friends.' We afterwards find them bearing just as bad a

character among the Romans. Says Juvenal--
Graeculus esuriens in coelum jusseris, ibit.

'Bid the hungry Greek to heaven, to heaven he goes.'
Dr Johnson translated the words, 'Bid him to h--l, to h--l he

goes'--which is wrong. A DIFFICULTY is implied, and everybody
knows that it is easier to go to the latter place than the

former. It means that a needy Greek was capable of doing
anything. Lord Byron protested that he saw no difference between

Greeks and Jews--of course, meaning 'Jews' in the offensive sense
of the word. Among gamblers the term was chieflyapplied to

'decoys.'
GAMING TABLE SLANG AND MANOEUVRES.

Captain Sharp. A cheating bully, whose office it was to bully
any 'Pigeon,' who, suspecting roguery, refused to pay what he had

lost.
St Hugh's bones. Dice. A bale of bard cinque deuces; a bale of

flat cinque deuces; a bale of flat size aces; a bale of bard
cater treys; a bale of flat cater treys; a bale of Fulhams; a

bale of light graniers; a bale of gordes, with as many highmen
and lowmen for passage; a bale of demies; a bale of long dice for

even or odd; a bale of bristles; a bale of direct
contraries,--names of false dice.

Do. To cheat.
Done up. Ruined.

Down-hills. False dice which run low.
Elbow-shaker. A gamester.

Fulhams. Loaded dice.
Fuzz. To shuffle cards closely: to change the pack.

Game. Bubbles, Flats, Pigeons.
Gull Gropers. Usurers who lend money to gamesters.

Greeks. Cheats at play.
Hedge. To secure a bet by betting on the other side.

High Jinks. A gambler who drinks to intoxicate his Pigeon.
Hunting. Drawing in the unwary.

Main. Any number on the dice from five to nine.
Paum. To hide a card or die.

Pigeons. Dupes of sharpers at play.
Vincent's Law. The art of cheating at cards, by the banker, who

plays booty, Gripe, who bets, and the Vincent, who is cheated.
The gain is called termage.

Vowel. To give an I. O. U. in payment.
Up-hills. False dice which run high.

SPECIMEN OF A QUASI GAMING HOUSE CIRCULAR.
'SIR,--I hope you will join with the rest of the parishioners in

recommending what friends you can to my shops. They shall have
good candles and fair play. Sir, we are a not gang of swindlers,

Like other Gaming Houses,
We are men of character.

Our Party is,
Tom Carlos--alias Pistol,

Ned Mogg,--from Charing Cross,
Union Clarke, ------------

{The best in the world at
A Frenchman,{

{sleight of hand.
My poor Brother,

and
Melting Billy,

Your humble Servant.
To the Church-Wardens, Overseers, and each

respectable inhabitant in the Parish.'
A card was enclosed, as follows:--

'****
Gaming House Keeper,

and **** **** to
The Honourable House of Commons

No. 7 and 8 **** St, St James's.'
This circular was sent to Stockdale, the publisher, in 1820, who

published it with the names in asterisks suppressed. It was
evidently intended to expose some doings in high places.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE DOCTRINE OF PROBABILITIES APPLIED TO GAMBLING.

A distinction must be made between games of skill and games of
chance. The former require application, attention, and a certain

degree of ability to insure success in them; while the latter are
devoid of all that is rational, and are equally within the reach

of the highest and lowest capacity. To be successful in throwing
the dice is one of the most fickle achievements of fickle

fortune; and therefore the principal game played with them is
very properly and emphatically called 'Hazard.' It requires,

indeed, some exertion of the mental powers, of memory, at least,
and a turn for such diversions, to play well many games at cards.

Nevertheless, it is often found that those who do so give no
further proofs of superior memory and judgment, whilst persons of

superior memory and judgment not unfrequently fail egregiously at
the card-table.

The gamester of skill, in games of skill, may at first sight seem
to have more advantage than the gamester of chance, in games of

chance; and while cards are played merely as an amusement, there
is no doubt that a recreation is more rational when it requires

some degree of skill than one, like dice, totallydevoid of all
meaning whatever. But when the pleasure becomes a business, and

a matter of mere gain, there is more innocence, perhaps, in a
perfect equality of antagonists--which games of chance, fairly

played, always secure--than where one party is likely to be an
overmatch for the other by his superior knowledge or ability.

Nevertheless, even games of chance may be artfully managed; and
the most apparently" target="_blank" title="ad.显然，表面上地">apparentlycasual throw of the dice be made subservient

to the purposes of chicanery and fraud, as will be shown in the
sequel.

In the matter of skill and chance the nature of cards is mixed,--
most games having in them both elements of interest,--since the

success of the player must depend as much on the chance of the
'deal' as on his skill in playing the game. But even the chance

of the deal is liable to be perverted by all the tricks of
shuffling and cutting--not to mention how the honourableplayer

may be deceived in a thousand ways by the craft of the sharper,
during the playing, of the cards themselves; consequently

professed gamblers of all denominations, whether their games be
of apparent skill or mere chance, may be confounded together or

considered in the same category, as being equally meritorious and
equally infamous.

Under the name of the Doctrine of Chances or Probabilities, a
very learned science,--much in vogue when lotteries were

prevalent,--has been applied to gambling purposes; and in spite
of the obvious abstruseness of the science, it is not impossible

to give the general reader an idea of its processes and
conclusions.

The probability of an event is greater or less according to the
number of chances by which it may happen, compared with the whole

number of chances by which it may either happen or fail.
Wherefore, if we constitute a fractionwhereof the numerator be

the number of chances whereby an event may happen, and the
denominator the number of all the chances whereby it may either

happen or fail, that fraction will be a proper designation of the
probability of happening. Thus, if an event has 3 chances to