An Eccentric Gambler.

Auckland Star, Volume XXIII, Issue 4292, 23 February 1884, Page 8 (Supplement)

An Eccentric Gambler.

Monte Caklo has had another victim. As a matter of fact, the usual winding up of a gambler's career there is the pistol or poison. Of the two methods of shuttling off this mortal coil the director-: of the establishment prefer the latter, as it does not make such a mess in the place and causes much less fuss. A Frenchman, however, made a departure from the ordinary method and struck out a new line for himself in flying from ruin and despair, which is thus described by an Italian paper: "A few days ago the guards of a railway train, soon after passing the frontier, had their attention called to a disturbance in one of the carriages. On going to the .scene of the disturbance, they found a Frenchman who had evidently taken leave of his senses. He had on not the slightest particle of clothing, and was jumping about the compartment. Inquiries elicted the fact that the man had lost all he possessed—9o,ooo francs—at the gaming-table;; that he had then entered a train and had pitched his garments out of the window one after another, and these were found upon the line. The stationmaster rigged up the luckless individual with a suit of clothes, and in this way the broken-down speculator was conveyed to a lunatic asylum—a badly-singed moth in the fatal flame which has lured so many to destruction."