OF THE DIVERGENCES BETWEEN BRADLEY’S AND MONTE CARLO—OF THE IDIOSYNCRASIES OF THE LITTLE WHITE PILL—OF THE ODDITIES OF FAT PLAYERS—OF TIME-KILLING PASTIMES—AND OF THE WISDOM OF DIONYSIUS THE ELDER
ABOUT the only similarity between Bradley’s and the Monte Carlo Casino is the squareness of the game and the roundness of the roulette wheels. A majority of the people who gamble at Bradley’s are the extreme opposite of the majority of the people who gamble at Monte Carlo; and in these two gambling houses any observer may discover an outstanding difference between the European’s and the American’s attitude toward money. For years Americans have been disparaged by Europeans as money-grubbers. As a matter of fact, the people of all nations, generally speaking, are money-grubbers, in that they devote themselves to earning money on which to live. The European, however, pursues his money with an unrelenting ferocity; and when he over-takes it, he seizes it with such an iron grip that the head on each coin almost bursts into shrill screams of agony. The European makes money in order to save it; and he never lets go of it if he can help it. The American regards money-making as a fascinating game; and he makes it in order to spend it.
At Monte Carlo almost every gambler, out of the thousands that play there, plays a system. He uses a system book, checking each turn of the wheel in it, and writing down column upon column of figures. He devotes hours to computing his chances of winning; and practically every system player believes implicitly that he isn’t risking his money, but that he has a sure system that will enable him to get something from the Casino for nothing. He gambles for profit; not for pleasure.
At Bradley’s, nobody plays a system. All of the club-members—oil millionaires, steel millionaires, short-haired and short-skirted débutantes, and fat dowagers half concealed behind interlacing ropes of pearls and diamonds—play only for the thrill of playing. A person who used a system book would probably be regarded as being either insane or drunk. Nine-tenths of the women don’t know enough about the game to play anything except a number full on the nose, or red and black. In roulette a number can be played full on the nose; and if it turns up on the wheel, the player receives thirty-five for one. If one is satisfied with smaller odds, and with better chances of winning, one can place his money between two numbers, or in the middle of four numbers, or on a transversal of three numbers, or on a double transversal of six numbers, or in various other ways. At Monte Carlo the favorite woman’s bet is the single and double transversal. At Bradley’s the men, and women too, bet almost entirely on single numbers. They want the big thrill that comes from collecting thirty-five dollars for each dollar that they put up. They become foolishly stubborn about it, sticking to a single number so long that it would have to turn up three or four times in succession in order to enable them to break even. Fat ladies at Bradley’s love to take a fat roll of chips in one hand and run the hand down a column of numbers, allowing the chips to slip off their fingertips and stay where they drop.
There are two gambling rooms in Bradley’s—the big octagonal outer room in which there are six roulette tables and two French Hazard tables, and the small inner room for men only, in which there are three roulette tables and one French Hazard table. The inner room provides a retreat for the men whose attention is constantly distracted in the outer room by the frequent demand on the part of their wives and daughters for another fifty dollars.
By half past nine o’clock every night, Bradley’s is so crowded that one must almost fight his way from table to table. No matter where one threw a brick in the assemblage, it would be certain to hit a millionaire and carom against two other millionaires before falling to the floor. Until midnight there are usually more women than men engaged in observing the idiosyncrasies of the little ivory ball; and the hold-up man who succeeded in holding up the clientele of the Beach Club at eleven o’clock at night would have no difficulty at all in picking up at least ten million dollars’ worth of loot in jewelry alone. Many of the women wear their strings of pearls in double and triple loops so that they wont trip on them when they walk, and most of them seem to think that they may get rheumatism if they don’t wear at least five diamond bracelets on their left wrists.
One frequently sees these ladies rolling up the Lake Trail at midnight in wheel-chairs with a quarter million or a half million dollars’ worth of jewels sparkling in the moonlight. They are merely out taking the air, so that they can go back to the party which they just left and renew their activities without falling asleep. They dance and play cards and slip a few cocktails and exchange light persiflage until four and five and six o’clock in the morning.
They grow stronger and stronger as the season grows older, until toward the end they may be found going in bathing in their ballgowns at dawn and indulging in other tireless activities. If a tough, hardy Indian scout or Alpine mountain climber tried to follow them for three days, he’d drop in his tracks with fatigue.
Such is life among the time-killers of Palm Beach. They go there to kill time, and they are diligent at it. Old man Plutarch states that “Dionysius the Elder, being asked whether he was at leisure, replied, ‘God forbid that it should ever befall me.’”
The Palm Beach time-killers operate on the same principle. The last thing in the world that they desire is leisure, and the person who argues that Palm Beach is frequented by the leisure class is suffering from warped perception. They have different ways of killing time. Some of them talk it to death and some of them worry it to death, and some of them smother it with money. No time gets by them: they kill it all; and however they choose to do it, they’re the hardest working people in the world.