A remarkable story of a drunken variety actor's desperation in gambling has obtained currency within a few days because of the prominence which the miscreant's wife has of late been given in the pictorial and daily newspaper press. There is no necessity of going into the unpleasant details further than is necessary to illustrate the depravity which an appetite for liquor and a passion for gambling can inspire. The actor in question, a member of the variety profession, in a game in New York had "played in" all his money and available resources, and, under the influence of liquor, proposed to put it his wife, a noted variety stage beauty, against $60 in money. His five-year-old child was added to the stake to make the amount at issue $85 a side. The facts are given with entire accuracy. A father whom many members of the theatrical profession can readily call by name played his wife and child against $85 and lost, The wife went Into the custody of a new lord and master, and she could not, though she shed tears at the time, have greatly regretted to escape from a brute who could tragic her like a dog or a piece of furniture or clothing which he might take to a pawnbroker's. She has made a success in life on her account, and she may well, in the experience of the adulation and financial ease which she now enjoys, look back with a shudder on the night when she and her child were part of the stakes in a gambling house, made so by her own husband, the father of her child,

Illustrated Police News, April 30, 1881.