1588: "Sarah Brown"

In the Broadway world of guys and dolls, gamblers, they live by hots.

Dice roll in back rooms, and wagers move cross tables, and reputations are built on nerve.

But every gambling world, they eventually need someone who refuses to play the game.

Her name? Sarah Brown.

Sarah Brown first appeared in Damon Runyon's 1933 short story, The Idol of Miss Sarah Brown.

In Runyon's Broadway world of loading crap tables, and fast-talking gamblers,

she stands apart from almost everyone around her.

She's a missionary with the Salvation Army.

And while gamblers chase luck through cards and dice,

Sarah Brown runs a small mission in the middle of the Broadway district.

That neighborhood covers about one square mile, about 2.6 square kilometers,

filled with theaters, nightclubs, and men who spend their nights chasing

the next wager. Sarah Brown is there for a different reason.

She is trying to change them.

Night after night, she stands outside the mission, inviting gamblers, drinkers, and drifters to

step inside and listen. Most, they walk right by. Some laugh. A few stop long enough to hear

what she has to say. And then one evening, a gambler walks through the door,

Sky Masterson. Sky is famous for taking impossible bets, and one of those wagers sends

him to Sarah Brown's mission. Another gambler named Nathan Detroit offers $1,000 of Sky

can persuade the straight-laced missionary to join him for dinner in Havana, Cuba.

After Sarah refuses, she believes that gamblers are dishonest, and she believes men like

Sky Masterson represent the trouble that she's trying to keep out of her mission.

But something quite unexpected happens, the gambler who bets on everything

finally meets someone who refuses to play along, and slowly the man who trusts

probability more than people begins to change. Sarah Brown, she's not the gambler in the story.

She's the reason the gambler changes.

These are interesting things with J. C.