Sunday Dispatch

THE "HELLS" IN WASHINGTON.

A Washington correspondent says: I intimated in my last that I had been investigating various aspects of Washington life and operations, among which was that feature known as Banking, and the gambling hells of Washington are the most noted on the continent, both in numbers and magnitude. The best customers to these establishments are the members of Congress, although, since the war broke out, and has confined the "chivalry" with their corpulent pocket-books, south of Mason and Dixon's, the heaviest income of the hells has been cut off, and at present their business seems confined mainly to officers, who, in full uniforms, and at all hours of the day and night, throng the apartments of the Faro and roulette dealers.

We will be aristocratic for once, and visit only places where elegance presides, where wealth has scattered her luxuries and surroundings with a liberal hand. We need not fear mistakes, our conductor is a man of the world. He has frozen his toes in Ireland, made love to the tawny belle of the Choctaws, has trod the boards of the London and New York stage, has edited a newspaper, healed the sick, embalmed the dead, in short is a finished, thorough cosmopolitan.

A ring at a door-bell, and a reconnoissance through its grated upper half by stalwart negro, then up a pair of stairs, through an ante-room, and we stand in the carpeted, elegant jungles of the modern "tiger." There are two wide, lofty rooms, divided by folding doors, both dazzling with light, softly carpeted, decorated with elegant and voluptuous paintings, and seemingly just the spot where poor, tired humanity would come to get a foretaste of Eden, and recuperate for the stern battles of life. In the first room is a sideboard, upon whose shelves are rows of elegant decanters, through which blushes the purple brand, or flashes the crystalline extract of the juniper—Anglice, gin.

In this room is also a Roulette table, which as we enter, is vacant, and in the other room is a Faro table, around which are gathered a half dozen men, so absorbed in the game that, were Gabriel to rock the earth with a blast from his trumpet, they would never hear it.

The room, by the way, is interesting from reminiscence. Here, not long since, the presiding genius was John C. Heenan—the flitting, dissolving love of the fair Adah Isaacs Menken; and here not many weeks ago, an aspiring paymaster from Maryland succeeded in investing in one night the trifling little sum of twenty-seven thousand dollars.

I won't describe the game, for what little, if any, is not known about it in Chicago, is not known anywhere else, even in this city of iniquity—Washington.

Behind the table sits the dealer—long in finger, white in hand, and with the inevitable cluster of brilliants sparkling from digit and shirt bosom. He is grey eyed, pock marked, resolute, and yet pleasant in appearance, with a depth of chest that show him to be no mean man in the case of an exchange of fistic courtesies.

On the right stands a captain, playing with half-dollar checks, and investing one at a time, evidently a loser, for as his check is raked down he follows it with a sigh, and I doubt not a curse upon the capriciousness of Fortune. He has but a half dozen checks—in a minute they are gone, and after going to a corner and examining an empty pocket-book, he returns and stands moodily watching the game.

Next to him a thick-set young man, who, with something less than a bushel of ten and twenty dollar checks at his side, is with the most perfect nonchalance betting from one to five hundred dollars upon his cards, and winning or losing without the slightest change of countenance. But he is lucky; every card that he bets on wins, until, after a half hour, he loses three or four times in succession, and then, with the remark: "My luck is changing: I reckon I'll quit," he counts over his checks to the dealer, who coolly, as if it were a matter of five cents, pays over to the lucky individual thirty-seven hundred dollars, in one-hundred dollar three per centum coupons of the United States Treasury Notes. Thrusting the immense pile of paper in his coat pocket, the gentleman rises, takes a cigar and a drink at the sideboard, and then, with a "Good night, gentlemen," he walks out.

The dealer proceeds unconcernedly, while I, dazzled at such results, draw out a solitary five and deposit it on the king. In just three seconds the claws of the tiger cover my lonely and long-treasured five, and I see it no more; and, I may add, I have not seen it since.

A young gentleman, evidently a clerk in a dry goods store, sits on my left, and is betting and losing. Two or three times his checks run out, and then he goes to a friend, whispers a moment, and finally returns with a ten, which he invests in checks, and loses. At last he comes back from one of his excursions with a lowering brow and no money. He sits down, watches the game a moment, and leaves.

About in this style went the game—one man winning, all the balance losing. By-and-by an elegant supper was served in an upper room, and then the party adjourned and commenced playing at roulette, and officers appeared to be out of luck; for here, in less than half an hour, I saw a Federal captain lose some six hundred and twenty dollars. Everybody lost till just before I left, when the young gentleman who had been borrowing and betting on faro returned. He watched the spinning of the ball a short time, and then took a bystander aside.

"You owe me fifty now," I heard the other say.

"Pay or no pay?"

Finally he came back with a "green back" to the amount of twenty. He put it all on the red: red won. The whole pile again went on the red, and again red was winner. He changed to black, and black won. In short, everything that he laid his money on was the winning color. In less than five minutes from the time he began he quietly cashed his checks and left with over eighteen hundred dollars.

So much for luck.

During the two hours that I was in the establishment some five or six thousand dollars changed hands.

There are some five or six first-class establishments of the kind in Washington, besides any quantity of others of lesser note. They are well known to the police, and in fact everybody else, but are not disturbed. They are as much necessary to Congress as the nigger question, and nearly or quite as much patronized.