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IT 00200
On a small baize-covered table are representations of the suits -in a pack of playing cards, and therewith some superadded devices representing a crown and one or two other matters not now distinctly ^	remembered. Above this is the gilded head of a mustang	horse. The
w	gambler and player cast dice through an instrument like	that	used
in "High Dice," and if the dice, which are cut to represent on their several faces the figures on the board and not the ordinary black dotls, favor the player, player wins. Otherwise, "the Old Mustang Game, here it is, and the mustang wins!"
Another Game
Next is a game half-way between "High Die" and the	"Old	Mustang,"
and presenting pretty much the same general appearance,	save	that
it seems a lucrative device, to judge from the fact that the double funnel in the High Ball man's hand is of silver and elegantly chased.
Vingt-el-une or "vantoon" or Twenty-One"
Then there is Vingt-el-une, "vantoon," they call it, or twenty-one, which seems to be the casting of cards into a species of wooden ditch in a green-covered table, after it has been determined who that is playing comes nearest to having twenty-one pips—I believe this is Hoyle's word—on his cards.
Faro
And now, beyond all these, comes "Faro," his Egyptian majesty, supposed to be the pet avocation of the ancient Pharaoh, and losses wherefrom made him so uncommon hard on Gideon's band.
"Faro" i’s simply a calculation of chances as to whether any given card will come on the box or out, the pack being drawn from a little silver box, one in, one out. Where.A, for instance, bets that the king will come in the box and two kings come together, one in and one out. it is the gambler's privilege to take half the money bet on the king.
Beyond this, which is called "splits," the value of the game to these houses is in the fact th?t it is so indubitably "fair" that great confidence is felt in and affection for it by many. It is a principle that has defied all mathematicians, that if A'seek to say where B have a black pea or a white in feds hand, he will miss the truth oftener than he will hit, though it would seem that there is an exactly even chance; and on this principle the gambler makes his money at faro, for he holds the bean and makes the player guess.
"Faro," then, is a great favorite, and is here in all its glory. He may be persecuted in other places, but in New Orleans "cleans em out" with a full hand, even as the old original Pharaoh worried the Hebrews of yore.
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Upstairs
Up stairs from all this gambling--which is on a level with the w	sidewalk,	and into which you step, as stated, from the street bv
H'SM °BV’lde r °f the l00sely Swin«lnB hal?-a«H~thJr, is more Faro," more "High Die", and a liquor bar.