The Indianapolis Journal

GAMBLERS PARADISE

HOT SPRINGS THE GREATEST SPORTING PLACE IN THE COUNTRY.

The Tiger Rules in the Arkansas Town—Everybody Plays and the Fool and His Money Are Soon Parted.

Correspondence Philadelphia Record.

The sporting glory of the South which once filled the cabins of the Mississippi packets has been transferred to the green tables of this little Southwestern city. It is here that one finds to-day those same professional and nonprofessional disciples of dame fortune that once made famous in old slavery days the great boats which plied the Father of Waters between St. Louis and New Orleans. The same hands that nimbly dealt the cards and raked in jack pots representing in value the profits of a drove of slaves are now seen occupied industriously and skillfully in the poker games of the club rooms of Hot Springs. Here, too, have flocked from the frontier towns and the mining camps those typical Western gamblers who have furnished themes for so many border dramas and yellow-covered romances. From the great cities of the far West—touched at last by a moral wave—from Denver, from Cheyenne, from Pueblo to the one hunting ground still left open to this vast and hungry horde have come the crowds of adventurers seeking whom they may devour.

Driven to bay at last in this city among the hills of Arkansas, the tiger reigns supreme. Seated about the faro tables of the Arkansas Club, the Arlington Turf Club and a hundred other more or less famous resorts are seen merchants and business men with huge piles of chips in front of them, whose very manner of play stamps them as novices at the game. Many of them are at first so ignorant of the mysteries of faro that the "lookout" often has to call their attention to the fact that they have won a bet.

The Arkansas Club, which is the leading resort, reminds one of Phil Daly's Pennsylvania Club at Long Branch or of the Saratoga Club, although on a less magnificent scale. It is a two-story building situated a few rods below the park of the Hotel Eastman, with just enough green in front to render it picturesque. It supports a cafe, reading rooms and smoking rooms and is the most palatial establishment of the kind in the West or South. The main gaming rooms are on the second floor, and are handsomely furnished and elaborately decorated.

COSTLY ATTRACTIONS.

No money has been spared to render it alluring to the public, and of course it is the public that pays for it. The play at times runs very high, and the bank roll behind the establishment would put away from a man who was lucky enough to win it the necessity of ever having to work for a living again. It is probably this fact that tempts a great many capitalists and business men to lose more money in a visit to Hot Springs than they would have believed it possible for them to throw away. It is almost needless to add that the great bulk of the money wagered remains on the inside of the table at the close of the season. Although faro is the most popular and largely patronized game, there are plenty of other devices offered to the fool who is destined to soon part with his money. The little ball merrily whirls around the thirty-six numbers of several roulette wheels and plunges with the usual regularity into the O or the OO. There are not more sharks swimming in the still waters of the harbor of the island of Barbadoes, famous as is that spot for sharks, than there are in the hotel lobbies and in the lounging rooms of the bath houses at Hot Springs. The statement can be made with confidence that from no other telegraph office in the United States do so many messages for money leave over the wires as are sent from the Hot Springs, and at no other office are so many telegraphic money transfers received. It is the horde of sharks who are responsible for this. They have such a polite way of gobbling up their victim's money that he is in a great hurry to get a little more to hand over to them. Night after night a visitor will play poker in a quiet room in his hotel with four other apparently equally unsophisticated individuals. Yet all this time the odds are four against one, and the unsophisticated individuals, whose company he finds so agreeable, are consummate masters of their art, and that art is fleecing the unwary.

The managers of the hotels are powerless to prevent the playing of poker in the private rooms by their guests, nor would they in all probability prohibit it if they could. The bar is a large gainer from these poker-playing parties, and it is not within the prerogative of a Hot Springs hotel proprietor to discriminate too closely among his guests between men who are sporting men and men who think they are or want to be.

VISITORS JOIN IN.

Outside of the professional gambling element the visitors who come to Hot Springs are, as might be expected, inclined to sport. It is claimed that the usual course of twenty-one baths from these famous springs will more effectually boil out of the system the effects of dissipation than months devoted to treatment in a sanitarium. Here, then, are to be seen individuals of that class who devote eleven months of the year to soaking themselves in whisky, giving up the twelfth month to Hot Springs in order to soak it out of them and get ready for a fresh start. And here it may be said that at no place of its size throughout this land is there so little drinking done as at Hot Springs. Men who drink everywhere else lay aside the habit while here. At no other hotel of its size and class is there so little wine opened as at the Eastman when it holds 1,500 guests. "Absolutely stop from drinking any alcohol" is the first mandate issued by the physicians here to their patients.

There is nothing to do at Hot Springs but to bathe in the morning and to be a sporting man in the afternoon and evening. Visitors do not wait for night to settle down to begin to gamble here. By 2 o'clock in the afternoon every place is running full blast, although, of course, he who desires can find accommodation at the table in the morning also. From that hour until the small hours of the morning the resorts are crowded with all sorts and conditions of men. Many and large as are the club rooms, it is a common sight each night to see men standing in rows about the gaming tables waiting for a chance to play. And yet the name of these resorts is legion.

The great street, which might be said to be all of Hot Springs, consists of very little except drug stores with physicians' offices on the second floor and saloons with gambling rooms above them. These, with hotels and bath houses, compose about all that there is to the place. From now until the 1st of April it will be no unusual thing to have 15,000 visitors here continually. As the officers of the municipality are hospitable without being philanthropic, they place no barrier to the existence of anything that will add to the pleasure of the visitors and at the same time will incidentally aid them to leave their money in Arkansas.

STANDS IN WITH GAMBLERS.

"You brought something into Hot Springs, but you can take nothing out," is a scriptural perversion that one hears down here. In accordance with this idea the tiger is a favored beast and has license to put his paw on every dollar he is able to reach. Nor does he need to be governed by that statutory provision which says that a man may recover money lost in games of chance. The man who kicks after having lost his money in Hot Springs is very foolish indeed. He will find that the Mayor has not a sympathizing ear for his story of wrong and robbery, and he will discover that the chief of police and his able corps of assistants are stone deaf. He will be advised to board the train which goes out on the little single track to Malvern and from there to Little Rock, at which place he can find all routes that lead away from Arkansas. If he is wise and has any consideration for his own comfort he will act on these suggestions.

Even Hot Springs has shown of late one sign of moral improvement. This sign is in the shape of huge placards posted in the lobbies and card rooms of the Eastman, the new Arlington and other prominent hotels. These placards read:

The Game of Poker Is Prohibited in This Room.

Until three years ago, when the old Arlington, a favorite resort, was burned to the ground, the lobbies and public corridors of the hotels were filled every night with little round tables, at which the guests whiled away the evening looking for straights and flushes. When the sharks began to congregate here in vast numbers from the West the hotel men thought it wise to disclaim all responsibility for their actions, and with this end in view the seductive game of poker was banished to the private rooms, where the guests were their own lords and masters, and where, if they went to be fleeced, it was nobody's funeral but their own.

In order that Hot Springs might thoroughly deserve the name of the Sporting Man's Paradise, gambling is not confined to cards alone nor to the other devices which are the usual accompaniments of a club room. There are numerous turf exchanges where bookmaking is carried on in the afternoons, and auction pools are sold in the morning and evening. Two of these do a tremendous business and receive direct reports from the New Orleans, Chicago and San Francisco tracks. Then, too, there are numerous shops where policy is played, and outside of these stand huge blackboards whereon twice each day the winning numbers are displayed. It is in these places that the colored waiters at the big hotels find opportunity to squander their wages. Lottery tickets are sold openly in various places, and the turf exchanges post on their blackboards the winning numbers which they receive by telegraph directly after the monthly drawings.

Play runs very high at Hot Springs. It is a frequent occurrence for the chips on a poker table in the public club rooms to represent several thousands of dollars. There is also some high rolling done at the tables where the favorite Western game of stud poker is played. Draw poker is carried on with fifty-three cards, as is the custom in Denver and throughout the frontier towns. The joker is left in the pack and passes under the name of the "dunbar." It counts as either an ace when held with other aces or as a suit card to make up a flush.