21st
“The People’s Theatre.”
Across the room, and in front of the bar, stands a novel gambling-instrument. It is a small brass cannon, from which balls are projected, probably by a spring, and entering a curtained aperture a few feet distant, descend by an inclined plane, on which stand small wooden pins. Ten tickets are given out, say at three cents each. The holder representing the ball that upsets the largest number of pins, wins twenty cents—the balance of the stakes, one third of the whole, going into the pocket of the proprietor. This machine was surrounded by as many lads as could see it, and the betting was as constant as the machine could be made to work. The spirit of the gambling-hells at Homberg and Baden-Baden was in full play in these young scape-graces, and the foundations laying of desperadoes—and this on the Sabbath!
— The Sunday Liquor Traffic … Document No. V. of the New-York Sabbath Committee (New York, 1859).





