`There was also a great deal of play at Graham's, the Union, the
Cocoa Tree, and other clubs of the second order in point of
fashion. Here large sums were hazarded with equal rashness, and
remarkable characters started up. Among the most conspicuous was
the late Colonel Aubrey, who literally passed his life at play.
He did nothing else, morning, noon, and night; and it was
computed that he had paid more than sixty thousand pounds for
card-money. He was a very fine player at all games, and a
shrewd, clever man. He had been twice to India and made two
fortunes. It was said that he lost the first on his way home,
transferred himself from one ship to another without landing,
went back, and made the second. His life was a continual
alternation between poverty and wealth; and he used to say, the
greatest pleasure in life is winning at cards--the next greatest,
losing!

`For several years deep play went on at all these clubs,
fluctuating both as to amount and locality, till by degrees it
began to flag. It had got to a low ebb when Mr Crockford came to
London and established the celebrated club which bore his name.

`Some good was certainly produced by the system. In the first
place, private gambling (between gentleman and gentleman), with
its degrading incidents, is at an end. In the second place, this
very circumstance brings the worst part of the practice within
the reach of the law. Public gambling, which only existed by and
through what were popularly termed _hells_, might be easily
suppressed. There were, in 1844, more than twenty of these
establishments in Pall Mall, Piccadilly, and St James's,