kendrick Bangs
... by 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 pangingi, ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady
... allowed to pass, but I was stopped for want of—whiskers; till assuring him that I was older than he took me to be, and an Englishman—I was also permitted to pass. We first entered a small room, in which was a roulette-table surrounded by players, and well staked: this communicated by folding-doors with a spacious saloon with a double table for Trente-et-un, or Rouge et Noir, round which were seated the players, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 281, November 3, 1827 • Various
... 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. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... from Boston and the vicinity with the amusements of a fair. In these were carried on all sorts of dissipation. Here was a knot of gamblers, gathered around a wheel of fortune, or watching the whirl of the ball on a roulette-table. Further along, the jolly hucksters displayed their tempting wares in the shape of cooling beverages and palate-tickling confections. There was dancing on this side, auction-selling on the other; here a ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... our advent had apparently 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 ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... along Rue Conti, or Saint Louis, or the Rue Bourbon, you could not fail to notice several large gilded lamps, upon which you might read "faro" and "craps", "loto" or "roulette,"—odd words to the eyes of the uninitiated, but well enough understood by those whose business it was to traverse the streets ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... Those who exercise mercy lay up a store of it for themselves. Shylock had law on his side, but not justice or mercy. One is reminded of his case by the picture of certain Jews and Gentiles alike as seen playing roulette at Monte Carlo. Their losses, inevitable to any one who plays long enough, seem to sadden them. M. Blanc would be doing a real act of mercy if he would exact his toll not in cash, but in flesh. Some of the players are of a figure and temperament ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... 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 ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... portentous balances. The amount of money that he was keeping idle in the banks was beginning to weigh upon him. He finally ended by involving himself in some speculation; like a gambler who cannot see the roulette wheel without putting his ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... more, we can see many 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
... 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
... gullies into which his wealth 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 ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... 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 to overtures of ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... 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 man assured him that he couldn't help winning back all he had lost, and much more, ...
— The Adventures of a Boy Reporter • Harry Steele Morrison
... 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 ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... although it was comfortably fitted and furnished. The air was heavy with tobacco smoke, and a great crowd of men were playing roulette, faro, and ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... 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." ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... "Well, possibly it wouldn't, except here in Nevada. Specifically, it is designed to influence roulette and dice games." ...
— ...Or Your Money Back • Gordon Randall Garrett
... 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 that hardly a year had passed when Bodlevski ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... 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 at all. On a piece of canvas on the ground, ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... 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 and poker. ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... narrow compass; soil rapidly absorbent; if it rains in torrents at ten o'clock, and sun afterwards comes out, roadways dry by noon. Then there is the Kurhaus always open; palatial building, not to be outdone in size and beauty by Casino at Monte Carlo; but sound of roulette tablets silent. The "game is made" for ever; on ne va plus. Sometimes, on wet afternoons, there is found in the lofty, and otherwise cool room, one or two elderly gentlemen, who play doleful game of ecarte, poor shivering ghosts of departed gamesters. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 24, 1887 • Various
... 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 prohibited, and not ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... Orleans with Captain Bill Harrison one day on board the steamer Doubleloon, and was having a good game of roulette, when we noticed that most of the fish were suckers, and did not bite so well at roulette; so we changed our tackle, and used monte for bait. We were fishing along, and had caught some pretty good fish, but none of the large ones we saw about the hooks. Every ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... we would be satisfied if they gave the money to whichever one first presented the ring. Suppose I had said," she went on, turning to the King, "that it was either Barrat or the Colonel here who had turned traitor. They know the Baron of old, when he was Chamberlain and ran your roulette wheel at the palace. They know he is not the man to turn back an expedition. And the Colonel, if he will pardon me, has sold his services so often to one side or another that it would have been difficult to make them believe that this time he is sincere. But Kalonay, the man they fear ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis
... 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 ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... but pleasant round of eating, sauntering, 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 at the hotels were consequently thronged, and there acquaintances were soon made. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... frock was torn away, the outworn fabric in streamers. The man's hands came down and Mormon recognized him for Jim Plimsoll, owner of the Good Luck Pool Parlors, in the little cattle town of Hereford, where faro, roulette, chuckaluck and craps were played in the back room, owner also of a near-by horse ranch. There was blood on his face, the marks ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... a crowd was beginning to come together, and booths were being put up for the sale of apples and porter and cakes. A train had come in a little before at a station a mile or so away, and a number of the usual trick characters, with their stock-in-trade, were hurrying down to the sea. The roulette man passed us first, unfolding his table and calling out at ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge
... 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 in ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... came on, 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 ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... 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
... 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 ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... as a rough cavalier. And that the great-bearded giant Emperor Wilhelm did drink heavily, fight hard, and mulct France mightily, is matter of history. This was the last year of the gaming-tables at Homburg. Apropos of these, the roulette-table was placed in the Homburg Museum, where it may be seen amid many Roman relics. Two or three years ago, while I was in the room, there came in a small party of English or Yankee looking or gazing tourists, to whom the attendant pointed out the roulette-table. "And ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... either side were flat-roofed and coated with plaster. Over the sidewalks extended wooden awnings, beneath which opened very wide doors into the coolness of saloons. Each of these places ran a bar, and also games of roulette, faro, craps, and stud poker. Even this early in the morning every ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... 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 archways, was the dance hall. ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... doubtless little used to 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 ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... when 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. Not only death, but ruin, had ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... 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 papers ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... 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
... "E. 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
... 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 ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... in silence for a moment, then turned his eyes up, to the sky. Somewhere up there a tiny satellite spun wildly about the earth, a little silver ball in some celestial roulette wheel. Gradually it would spiral closer and closer, caught by the planet's implacable grasp, until it flared brightly like a cigarette in the heavens before dissolving into ...
— Sound of Terror • Don Berry
... room 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
... 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 ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... rose and, passing along the plage, arrived at a large, white house overlooking the sea, where, on the second floor, he entered a luxuriously-furnished suite of rooms where roulette was ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... 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 ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... 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 that the dogs were used as a patrol, to give the ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... man 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 this ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... keep him a hundred or two 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 room ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... 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
... 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 on a mad crowd of desperate gamesters. Paris has sent its ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... tables; 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
... 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 ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... period, the teacher fell ill and went his way with a fat pocket-book and not a warbling soul had got the chance to open his mouth. The experience dampened nobody. Generosity was limitless. It was equally easy to raise money for a roulette wheel, a cathedral or an expedition to Africa. And even yet the railroad was miles away and even yet in February, the Improvement Company had a great land sale. The day before it, competing purchasers had deposited cheques aggregating three times the sum asked ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... 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 ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... 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 ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... be there, or anyone else. As they say of marriage, it's a lottery. They might have roulette, or a spiritual seance, or ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... Rode horseback, motored, played roulette at the casino for big stakes, and scorned the American plan of service for the smarter European idea, with a special a la carte menu for each meal. Extraordinary-looking mixed drinks, strictly against the mandates ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... the sense treated of in this book, has ceased in England. If there be here and there a Roulette or Rouge et Noir table in operation, its existence is now known only to a few 'sworn-brethren;' if gambling at cards 'prevails' in certain quarters, it is 'kept quiet.' The vice is not barefaced. It slinks and skulks away into corners and holes, like a poisoned rat. ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz |
