"Would you have the kindness to spik Angleesh?" remarked the garçon. Though this raised some doubts in our minds as to our friend's capacity, yet one of our party, feeling indisposed, invoked his intercession for the sake of procuring some Seidlitz powders. However, in his indignation, he refused to have anything to do with it. In this dilemma, the sick man called in the English-conversing waiter to his aid, who readily offered to help him, and soon returned with a bottle of Seidlitz water, which he persuaded our unwary friend to make trial of. Now this water happens to be the strongest of all the mineral springs in Germany, and the consequence was, the poor young man became very shortly alarmingly unwell. In his anxiety, he fancied himself poisoned, and summoned the waiter once more. On his reappearance, he compelled him to finish the whole of the bottle, which contained nearly a quart, to prove it was not of a dangerous nature; but, in point of fact, he proved it to be so by nearly killing the wretched garçon. The company to be seen round the table consists usually of Russians and French, both male and female, with a sprinkling of Germans, who escape from their own police in order to satisfy their itching for play. Thus, for instance, we have Nassau and Darmstadt people at BadenBaden, while the Badese and Suabes rush to Homburg and Wisbaden. There is a very salutary law in every land where gambling is permitted, that no inhabitant of that land be allowed to play at the public table, and if any one is caught red-handed, he is usually imprisoned, and his winnings, if any, confiscated. We can call to mind a laughable instance of this at Wisbaden. Two old peasants, who had probably come for a day's pleasure and to see the sights, managed to find their way into the Kursaal, and stood all entranced before the roulette-table. One of them, imagining it a right royal way of making money, and much better fun than ploughing, lugged out his leathern purse and began by staking a modest florin on the rouge. In the course of about half an hour he had contrived to win a very decent sum, and was walking away in great glee, when a gendarme, who had been watching him all the while, quietly collared him and dragged him off to the Polizei, where, as we afterwards learned, he was incarcerated for three weeks, and his "addlings" employed for the good of the state. It may naturally be supposed that the presence of so much circulating medium in one place, and the prestige attaching to the banquier's coffers, which are currently supposed to contain a sum More precious far Than that accumulated store of wealth would induce many depredators to make an attempt on them, but we generally find that cunning is much more in favour than any open attack. Thus, for instance, Monsieur le Blanc, who, we may add, has been more assailed than any other banquier, was nearly made the victim of a stratagem, which might have entailed serious results. A fellow contrived to get into the "Conversation Haus" by night, and blocked up all the low numbers in the roulette machine in such a manner that the ball, on falling in, must inevitably leap out again. On the next day he and his accom plices played and netted a large sum by backing the high numbers. They carried on the game for two or three days, but were fortunately overheard by a detective while quarrelling about the division of their plunder, in the gardens behind the establishment. They were arrested, and the money recovered. A very dangerous design was also formed against him by one of his croupiers, who, being discontented with his lot, determined to make his fortune at one coup: and the plan he contrived was this. He procured a pack of pre-arranged cards, which he concealed! in his hat, and when it came to his turn to deal he intended to drop the bank cards into his chapeau and cleverly substitute the others; but this artfully-concocted scheme was disconcerted by one of his confederates considering he might make a better and safer thing of it by telling Le Blanc beforehand. His most imminent peril, and the occasion when his very existence as a banquier was at stake, was the affair with the Belgian company, of which Thackeray has given us such a detailed account in his "Kickleburys up the Rhine.' The "propriétaires," besides, suffer considerable losses by the dishonesty of the croupiers; for, although there is a person expressly employed to watch them, who sits in a high-backed chair behind the dealer, yet they are such practised escamoteurs, that they will secrete a piece of gold without his seeing it. One fellow was detected at Baden-Baden, who had carried on a system of plunder for a long time with security. He used to slip a louis-d'or into his snuff-box whenever it came to his turn to preside over the money department; he was found out by another employé asking him casually for a pinch of snuff, and seeing the money gleam in the gaslight. These croupiers are the most extraordinary race of men it is possible to conceive. They seem to unite the stoicism of the American Indian to the politeness of the Frenchman of the ancien régime. They are never seen to smile, and wear the same impassive countenance whether the banque is gaining or losing. In fact, what do they care as long as their salary is regularly paid? They seem to fear neither God nor man: for when a shock of the earthquake was felt at Wisbaden in 1847, though all the company fled in terror, they remained grimly at their posts, preferring to go down to their patron saints with their rouleaux, as an evidence of their fidelity to their employer. Perhaps, though, they regarded the earthquake as a preconcerted scheme to rob the banque, the only danger they are apprehensive of. You may beat them, and yet they smite not again; for when a young Englishman, of high repute and bearing an honourable name, vented his rage at losing by breaking a rake at Baden-Baden over the croupier's head, he merely turned round and beckoned to the attendant gendarme to remove him and the pieces, and then went on with his parrot-like "rouge gagne-couleur perd." His The most amusing thing to any philosophical frequenter of the rooms, is to see the sudden gyrations of fortune's wheel.. One gentleman at Baden-Baden, a Russian, was so elated after an unparalleled run of good fortune, that he went out and ordered a glorious feed for himself and friends at the restauration; but during the interval, while dinner was preparing, he thought he would go back and win a little more. good fortune, however, had deserted him, and he lost not only all his winnings, but every florin he was possessed of, so he was compelled to countermand the dinner. On the arrival of his remittances, determined not to be baulked of his repast this time by want of funds, he paid for a spread for twelve beforehand; but his luck was very bad, and he actually went back to the restaurateur, and, after some negotiation, sold him the dinner back at half-price. The money he received was, of course, very speedily lost. Another, a student of Heidelberg, won at a sitting 970 florins, but disdaining to retire without a round thousand, he tempted fortune too long, and lost it all back, as well as his own money. The most absurd thing was, that not having any friends in Baden, he was driven to return "per pedes" to his university, a distance of more than 100 miles. It is a very rare occurrence for the banque to be broken, though the newspapers state that such a thing happened three times at Baden-Baden during the present season, a statement which we are inclined to place in the same category with the wonderful showers of frogs and gigantic cabbages which happen so opportunely to fill any vacant corner. When, however, it really takes place, the rooms are only closed for an hour or two, and the play soon commences again. The most painful incident is, the frequency of suicides during the season, any account of which Monsieur Benazet, for obvious reasons, prevents reaching the public. When anything of the sort occurs, the place most commonly selected for the tragedy is a summer-house a little way out of the town, on the road to the Alt Schloss, whence the poor victim can take a last lingering look on the scene of his ruin. One young man, in our time, attempted to blow out his brains at the roulettetable, but was fortunately prevented, and a fortnight's detention in the House of Correction very much cooled his ardour for making a "dem'd disgusting body" of himself. Indeed, it has ever been a passion with your Frenchmen to cause a scene when dying: they would not give a "thank you" to cut their throats in private. On the 31st of October, the day on which the rooms close for the season, an immense quantity of players throng to the Kursaal; for though they have withstood temptation for so long a time, they cannot possibly suffer the season to go past without making one trial. On the 1st of November, those birds of ill-omen, the croupiers, set out to hybernise in Paris, and the rooms are closed, not to be reopened till the 1st of May. It has long been a question most difficult of decision whether, leaving morality entirely out of sight, the watering-places of Germany are benefited or injured by the continuance of gambling. We are inclined to the latter opinion; for, though it may be said that it brings a deal of money into circulation, yet your true gambler is a most unsocial and inhospitable fellow, and one of the worst visitors an hotel-keeper can have. Besides encouraging, as they do, all the riffraff of Europe to pay periodical visits to Germany, they thereby prevent many respectable persons from settling in that country; for any wife or mother who has the interests of her family at heart, would fly from a place where gambling is allowed, as from a pest-house. At the same time, a very lax tone prevails in these towns, and every finer feeling is blunted-in many cases irreparably-by constant association with hard-hearted, callous, and unscrupulous gamblers. That this was a view taken by the more enlightened of the Germans, is proved by the fact that the parliament of Frankfort decided on the abolition of all gambling-houses by a considerable majority, but unfortunately there was no time to carry such a salutary measure into effect. Had it been otherwise, the Regents in all probability would, through very shame, have hesitated in giving their assent to the re-establishment of such a crying evil. THE SEA-SIDE RECREATIONS OF MR. JOLLY GREEN. CHAPTER I. I RETIRE TO A QUIET WATERING-PLACE. CIRCUMSTANCES of a painful nature, into the details of which I may be excused if I do not enter-though I dare say they are as fresh in the recollection of the public as in my own-having induced me to withdraw from the metropolis in the middle of last summer, I retired for a short time to the sea-side, to recruit my exhausted faculties and restore the tone of a constitution somewhat shaken by recent occurrences. The spot which I selected was a mild kind of watering-place on the coast of S-ss-x, which, for reasons of State, I shall only partially designate, as the meditations which occupied me during a part of my stay had so intimate a bearing on the future prosperity of my native land, that a premature disclosure of what my thoughts were might possibly be detrimental to the maturity of my plans. My reason for fixing my temporary abode at W-rth-ng was, partly because I have a species of ancestral claim on the county, my grandfather having been born there, and partly because I was personally unknown to any individual in the place. It was something, I felt, to tread upon the soil which my grandsire's foot had pressed-something also to be able to take refuge in a retreat where the clamour of the multitude found no echo. I was weary, as well I might be, of popular applause, and yearned for the solitude which waits upon a judicious incognito. Had I worn the old family surcoat in which my renowned ancester, Roger de Greyne, fell, fighting beside the Black Prince, at the battle of Marston Moor; had I spread my penoncelle to the blast, embroidered with the arms of my house, by the fair hands of Jacqueline de Cornichon, my great-great-grandaunt (who, of course, came over with the Conqueror); had I even nailed my card on one of my boxes, I know full well what the consequences would have been. A deputation of the principal inhabitants of W-th-ng, headed by the mayor and borseholders, the high-water-bailiff and other functionaries, would have been in attendance at the railway station, to invite me to a public dinner and present me with the freedom of the town, and, very probably, invite me to stand for the representation on the first vacancy, or, at furthest, at the dissolution of parliament. I should have been besieged by admiring crowds during the whole of my stay; my time would have been engrossed by getting up speeches and delivering them; my political and social opinions would have been torn to pieces in the daily leaders of the Times; I should have been denounced by one party as too aristocratic, by another as too ultra-republican; in short, I should have led the life of a K-ss-th or a C-bd-n, of a dog with a kettle tied to his tail, or a fellow in perpetual hot water. To obviate all these inconveniences, I determined to adopt the strictest incognito, and, as the passport system does not prevail in this land of freedom, I was at liberty to assume any name I chose; and, accordingly, shrouded my blazing patronymic under the ignoble sobriquet of Brown, Jan.-VOL. XCIV. NO. CCCLXXIII. F and buried my baptismal appellation beneath the quiet and gentlemanlike designation of Plantagenet. That my secret might be religiously kept I took with me none of my retinue, not even my faithful dog Growler, whose very bark might have betrayed me; and merely desiring my butler, old faithful Blithers, to direct my letters to the care of P. Brown, Esq., post-office, W-th-ng, till called for, I took a tearful farewell of my household, and, throwing myself into a cab, drove off to the S-th E-st-n Railway Station, from whence I was speedily borne to my destination by a special train, another of my careful precautions. Having thus completely cut off the trail-as we sportsmen say- I felt that I was once more a free agent, and gave myself up without control to the delights of a dual existence. I could now, like the Caliph Haroun Al-raschid, walk abroad in the name of Brown and listen unrestrained to the glowing eulogiums which men would pronounce upon the celebrated Jolly Green, and if a blush arose to tinge my swarthy check or mantle on my sunburnt forehead, the world would still be ignorant of the cause of that emotion. I could not help inwardly smiling-it may be with a shade of bitterness-when I engaged a suite of apartments at "Ocean Cottage," to hear the landlady address me, for the first time, as Mr. Brown. "Who," said I to myself, as I ruminated, cow-like, over my destiny: —— “ who would read in that name The high soul of the son of a long line,Who, in this garb——” (I wore a Prince of Wales's black-glazed straw hat and pilot-jacket) — "the heir of prince lands, Who in this--” (not "sunken" and "sickly" but) Of rank and ancestry ?” "careless, jovial eye, the pride It was altogether a case of Werner Redivivus, except that he had no money in his pocket and I had plenty, and that he plunged into obscurity to save himself from the clutches of Bohemian bailiffs or Silesian sheriffs'-officers, whereas my seclusion was for the sole purpose of avoiding popular ovations. Yet although I had no reason to doubt the impenetrability of my disguise, it was not without a slight sensation of nervousness that I entered the reading-rooms on the esplanade of W-rth-ng, to which I became an immediate subscriber; nor was it without a certain tremor that I took up the S-ss-x Adv-rt-s-r, whose lynx-eyed fashionable reporter would, I feared, have unearthed me in my lonely lair. But, strangely enough, though-of course-greatly to my satisfaction, my arrival was unnoticed either by the whisperings loungers of "the establishment" or the Argus of the county paper. What a hollow mockery is the breath of popular favour! Not fourand-twenty hours before, and I stood within the walls of a police-office, the cynosure of every eye for a deed of daring without a name, and now -having taken the magistrate's advice and left London-only sixty miles apart and a day scarcely gone by-and no one appeared to know, no one seemed to heed the gap in society which my absence had caused. |