Identifier: someeccentricswo00benjrich (find matches)
Title: Some eccentrics & a woman
Year: 1911 (1910s)
Authors: Benjamin, Lewis Saul, 1874-1932
Subjects: Eccentrics and eccentricities
Publisher: New York, J. Pott London, M. Secker (1911)
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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were the manners of the gamesters, or even their dresses for play, undeserving notice. They began by pulling off their embroidered clothes, and put on frieze great-coats, or turned their coats inside outwards for luck. They put on pieces of leather (such as is worn by footmen when they clean knives) to save their lace ruffles ; and to guard their eyes from the light and prevent tumbling their hair, wore high-crowned straw hats with broad brims, and adorned with flowers and ribbons ; masks to conceal their emotions when they played at quinze. Each gamester had a small, neat stand by him, with a large rim, to hold their tea, or a wooden bowl with an edge of ormolu to hold their rouleaus. They borrowed great sums of the Jews at exorbitant premiums. Charles Fox called his outward room, where those Jews waited till he rose, the Jerusalem Chamber. His brother Stephen was enormously fat ; George Selwyn said he was in the right to deal with Shylocks, as he could give them pounds of flesh. 224
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Charles James Fox Charles James Fox It is not exaggeration to say that during thelong sittings at macao, hazard, and faro manytens of thousands exchanged hands. Fox was a magnificent player of piquet andwhist, but in the evenings, when he had dinedwell and wined well, he would play only gamesof chance, at which he was always unlucky. At Almacks of pigeons Im told there arc flocks,But its thought the completest is one Mr Fox.If he touches a card, if he rattles a box,Away fly the guineas of this Mr Fox. Once, before delivering a speech in defence ofthe Church, he played for twenty-two hours, andlost five hundred pounds an hour ; and then de-clared that the greatest pleasure in life, afterwinning, was losing ! His bad luck was notorious,but again and again his intimates came to hisassistance, and Walpole wondered what he woulddo when he had sold the estates of all his friends !It was noticed that he did not do himself justicein a debate on the Thirty-Nine Articles (6thFebruary 1772), and

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