3-034-690 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Gambling Table at Hombourg, [Germany], 1871. 'The rooms [at the Hombourg Kursaal] certainly present an imposing effect at night time when lighted up with hundreds of lamps, and crowded with promenaders...The suppressed hum of conversation is broken only by the...jingling of gold and silver coin, and the clattering of the croupiers' rakes...the tables at this hour can be approached only with some difficulty; and much unseemly struggling often takes place among the more ardent players, who press eagerly forward to deposit their stakes, as though every turn of the roulette wheel were to be its last...Young girls, who make their first venture with blushing timidity, exhibit uncontrolled delight at winning a florin or a five-franc piece, and many of them acquire all the confidence of old punters...Among the frequenters of the rooms may be found representatives of almost every country of the globe. The English are of course there in great variety; of Russians and Poles not a few, generally either breaking the bank or being slowly but surely ruined by it;...foreign barons and counts of irreproachable costume, but of shady reputations; young and charming countesses, whose husbands, strange to say, have all died in remote quarters of the globe'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.