d with the
presence of a certain type of itinerants, so-called " Methodist ministers." In these few first years, they went about from camp to camp, and won or lost their money as the men above described.
The man who keeps a gambling den to-day is another manner of man. The professional gambler through most of the Pacific cities of to-day is a low character. The would-be " sport " who would imitate these men of the early time is usually a broken-down barber, bar-tender, or waiter in disgrace.
A sudden and short-lived race were these. Gay old sports, who sprung up mushroom-like from the abundance and very heaps of gold. Men who had vast sums of money from some run of fortune, and no great aim in life, and having no other form of excitement, sat down and gambled for amusement, until they came to like it and followed it as a calling, for a time, at least.
All men have a certain amount of surplus energy that must be thrown off against some keen excite ment. You see how very naturally very good men became gamblers in that time. Their suc cessors, however, gamble for gold and gain ; too idle to toil and too cowardly to rob, they follow a calling, about the mining camps particularly, that is now as disreputable as it was once respectable, or rather aristocratic.
The good old days are gone. The gay gamblers with their open pockets and ideas of honour ; the fast women who kept the camps in tur
