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The Gaming Table by Andrew Steinmetz

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Gambling at the german bathing-places

CHAPTER VIII. page 34

Then he temporizes; remembers that there is a capital reading-room,
provided with all the newspapers and periodicals of civilized
Europe, attached to the Kursaalian premises. There can be no
harm, he thinks, in glancing over "Galignani" or the
"Charivari," although under the same roof as the abhorred
_Trente et Quarante;_ but, alas! he finds _Galignani_ engaged by
an acrid old lady of morose countenance, who has lost all her
money by lunch-time, and is determined to "take it out in
reading," and the _Charivari_ slightly clenched in one hand by
the deaf old gentleman with the dingy ribbon of the Legion of
Honour, and the curly brown wig pushed up over one ear, who
always goes to sleep on the soft and luxurious velvet couches of
the Kursaal reading-room, from eleven till three, every day,
Sundays not excepted. The disappointed student of home or
foreign news wanders back to one of the apartments where
play is going, on. In fact, he does not know what to do
with himself until table-d'hote time. You know what the moral
bard, Dr Watts says:--

"Satan finds some mischief still,
For idle hands to do."

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