LUCKY GAMBLER

Greymouth Evening Star, 14 January 1933, Page 11

LUCKY GAMBLER

FORMER SCHOOL TEACHER Miss Zilphia Wood was a teacher in an American village school —and life was dull. So she decided to spend a holiday “seeing life” —in London, Cannes, Monte Carlo, and Le Touquet. She said good-bye to her strict Methodist father and mother and left her home at Tacoma, in the State of Washington. All the Sunday school children she taught in a neighbouring village waved farewell to her. That was five years ago, and since then Miss Wood has made £lOOO a year playing baccarat at Continenal casinos. She does not look like a schoolteacher —except that she has a dimpled, smiling face, innocent of powder and paint, and was wearing an expensive gown bought in the Rue de la Paix.

“When I set out on my holiday,” she said to an interviewer, “I never dreamed that I would enter a gambling place. Father gave Bible readings in our home and I was never absent from morning prayers. “I came to London and visited museums. I attended lectures. Then I went to the South of France. At Cannes I could not resist the temptation to peep at the casino and see the wicked gambling that went on. “I wanted to prove for myself the folly of gambling. So 1 risked a few pounds at baccarat. I won. 1 played again,' and won. “An elderly woman who had been losing looked enviously at me, and urged me to play as long as my luck lasted. That night I went to my hotel nearly a, hundred pounds richer than when I set. out.

“The next evening I won again and again. My conscience worried me. I tried to shake off the temptation to gamble. I shuddered at the thought of going back to teach village children. “But I played every night for the rest, of the season, and 1 have been playing ever since.

PARENTS ALARMED “My parents became alarmed at my long absence, and my mother came to Europe to see what had happened. In my letters 1 had made no mention of playing bdccarat. When she arrived I gave her a new dress. She was horrified when I told her where I had found the money. “But I explained that 1 never played for more than fifteen minutes unless my luck warranted longer play, and then I always left as soon as my winnings came to a certain fixed amount. “t can always tell within a. quarter of an hour whether I am to be lucky that night. If 1 am not I leave the casino at once. “Mother did not like my playing, but after a season she was convinced that I was not the victim of the gambling fever. She realised I had made baccarat a business proposition. “Rather does not know what I am doing even now. and mother and I are keeping it a secret from him.” Miss Wood protested that she is still “a good Methodist.” She goes to chapel every Sunday. She declared: “It is no more wicked to play baccarat than it is to buy stocks and shares.”