This fraternity of artists—whether they were to be denominated rooks,(5) sharps, sharpers, black-legs, Greeks, or gripes—were exceedingly numerous, and were dispersed among all ranks of society.
(5) So called because rooks are famous for stealing materials out of other birds' nests to build their own.
The follies and vices of others—of open-hearted youth in particular—were the great game or pursuit of this odious crew. Though cool and dispassionate themselves, they did all in their power to throw others off their guard, that they might make their advantage of them.
In others they promoted excess of all kinds, whilst they themselves took care to maintain the utmost sobriety and temperance. 'Gamesters,' says Falconer, 'whose minds must be always on the watch to take advantages, and prepared to form calculations, and to employ the memory, constantly avoid a full meal of animal food, which they find incapacitates them for play nearly as much as a quantity of strong liquor would have done, for which reason they feed chiefly on milk and vegetables.'
As profit, not pleasure, was the aim of these knights of darkness, they lay concealed under all shapes and disguises, and followed up their game with all wariness and discretion. Like wise traders, they made it the business of their lives to excel in their calling.
For this end they studied the secret mysteries of their art by night and by day; they improved on the scientific schemes of their profound master, Hoyle, and on his deep doctrines and calculations of chances. They became skilful without a rival where skill was necessary, and fraudulent without conscience where fraud was safe and advantageous; and while fortune or chance appeared to direct everything, they practised numberless devices by which they insured her ultimate favours to themselves.
Of these none were more efficacious, because none are more ensnaring, than bribing their young and artless dupes to future play by suffering them to win at their first onsets. By rising a winner the dupe imbibed a confidence in his own gambling abilities, or deemed himself a favourite of fortune. He engaged again, and was again successful—which increased his exultation and confirmed his future confidence; and thus did the simple gudgeon swallow their bait, till it became at last fast hooked.
When rendered thus secure of their prey, they began to level their whole train of artillery against the boasted honours of his short-lived triumph. Then the extensive manors, the ancient forests, the paternal mansions, began to tremble for their future destiny. The pigeon was marked down, and the infernal crew began in good earnest to pluck his rich plumage. The wink was given on his appearance in the room, as a signal of commencing their covert attacks. The shrug, the nod, the hem—every motion of the eyes, hands, feet—every air and gesture, look and word—became an expressive, though disguised, language of fraud and cozenage, big with deceit and swollen with ruin. Besides this, the card was marked, or 'slipped,' or COVERED. The story is told of a noted sharper of distinction, a foreigner, whose hand was thrust through with a fork by his adversary, Captain Roche, and thus nailed to the table, with this cool expression of concern—'I ask your pardon, sir, if you have not the knave of clubs under your hand.' The cards were packed, or cut, or even SWALLOWED. A card has been eaten between two slices of bread and butter, for the purpose of concealment.
With wily craft the sharpers substituted their deceitful 'doctors' or false dice; and thus 'crabs,' or 'a losing game,' became the portion of the 'flats,' or dupes.
There were different ways of throwing dice. There was the 'Stamp'—when the caster with an elastic spring of the wrist rapped the cornet or box with vehemence on the table, the dice as yet not appearing from under the box. The 'Dribble' was, when with an air of easy but ingenious motion, the caster poured, as it were, the dice on the board—when, if he happened to be an old practitioner, he might suddenly cog with his fore-finger one of the cubes. The 'Long Gallery' was when the dice were flung or hurled the whole length of the board. Sometimes the dice were thrown off the table, near a confederate, who, in picking them up, changed one of the fair for a false die with two sixes. This was generally done at the first throw, and at the last, when the fair die was replaced. The sixes were on the opposite squares, so that the fraud could only be detected by examination. Of course this trick could only be practised at raffles, where only three throws are required.