The reader, among other of Gotham's gambling devices, may have heard of what is aptly designated "Skin Faro," but it is altogether unlikely that he may be acquainted with the modus operandi of the game. Skin faro is not played at a regular establishment in which the player against the bank is fleeced. The game is liable to drift against the stranger in his journey to New York, or indeed on any railroad or steamboat, and the "point" is to get the unsophisticated countryman to be banker. In this "racket" it is the banker who is to be skinned. According to a recent authority the ordinary process is something like this:

"After the topic has been adroitly introduced and the party worked up to the desire to play, it is proposed that the man with the most money shall act as banker. Now, in an ordinary square game, few would be unwilling to stand in this position, for though the risk is considerable, the profit is generally slow but certain. At this point the question rises as to who has a pack of cards. The question is soon answered; there always is a pack handy, and the swindlers have it; and this pack, if examined, will be found to contain a neat round pin-hole through the center of the pack. The object of this pin-hole is as follows: the player against the bank makes his boldest play on the turn, that is, at the end of the game, when there are only three cards out, tarry; five, nine and all the aces, except spades, can be guessed with almost uniform certainty by any one looking on the dealer's hand just before he is about to turn the last two cards (excluding the one left in hoc). As the bank pays four for one 'on the turn,' it is a very good thing for the player, and the faro banker, for the nonce the would-be sport, soon finds himself cleaned out."

The people who frequent gambling-houses may be divided into two classes: occasional gamblers and professional gamblers. Among the first may be placed those attracted by curiosity, and those strangers already referred to who are roped in by salaried intermediaries. The second is composed of men who gamble to retrieve their losses, or those who try to deceive and lull their grief through the exciting diversions that pervade these seductive "hells."

[C]HAPTER XXI.

GAMBLING MADE EASY.

The Last Ingenious Scheme to Fool the Police—Flat-Houses Turned into Gambling Houses—"Stud-Horse Poker," and "Hide the Heart."

The following timely article on the newest racket in gambling in the City of New York is from the Sunday Mercury of June 20, 1886:

"Since the gambling houses in the upper part of the city, where night games flourished, have been closed and their business almost entirely suspended, a new method of operations has been introduced. A Mercury reporter a few days ago was hurrying down Broadway, near Wall street, when he was tapped on the shoulder by a young man not yet of age, whom he recognized as a clerk in a prominent banking house, and whose father is also well known in financial circles. After interchanging the usual courtesies the young clerk pulled a card-case from his pocket, and, asking if the Mercury man liked to play poker, presented a neat little piece of white Bristol board which read:

Harry R . . . . n,

First Flat, No. — Sixth Avenue.