Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 December 1893 — A GAMBLING DEVICE. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

A GAMBLING DEVICE.

WUI the People Ever Learn to Beware of “the Other Man’s Game ? ” One of the surest devices employed by traveling fakirs at fairs and like places for winning dollars from the pockets of the unwary is known as the beehive, and this is but a form of the wheel of fortune. It is known as the “haphazard” or “beehive,” and consists of an inner and outer cone, the latter of glass, placed upon a heavy circular piece of wood, around

the rim of which are thirty-two numbered compartments separated by thin metal plates. The inner cone is studded with nails driven rather close together and projecting just about far enough to touch the outer one.

The game consists of dropping a marble through an aperture in the top of the outer cone. The little ball pursues a devious way to the bottom, zigzagging along between the nails. The compartments are numbered, and if the marble falls into one corresponding with the number on any of the prizes that are seduciively displayed near at hand the player wins. This happens just often enough to keep the interest of tbe crowd from waning. It can be prevented at will by the operator, for at the base of the inner cone are pegs which by an almost imperceptible movement of the cone can be made to stand exactly over the winning compartments. A skillful beehive operator has said that his winnings had run as high as SI,OOO a week with one of these contrivances.

THE BEE-HIVE.