A CONVERTED GAMBLER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 6948, 23 February 1884, Page 2 (Supplement)

A CONVERTED GAMBLER.

It is announced in the Paris press that Garcia, who enjoys the reputation of being the moat notorious gambler of modern days, has resolved to renounce the world and all its vanities, and to end his life amongst that austere religious brotherhood, the Trappiat3. Ho has grown weary of all the ups and dowDs, the feverish excitement and emotions of the professed gambler's existence, and seriously means to forswear henceforth rouge tl noir or rouUlte. The heavy losses and enormous gains of the man who has just been admitted as a uovice in the monastery of La Trappe have boon legendary. On a celebrated occasion he is said to have won over £SO,OOO in a couple of hours at the Ilomburg gambling tables, and to have lost in thesamo afternoon double that amount, without his countenance betraying the sliehtost emotion. So admirable was his nclf-possession and coolness, that, the Duke de Morny, who was present, openly congratulated him on his power of self-control. Tho latest oxploit recordod of Garcia was the breaking of a roulette bank in Spain. What he won one day, however, he invariably lost the next, und hue amassed no fortune during bin loug career as a pUyor. "Brother Garcia, as ho in now called, is to pass a probationary noviciate of a year to allow the Abbot to determine whether ho can bo reooived as a cloistorod monk by tho Trappists l'osaibly, after experiencing tho austerity of monastic lifo for twelve nionths, tho invoterate gambler may heoitato to relinquish the plcaDurca aud trcodom of tho outor world.