Alma Record

Women Who Fight the Tiger.

Gambling among some of our fair women says a New York letter has become such a craze that in several instances they have had to sell their jewels in order to obtain money enough to pay their debts. Poker is their favorite game, and it has played sad havoc with many a dainty, well-stocked jewel casket. Two well-known society women, one young and the other rather advanced, have been especially unfortunate. A considerable difference in their appearance at the opera and whatever places they have been wont to flash their gems in will be noticeable. Both husbands have refused point blank to settle their wives' "debts of honor."

At a big hotel on the sound, which, perhaps, has a scarcely enviable reputation, every evening during the summer was spent by married women and young girls in the rather dainty card-rooms, making a business of card-playing. At first the limit was kept at a low figure, just enough to make it interesting; but as the season passed and the women became more infatuated it was gradually allowed to become larger. Some of these devotees were mothers of large families, and needed rest after their winter's social and household duties, but they gambled with a reckless nervousness that is always observable in a woman at a poker-table.

They frequently played until morning, and were a nervous, dragged-out set when the hotel closed its doors and they came back to town.