Southport Telegraph

THE VILLANY OF GAMBLING.

Mr. Jonathan H. Green, the reformed gambler, is still in Baltimore, exposing the various schemes of fraud by which gamblers fleece their victims. The editor of the Baltimore Sun availed himself of an invitation to visit the apartments of Mr. Green a few days since, and gives the following account of the interview: "The purpose of this visit was to witness an exposition of the ingenious but most atrocious devices resorted to by the manufacturers of playing cards to afford to those who are willing to pay for the secret, 'means and appliances,' almost beyond credibility, by which the heartless and mercenary wretches who infest the community—under the specious appellation of sportsmen, but more properly 'gamblers' and 'black legs,' may fleece the confiding and unwary at will and with a degree of facility that is literally frightful. From the decided stand which has been taken by this journal, from its commencement to the present hour, against gaming, in all its phases and varieties, our readers are doubtless well assured that we were pretty thoroughly convinced, that fraud of no ordinary character was the real secret of the success of the gambler; but we are free to confess, that it had never for a single moment entered into our imagination to conceive one hundredth part of the rank and diabolical system of villany by which the gambling fraternity appear to be sustained. The fraud and adept, which occasionally detected, as in the case of Lord de Roos and others, has excluded the victim from the society of honorable men, and brought upon him the affected contempt or even gamblers themselves. Its angel purity contrasted with the hideous hellish, and irredeemable atrocity of the well devised schemes for the gambler's success. Unfortunately, it is impossible without numberless illustrations and an amount of space beyond our command, to elucidate to the reader with sufficient clearness the character, extent and minutiae of the ingenious and comprehensive villany in reference. It embraces every possible diversity of card playing, and descends to incredible peculiarities by which to establish the successful practice of the most glaring system of fraud that was perhaps ever exploded in the world. A fraud that has held in its accursed thraldom, for nearly a century, the civilized nations of both hemispheres, and offered up at the heartless shrine of mammon its millions of unsuspecting victims, regardless of the sufferings of women and children, deaf to the shriek of the maniac, and relentless over the grave of the suicide—sacrificing body and soul in its all-grasping avarice and cupidity. With regard to the devices themselves, they are too palpable to be misunderstood, too circumstantial to have been accidental, and so plain when pointed out as to make it a matter of no little astonishment that they have not been discovered by some one of the victims of card playing long before, and exposed throughout the world. Several gentlemen were present with us on the occasion to which we refer, and one of them, a professor in one of our medical colleges, after being in communication with Mr. Green less than a minute, took one of the packs of cards on the table, and dealt out readily, by the backs alone, the four different suits in four different piles. The secret was then pointed out to us all by Mr. Green, and of course universal astonishment and indignation was expressed.

But there was another secret still, which when designated, enabled any one to detect the "size" or denomination of the card quite as easily and almost as readily by the back as by the face or spots. There were several packs of cards on the table, with a diversity of ornaments on the back, but every pack exhibited some peculiarities adapted to particular games, by which the cards especially desirable to be known, could be identified with a glance of the eye. There was a pack intended for certain games, cut slightly wedge shaped, so that by inverting a card, its position could always be determined by the touch, though to the unwary it would be imperceptible. Another pack designed for "brag," white backed, and apparently plain and fair, when exposed to sufficient light, exhibited fine lines in the grain of the paper, drawn lengthwise on the back of the "aces," "knaves" and "nines," the valuable cards in this game; and breadthwise in the rest of the pack. There was also a pack, brought to Mr. Green, in Louisville, which were twenty years old, and in which he was defied to point out any proof of collusion between the manufacturer and the gambler; but he succeeded, it appears, in detecting instantly a distinct identity by the backs, of each particular suit. He also stated his desire to be put to the test, and expressed his ability to point out in any cards, whether English, French, German or American, purchased in any city or any store, the means of collusion between the manufacturer and the gambler, or the secret which the former sells to the latter, and by which he is put in possession of the means to rob and swindle every unsuspecting victim he can either entice into his den, or who lucklessly falls in his way."