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Collection: Books and Periodicals
Three Years in California by John D. Borthwick (1857)(LoC) (423 pages)
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Page: of 423
52 FRENCH MONTE AND THIMBLERIG.
of it all, the runners, or tooters, for the opposition
river-steamboats, would be cracking up the superiority of their respective boats at the top of their
lungs, somewhat in this style: “One dollar to-night
for Sacramento, by the splendid steamer Senator,
the fastest. boat that ever turned a wheel from Long
wharf—with feather pillowsand curled-hairmattresses,
mahogany doors and silver hinges. She has got
eight young-lady passengers to-night, that speak all
the dead languages, and not a coloured man from
stem to stern of her.” Here an opposition runner
would let out upon him, and the two would slang
each other in the choicest California Billingsgate for
the amusement of the admiring crowd.
Standing at the door of a gambling saloon, with
8
one foot raised on the steps, would be a well-dressed
young man, playing thimblerig on his leg with a golden
pea, for the edification of a crowd of gaping greenhorns, some one of whom would be sure to bite. Not
far off would be found a precocious little blackguard of
fourteen or fifteen, standing behind a cask, and playing on the head of it a sort of thimblerig game with
three cards, called “ French monte.” He first shows
their faces, and names one—say the ace of spades—as
the winning card, and after thimblerigging them on
the head of the cask, he lays them in a row with their
faces down, and goes on proclaiming to the public ina
loud voice that the ace of spades is the winning card,
and that he'll “bet any man one or two hundred
dollars he can’t pick up the ace of spades.” Occasion-