BLOOD AND TREASURE.
This last was a favorite phrase, and he rolled it unctuously over his tongue when his beans ran out. But his vivacity was evidently on the wane, and he rose with a tinge of humility in his manner. He approached the landlord and whispered something. That individual, however, did not answer with a whisper, but said, with fair power of lungs, “Oh, that be d⸺d for a yarn. Fork over that quarter now, and no fooling.” I could just hear my late comrade begin a sentence with “But, my dear sir,” when the indignant restaurateur would break in, “My dear sir nothing; I want my money.” With this he relieved his debtor of his hat, expressing his determination to keep it till he got paid. The shabby genteel one had furnished a subject for one of these sketches, and thinking that was worth something, I paid his shot and charged it to The News. He immediately became dignified again, recovered his hat, treated the landlord with cold disdain, and thanked me with a jaunty air, as if to say, “Old boy, you have helped me out of a little fix; I’ll reciprocate some other time.”
Poor devil, I saw him three hours after in an early opening bar, looking very sleepy and fagged. He had probably been walking the streets ever since I left him, and had taken refuge here in hopes that some fresh stranger would ask him to take a drink of that liquid for which he had bartered every comfort in life, and for which he will soon barter life itself. I did not ask him why he had omitted to use his ingenious key.
CHAPTER III.
THE CABMAN’S CHATTER.
Knowing that a hackman knew as much of city life if not more, than any other one man out of 10,000, I climbed on the box of a hack and asked an old-timer to drive me around town.
“All right boss, get up here and I’ll drive you to the Queen’s taste.”
After some general conversation I drifted to the subject of what sights and sounds a hackman sees and hears after nightfall.
“I’ve seen too much of that to my own sorrow, as you know,” my companion said. “If I had seen less of it, instead of being another man’s servant, I would have had a carriage of my own. Not that there ain’t more money to be made at night than in the day time if a man holds a good sharp rein on himself. A fellow that keeps his eye on the main chance and knows how to keep a stiff upper lip will make dollars and dollars.”
“I suppose your work has given you a big insight into the wickedness of a great city.”
“What I don’t know of the blackguards, men and women, in this town ain’t worth knowing. I am up to every scheme that has ever been tried, I believe. I tell you, we hackmen are about as fly as they make them.”
“You can’t all be extra ‘fly,’” I said.
“Well, there are a lot of new fellows in the business, and they are regular chumps. It’s them that spoils everything. They don’t know the kind of men to strike for a good fat fare, and when they do they bungle it, and get themselves in the papers and give the hackmen a bad name. The business is overrun. Everybody that knows how to put on a horse-collar now wants to drive hack. They see that it is a job which there ain’t any hard work in. But there’s any amount of dirty work for us. We’re out in all sorts of weather, sun and rain and frost. We’re liable to be out till all hours of the night and up by daylight the next morning to catch a train. Then, if we want to make a cent, we have to do everything we’re asked. It’s quite a common snap to have a stranger come to you at the Union station and ask you to drive him up to one of them houses. Now, just look at such work as that—acting as a bad woman’s directory. But I don’t know of a hackman on the stand who won’t take the job. You bet your life I make them fellows pay accordin’ to a special tariff. Do you know, last summer I drove an old fellow from Parry Sound up to a house on Little Nelson street. When he paid me my fare I saw he had a big wad of bills. He told me to come back next day about two o’clock, as he wanted to be driven to a sister of his who lived on the Kingston road. I called for him next afternoon, but the old man was not ready to go, and would you believe, I called for that old tarrier for five days, and on the fifth day he didn’t have a picayune. I had to drive him to Singer’s pawn shop, where he put up his watch and chain for money enough to take him home. He never saw his sister, and I often wondered what yarn he told the folks at home about his visit to town.”
“Do you suppose they robbed him?”
“Oh! not exactly robbed him, but I heard afterwards that the old fool was offering prizes of five dollar notes for whoever could kick highest. Do you know that if it wasn’t for the strangers half of these places would have to shut their doors.”
“I believe you are right.”
“I know it. Why, the missuses of these places know that so well that a hackman who always takes such fares to her place is welcome to an occasional bottle of beer, and any driving that she has to do is given exclusively to him.”
“Well, sir, I am sorry to have to say it, but it’s a mighty poor business for a respectable man to have to engage in.”
“Oh, indeed, I know it, but still I discovered something worse even than that the other night. A young fellow hired me not very long ago. He said: ‘I want to look for a certain person on King street, so I’d like you to drive very slowly along the south side close to the sidewalk.’ I said all right, and I did as I was told. Every once in a while he would say ‘A little slower, cabby,’ and I saw he was peering out of the window. By gob, says I, he is some American fly-cop after someone. But I didn’t think that long. I heard him say something, and thinking he was speaking to me I leaned over and found he was talking to a young girl on the sidewalk. I heard her say: ‘get out, you sneak.’ I was on to him then. He just did it once more, when I jumps off the hack and told the girl to stop for a second, and I would see that the man who insulted her was punished. I hauled him out of the carriage and told him to pay me $3. He made a grand kick. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘there will be a policeman by here in a minute.’ That settled it. He paid me and escaped.”
“That was a case where virtue was its own reward.”
“Yes sir; three dollars for ten minutes’ work. I was telling some of the boys on the stand about my adventure, and some of them were saying that there was a gentleman in the town here who used his private carriage for making mashes on young girls along the street after dark. A handsome carriage and a pair of horses is more than some girls can resist.”
“What was the most exciting thing that ever happened you as a hackman?”
“Well now, that would be pretty hard to say. Oh, as a general thing there is nothing ever very special happens to a hackman. The time the block-paving was going on on King and Queen streets, last summer, I had a funny experience. I was on the York street stand one night when a young man with a black beard came up to me. There was a young woman with him, not very good-looking but pretty nicely dressed. He asked for a certain hackman. Well, we don’t care, as a rule, about putting fares out of our own paw into that of any other driver. But this fellow happened to be next hack to me, and heard his name. Anyway, they got in, and I heard the man say, ‘Drive me to the Humber.’ Jim’s going away left me first hack on the stand. I thought no more about it, but in a few minutes a real pretty woman came up to me and described this man, and asked me if I had seen him. I told her he had gone into a hack with a lady. You ought just to have seen that woman’s eyes when I told her that. ‘If you can catch—no, I think she said overtake—overtake that hack, said she, I’ll give you $5.’ Well, now, I knew they had gone to the Humber, and I was pretty sure they wouldn’t drive very fast, so I bundled her in and got on the box. I wasn’t very sure how far they had got with the block-paving on Queen street, but I wanted to strike what was fit to drive on as soon as possible, so as to make sure I wouldn’t pass the hack. So I went along Richmond street to Esther and when I got there I found the street full of blocks. This kept me back, and we didn’t catch that darned hack until we were on the lake shore road. When we got even with it I said, ‘Jimmy, stop your load, I want to speak to you a minute.’ He stopped, and when I assisted my fare out she was trembling like a leaf. She just went over to the other hack and looked in. I just saw her reach in her two hands and when she took ’em out she held in them the other woman’s hat and feathers. She threw that on the ground and trampled on them and then reached for the other girl again. She fairly skull-dragged her out of the hack. I believe she would have choked her if I and another cabman hadn’t pulled her away. And do you know, that big chump in the hack never interfered or said a word. He had a black beard and mustache, and his face was as white as a sheet. As soon as we pulled her away she just sat down in the sand and commenced to cry as if her heart would break. Then the man came out of the hack and came up to her: ‘For heaven’s sake, Kate, don’t make an exhibition of yourself,’ he said. Well, sir, women are the darnedest fools you ever saw. If she had gone to work and scratched the nose off her husband I’d never have interfered, but instead of that she tackles the woman, and when that mean villain began to talk to her and raised her up out of the sand she quieted down and drove off with him in Jim’s hack. Oh women are queer ones. I’ll bet that she puts all the blame on the other woman, and thought her husband was a perfect angel, who had been led astray by a designin’ woman—that’s what they call it. Well, I drove the girlie back to town, and when she had time to think she was hopping mad. Every time she’d look at her mashed hat she wanted to go and find that woman. She said she had as much right to him as the other woman, because he paid attentions to her before he was married, and only married the other woman because she was better fixed than she was. ‘Yes, and better looking,’ I said to myself. But the strangest thing that happened that night was that I was so flustrated that I let that woman go off without ever asking for my $5. But it was all right. A boy came up to me on the stand next day and handed me an envelope with a $10 bill and a slip of paper inside with writing on it, ‘Fare to Humber and back.’”
CHAPTER IV.
BILLIARDISTIC BOYS.
There is no amusement I can think of out of which innocent enjoyment cannot be extracted. Personally, I can see no harm in young people dancing or playing billiards or cards—as long as they are carried on in the homes of these young people. As soon as our youth desire to pursue these pleasures away from the watchful eye of their parents, so soon do they become dangerous. The billiard halls of this city are not supported by men, but by lads. Go to any of them, either day or night, and ten to one you will find the majority of the players are youths not yet come of age. A remarkably large proportion you will find to be mere boys, and the skill with which they play seems to argue that they did not start playing yesterday nor the day before. Just watch the swagger they assume. The blase airs of these young cynics is an article of first-class quality. After you have admired that, I call your attention to the cut of the garments of these young gentlemen—very neat isn’t it—and two or three of them sport watches, gold or silver. Then consider that it costs these cute-looking chaps 30 cents an hour for every hour that they occupy that table and that some of them are here every night, and you will wonder where the wherewithal comes from. Some of them work. Some of them don’t. In any case they must have indulgent parents, or—something. There is a group of Upper Canada College boys round that table. No doubt their wealthy and aristocratic progenitors make liberal allowances to their darling boys. They play good enough to make a good showing in a tournament. If they are as proficient regarding the angles at the base and on the other side of the base of an isosceles triangle as they are with the angles in and about this table they must be fine mathematicians. There is another group playing pool. Don’t look at them too hard, because they are chipping in ten cents on the game. One little boy who has not been playing very long, and who I saw scoop in a “pot” shortly after I came up stairs, has lost the joyous look that then mantled his features. Just study that face. Look at the dreadfully anxious expression with which he follows the movements of the ball, and as it creeps slowly towards a pocket I believe the intensity of that boy’s will makes the inert ivory move an inch further on, and it drops in the pocket. He flushes up to the roots of his hair. If he gets the next ball he will take in the “pot” again. But he is very nervous, and makes a poor shot, and the next in hand pockets the ball. The little chap looks wistfully at the bigger boy who took in the forty cents, and goes up and whispers something to him. “I can’t do it Charley. You’d only lose again. You’ve got no show with us, and you’d better get out of it while you can.” Charley goes and sits down, feeling very bitterly I’ve no doubt. There is the spirit of gaming in its essential characteristic—after all of your own money is gone, borrow from anybody and everybody, and have another hazard.
I went up to another prominent hall in the daytime, and found it filled with youths, but they did not seem such a respectable-looking lot as those I saw at night at the first place. They were a hoodlum lot, very noisy, and poor players. I was much surprised. It seemed astonishing that during the working hours there could be such a number of young men unemployed and yet playing a game which it requires funds to engage in. There is something very ominous about this and no one could think otherwise than that times must be very flush indeed to permit of it.
A visit to a hall which is attached to a saloon showed me that this class of place is patronized mainly by men, nor was there half as much noise as in the room last mentioned. I am told that in some of these places they merely play for the drinks, and much drunkenness is the result.
Pool is at present the most popular form of billiards among the masses. It lends itself more readily to gambling than carom billiards, and any person who takes observation will come to the conclusion that more of the spirit of gaming is disseminated among our young men by this game than by any other half-a-dozen things. It would seem to be quite as necessary that boys should be prevented playing at all in public billiard halls, as it is that they should be prevented buying liquor at a bar.
CHAPTER V.
THE GAMBLERS.
The life of a professional gambler is not passed in a constant whirl of excitement, as the uninitiated may suppose; neither is it a continual source of pleasure to him, as many of the fraternity in Toronto could testify did they wish to relate their Police Court reminiscences, or the enjoyment they experienced during their somewhat erratic periods of “financial depression.” The crime of gambling at cards increases with the growth of every city and for some reason or other the police make but spasmodic efforts to suppress it. This appears to be especially the case in Toronto, where the members of this thieving profession openly defy the detectives and laugh at the puny efforts of the police constables and their officers, who have sometimes occasion to visit the houses in search of thieves. Neither the constables nor the detectives are to blame for this deplorable state of affairs, but the heads of the department are, because they know that the evil exists; know that young men are nightly receiving their first lessons in those dishonest practices that tend to damn their whole future prospects, and yet will not issue the mandate that would rid the city of these unprincipled professional gamblers, these miserable curs of society. Not long ago, at a Police Court trial, the Magistrate remarked that he looked upon a professional gambler as a more degraded being than a common street thief, and explained his meaning by adding that a thief boldly takes the chances of securing his spoil or a term in prison, while the gambler first secures the confidence of his victim, and then by subtle cheating robs him of his money. And yet as a Police Commissioner he details about two hundred constables and seven detectives to hunt down the thieves, and allows the gambling hells to flourish on the principal streets. The Magistrate is not alone in this neglect of duty. Mayor Boswell is chairman of the Board of Police Commissioners, and his Honor Judge Boyd sits by his side. Are these gentlemen aware that night after night scores of young men are being