17. On the Casino Terrace - Page 2

better chance to win yourself, while other parties
stand a better chance to lose; and that kind, which is played in great
gambling-houses known as the Stock Exchange and the Bourse, is
considered, morally speaking, as quite innocuous. Large fortunes are
made at this other sort of gambling, which, of course, sanctifies and
almost canonises it. Indeed, if you will note, you will find not only
that the objection to gambling pure and simple is commonest in the most
commercial countries, but also that even there it is commonest among the
most commercial classes. The landed aristocracy, the military, and the
labouring men have no objection to betting; nor have the Neapolitan
lazzaroni, the Chinese coolies. It is the respectable English
counting-house that discourages the vice, especially among the clerks,
who are likely to make the till or the cheque-book rectify the little
failures of their flutter on the Derby.

Observe how artificial is the whole mild out-cry: how absolutely it
partakes of the nature of damning the sins you have no mind to! Here, on
the terrace where I sit, and where ladies in needlessly costly robes are
promenading up and down to exhibit their superfluous wealth
ostentatiously to one another, my ear is continuously assailed by the
constant _ping, ping, ping_ of the pigeon-shooting, and my peace
disturbed by the flapping death-agonies of those miserable victims. Yet
how many times have you heard the tables at Monte Carlo denounced to
once or never that you have heard a word said of the poor mangled
pigeons? And why? Because nobody loses much money at pigeon-matches.
That is legitimate sport, about as good and as bad as pheasant or
partridge shooting--no better, no worse, in spite of artificial
distinctions; and nobody (except the pigeons) has any interest in
denouncing it. Legend has it at Monte Carlo, indeed, that when the
proprietors of the Casino wished to take measures "pour attirer les
Anglais" they held counsel with the wise men whether it was best to
establish and endow an English church or a pigeon-shooting tournament.
And the church was in a minority. Since then, I have heard more than one
Anglican Bishop speak evil of the tables, but I have never heard one of
them say a good word yet for the boxed and slaughtered pigeons.

Let me take a more striking because a less hackneyed case--one that
still fewer people would think of. Everybody who visits Monte Carlo gets
there, of course, by the P.L.M. If you know this coast at all you will
know that P.L.M. is the curt and universal abbreviation for the Paris,
Lyon, Méditerranée Railway Company--in all probability the most gigantic
and wickedest monopoly on the face of this planet. Yet you never once
heard a voice