FEMALE GAMBLERS.
By Andrew T. Sibbald.
NOTWITHSTANDING the fact that women are far too excitable for a business which requires the utmost coolness at all times, whether the gambler be winning or losing, there are facts on record which prove there have been instances in which women have evinced all the necessary dispassionateness which successful gambling en tails. In Plutarch's "Life of Artaxerxes," an incident related of Queen Parysatis furnishes a case in point. In those days (about four hundred years before Christ) gaming with dice was a fashionable pastime at the Persian court, and as Queen Parysatis wished to revenge the murder of her favorite son, who had been slain by a slave named Merabetes, by order of Artaxerxes, she determined to utilize her well known skill at the dice to accomplish her cherished revenge. One day, therefore, she induced the king to play with her for a thousand darics (about two thousand five hundred dollars), and purposely allowed Artaxerxes to win. After losing the game Queen Parysatis played for a slave; the winner to select the slave which he or she required. The Queen won; chose Merabetes; tortured and killed him, and thus satiated her revenge.
Among the ladies of ancient Greece and Rome, there was but little tendency to any description of gambling. As a rule, the Grecian and Roman women were too deeply interested in their domestic concerns to devote time or energy to a business the very nature of which necessitated absolute singleness of purpose, and the complete annihilation of family cares. Even when the Roman women were corrupted under the baneful rule of Nero, they seldom or ever acquired the vice of gambling. Except during the festival of the Bona Dea, betting on any event or game was but little practiced, and even then the individual sums risked were comparatively trifling.
French ladies, unfortunately, have not always followed the good example of the women of Greece and Rome. At first, in deed, when French women began to succumb to gambling transactions, public opinion was so antagonistic to the departure that gaming ventures were carried out in the most secret manner possible. During the reign of Louis the Fourteenth, however, gambling transactions were conducted on a bolder scale, and under Louis the Fifteenth heavy betting was indulged in by French ladies with but little regard for the opinion of Mrs. Grundy. At the close of the eighteenth century gamestresses were as plentiful as blackberries, especially so among the higher classes, and their play was frequently characterized by unfairness and bare-faced cheating. Yet in spite of their cheating propensities, the ladies were often losers. The reverse of fortune frequently reduced high-born dames to beggary, a condition which induced them to sacrifice not only their honor, but that of their daughters as well, in order to pay their gambling debts. As an illustration of the degrading position to which gambling may reduce women, the case of the Countess of Schwiechelt, one of the beauties of the opening years of the present century, is instructive. The Countess was much given to gambling, and while in Paris, on one occasion, she lost fifty thousand livres. Being unable to pay, she actually planned a robbery at the house of one of her friends — Madame Demidoff. Madame Demidoff was the fortunate possessor of a remarkably fine coronet of emeralds. The Countess of Schwiechelt by some means found out where it was kept, and at a ball given by Madame Demidoff she managed to
