betting) is as follows: The player notes the course of some
stock—perhaps one called “Jem Dandy”—observing its “rise” or “fall,” as
shown by the figures on the cards, and possibly keeping a record of its
ostensible “fluctuations,” very much as a faro player records the
issuance of cards from the dealing box. Perhaps one of them concludes
that some particular “stock” having fallen, as shown by the cards during
three or four consecutive exposures, he imagines that the chances are in
favor of the next card of the same stock showing an “advance.”
Accordingly, he concludes to back his judgment with his money. He does
not bet directly, as a faro gamester, for instance, might place a stack
of chips upon a queen. He “purchases” a certain number of “shares” of
the “stock” in question, advancing the amount which he is willing to
risk as a “margin,” precisely as he would were he buying stocks or grain
in a bucket shop. His fate is sealed by the appearance of the next card
inscribed with the same suit. If “Jem Dandy,” or whatever other stock he
may have bought, “goes up” he wins; if it “falls” he loses.
The reader will have no difficulty in perceiving that, as has been
intimated, the pretended “sale” was in reality no sale at all, the
entire transaction being a wager, pure and simple, on the turn of a
particular card. Nor is it difficult to comprehend that a professional
gambler can manipulate pre-arranged cards by pulling a string as easily
as by using his thumb and forefinger.
The rooms where the “clock” is used are not infrequently infested by
confidence men of a peculiar sort. The verdant visitor who appears to be
a “soft mark” is often approached by men who tell him that their “wives”
are clairvoyants, or trance mediums, who can predict with infallible
accuracy, the order in which these cards will leave the receptacle on
the ensuing day. For a small consideration—_e. g._, five dollars—they
will impart to him information through the possession of which he may
certainly win hundreds, if not thousands. These persons, however, never
explain why they should prefer to sacrifice, for such a paltry sum, the
knowledge which would enable themselves to accumulate fortunes with a
celerity which would cast completely into the shade the rapid
mathematical computations of the “lightning calculator.”
It occasionally happens, however, that the proprietor of one of these
“clocks” comes to grief through the wiles of a more adroit scoundrel
than himself. Within a comparatively short period a manipulator of a
machine of this kind in a great western metropolis found his attention
diverted from his “clock,” with its attached string, by the progress of
a fight in one corner of his room. There appeared to be no doubt as to
the genuineness of the combatants’ hostility, the blows were heavy and
blood flowed freely. The available force of the place was called into
requisition to separate the combatants and restore order. Peace having
once more settled down upon the establishment and the brawlers having
been ejected, business was resumed. A quiet-looking gentleman, who had
recently entered, became deeply interested in the market for “Jem
Dandy;” he bought and sold with apparent recklessness, yet—_mirabile
dictu_—he invariably won. He bet largely and won enormously. In
consequence the proprietor concluded to abjure “speculation” for the
day. In other words, he posted a placard to the effect that holders of
contracts might cash their winnings at once, but that the house proposed
to suspend further business until the next morning.
Of course the fight was what gamblers term a “stall,” _i. e._, a trick
by which another gang of sharpers might have an opportunity of resorting
to the same tactics employed by professionals who travel about the
country “snaking” cards. In other words, and plainer English, the
“fight,” however seemingly earnest, was in reality a sham. Five sharpers
were confederated in the perpetration of the scheme. Three of them
engaged in the scrimmage, one of them took advantage of the melee to
“ring in a cold deck,” and the other, handsomely dressed and
imperturbable of demeanor, quietly saw his confederates “pound” one
another, and then quietly bet upon the descent of the cards from a pre-
arranged pack which had been substituted in the receptacle for those
placed there by the proprietor’s employes.
I hardly know how I could more fittingly close my exposition of gambling
than by a description such as that given above. Nothing could more aptly
illustrate the remorseless tactics of the professional scoundrel;
nothing could better show the gullibility of the dupe; nothing could
better exemplify the hollowness of the adage that there is “honor among
thieves.”
O, young men of the only republic which has demonstrated its past
vitality by the average virtue of its citizens; O, parents, to whose
tender care has been committed a charge which God Himself has
denominated a sacred trust; O, law-makers, to whose wisdom is entrusted
the framing of statutes for the repression of vice and the propagation
and perpetuation of public morals—listen to the voice of a penitent who
has sounded the utmost depths of degradation. The enlightenment of the
intellect, the awakening of the conscience, the conversion of the
will—these are the agencies which Divine Providence may employ to avert
from the American people the wrath of Him who has said that the casting
of the lot is in the hands of the Lord.
“OLD HUTCH.”
[Illustration]
No description of the Chicago Board of Trade would be complete which
failed to bring out, in bold relief, the figure of the daring speculator
whose mysterious movements have long proved an enigma to his fellow
members, the sphinx of the chamber, the “king of the wheat pit,” Mr.
Benjamin Peters Hutchinson, better known to his friends and to the
country at large as “Old Hutch.” The accompanying cut is a good likeness
of this remarkable man. Born in New England, he emigrated to the West
while a mere youth, and has “grown up” with Chicago. Endowed by nature
with indomitable pluck and marvelous energy, he has carved out his own
success. He is beyond question the largest operator on the floor of
’Change in the city of his choice, and his ventures are as bold as they
are gigantic. In a business enterprise he fears no foe, as he recognizes
no friend, and his tall, spare form looms up as a tower of granite in
the midst of the turbulent waves of speculation which surge around him.
CHAPTER III.
NATURE AND EFFECTS OF GAMING.
Gambling holds a high place among the vices of society. It proposes to
the young that they secure money without earning it honestly. It thus
asks thousands of persons to disregard the noble pursuits and to become
gamblers. True manhood is made by the following of an honorable
industry. If we contrast Watt, who made the engine, with some gambler,
the difference at once appears between the noble callings and the games
of chance. The lawyer, the physician, the mechanic, the inventor, the
writer can show a reason of existence. With the gambler this is
impossible. He has no reason for being in life.
The first evil of gambling is this intellectual loss, incurred by being
turned away from all those honorable pursuits which create mental power.
Astronomy helped make Newton, art made Angelo, the law helped make Burke
and Webster, traffic made Peabody and Peter Cooper, the press made
Greeley and Raymond, but gambling will take the best mind the age can
produce and degrade it to the level of the brain of a trickster or a
thief. There is nothing in gambling except a kind of sneaking hope of a
shameful success. It is a contest in which victory is as shameful as
defeat.
The professional gambler does not glory in his calling. He does not call
a convention for the purpose of conferring with the scientific men of
the age; nor does he demand a corner in the world’s “fairs” that he may
exhibit his implements and methods. His occupation asks concealment, and
thus makes the features of the face carry at last the strange evidences
of the hidden art.
The many fashionable people who play cards for a little money extract
from the game a little amusement, but a certain per centum of those who
thus begin so modestly move on to a financial and mental ruin. The taste
for games of chance grows as days pass, and the one who played a little
passes on until he plays much. Soon the heart, mind and face are those
of the gambler.
The gambling room is based upon fraud. The philosophy is simply that of
craft against innocence. It is a well known fact that a large part of
the human race is simple-minded. These can be preyed upon by those who
have made craft a study. Many persons are weak and innocent enough to be
caught in a trap. The professional gambler belongs to a form of humanity
which will spend life in betraying persons younger and less suspicious
than itself. A large part of the human race possesses innocence enough
to enable them to be betrayed. The gambler thus makes his fortune by
wrecking the trust men have in each other. He picks the pockets of the
simple of heart.
The game of the professional gambler is not one of chance. They cannot
afford to use a fair game of chance, because nature would be against
them half the time and loss and gain would be equal. All those games
played on the railway and in the “den” are the gambler’s own games. They
are doctored so as to fall, like loaded dice, in his favor. For the
young man to play with a gambler is to be beaten. Fairness is a virtue
for which the gambler has no use. If he loved fairness he would work at
some trade or turn farmer. Luck may help a man for a day, but it will go
over to the other man to-morrow, for it is no respecter of persons. The
only help that will stand by a gambler all the year through is fraud.
It is difficult to measure this vice, but it is so great as to merit
from all civilized States immediate destruction. Like the opium habit,
it must be checked by law. When the police will not enforce an existing
law, they cease to be police, because the word “police” implies the care
of a city, the study of its welfare. It is a bad condition of wool-
growing when wolves are employed to guard sheep.
[Illustration: David Swing]
[Illustration: David Swing]
[Illustration: M^cIntyre]
CHAPTER IV.
ARRAIGNMENT OF GAMBLING IN ITS MORAL ASPECTS.
“Did you ever see the autograph of the President?” said Warden B., of
the I. State Penitentiary. He had been a member of my congregation for
years, and at his request I had visited the prison to preach to the
convicts. The wagon which brought me from the station carried the mail
bag, and, while looking over his letters, he held up a large official
envelope with the above question.
“No,” I answered, taking my eyes from the intelligent convict who sat in
striped clothing writing at a desk, and whose shaven and shame-flushed
face was persistently turned from me. “I would like to see his
signature, as my vote helped to put him in the White House.”
“There it is,” said the warden, handing me the document, which I soon
discovered to be a pardon for a certain youth, who had served three
years of a six years sentence for theft from the Post Office Department.
“Why is this pardon given, warden?” “Well,” said he, “this young man is
of good family, and has dependent on him a widowed mother, a wife and
child. He became the dupe of gamblers who fleeced him, and then the
Devil, I reckon, suggested that he might recoup his loss by stealing
from the Government, and in an evil hour he fell, was detected,
convicted, and with other United States men sent here. I remember the
day he came; how heart-broken he stood in the corridor till the sheriff
gave me the papers, unloosed his shackles, and turned the gang over to
me. They were coupled in irons on the cars, and John was paired with a
hardened felon who had done time before, as had most of the lot. They
glanced defiantly around at the officers with a braggart insolence as
the iron gates clanged on them, but he paled and trembled, tears
silently flowing down his face to the stone floor. I followed to the
bath-house, where they are washed, shaved, cropped and dressed in
stripes. At the registry, when asked his age, name, etc., with great
effort he managed to answer, but when asked his father’s name, a vision
of the dead seemed to rise before him. Overwhelmed with shame he tried
thrice with choking utterance to tell the name, and then faltered it
with such a moan of agony that even the clerk, used to such scenes, felt
his hand tremble as he wrote it down. You know our rules require the
reading of all letters before they reach the prisoners. The chaplain, at
my request, read those sent to him. We found such woe, such evidence of
his former honor, such testimony to his previous good character, that
friends became interested in him. I helped them, thinking it a case for
Executive clemency. The President, who is a merciful man, looked into
the case, pondered it a month, and sends this pardon.”
“Now,” I said when the sad story was ended, “warden, I want to ask a
favor. Let me present this pardon to him in person. I understand that it
makes him free from this hour; I wish to study the human face in the
moment when the revelation that he is free dawns on his mind. May I do
this?”
“Certainly,” was the answer, and striking a silver bell, a “trusty”
appeared. He said, “Tom, bring John R. to my office at once.”
While waiting, I said, “Does he expect a pardon?”
“No,” was the answer, “he knows nothing of the efforts to set him free.
It will be a total surprise to him.”
In a few moments the trusty returned with the man he was sent to summon.
The jail garb did not wholly hide his handsome form, nor the cropped
hair entirely vulgarize the intellectual countenance which fell as he
saw strangers looking at him. He seemed to wonder why he was ordered up
before the warden; there was shame, sorrow, helplessness in his face as
I rose, with the paper in my hand and walked toward him.
“John,” said the warden, “this gentleman has a few words to say to you.”
The convict braced himself for the interview, and I said, “Your name is
John R., I believe.” “Yes,” he replied steadily.
“I have here,” I went on, “a paper addressed to you, signed by the
President of the United States. It is a pardon. You are a free man,
John.”
The look of assumed courage in his eyes changed to one of infinite
pathos, then softened piteously as his soul swooned with joy that was
almost too much. I saw him sway as if to fall, but caught him, and
leaning on my shoulder, he said, “Free! free! O God, is it true? When
can I go home?” “This very moment,” said I. He looked wistfully out the
great door where the sentry stood, and asked, “Can I go out there now.”
“Yes,” I said, “come, I will go with you,” and arm in arm we walked down
the great stone stair, passed the guards into the street and across to a
fence beyond. He stopped a pace or two away, looked at the emerald
hills, the river flowing by, the children passing, the firmament above,
and as the happy tears drenched his face, said: “O, sir, I am the
happiest man alive. When does the train start East?” “At three,” I said,
“I will see you safely started.”
“Wont my wife and baby Jess be glad to-morrow, and mother, how she will
smile; I am eager to be off.” I took him in and soon saw him fitted with
the civilian’s clothes and provided with the railway ticket to his
destination, and with the $10 the State gives every released convict.
How proudly he walked by my side to the station, and as the bell
clanged, he held my hand and said, “You talk to hundreds of young men.
Sir, tell them this, tell it with burning eloquence, tell it with
pleading tears, beware of gaming, shun gamblers as lepers. Cards are
accursed of God, and pass-ports to perdition. Will you tell them this?”
And as the train moved off I said, “I will.”
To this end I write a chapter in this book, that by earnest warning or
brotherly appeal, I may help to pluck young men out of the hands of this
giant enemy of our race, and perhaps halt some who are already hurrying
down this highway to dishonor. Standing here at the very gates of these
polluted temples, where many have been cruelly “done to death,” I raise
the cry “beware of gaming. It dishonors God, degrades man, wrecks honor,
ruins business, destroys homes, breaks wifely hearts, steals babes’
bread, brings mothers sorrowing to the grave, and at last, with reckless
bravado, launches the sinful soul into the path of God’s descending
wrath, to be overwhelmed forever.”
The only argument offered by gamblers is that their business keeps money
in circulation. It does, indeed, transferring it from the pocket of the
fool to that of the knave, and thence to the pockets of the harlot or
rum-seller, but there is no gain in this transaction. Better the money
had remained where it was, or been put to other uses.
Young men will read these words who know not one card from another; who
have no personal knowledge of lotteries, raffles, dice or betting. Yours
is blissful ignorance, honorable innocence.
How I love the youth who can say, when cards are brought out for play in
a private house, “I do not know one card from another. I have no desire
to learn their use.” Young heart of oak, give me thy hand. Some will
sneer, I charge you to keep your honor bright.
Though people of good character persuade and gloss this evil, stand firm
as the hills. Should professing Christians (God pity them) make of the
painted paste-boards a social snare, be the company never so charming,
the stakes never so trifling, beware. Once you play the first game, you
are on the slant; the descent is smooth and swift, and the end is
terrible.
You will hear sophistries about the difference between playing and
gambling, and the harmlessness of cards and other Devil’s toggery.
Playing is the egg out of which the cockatrice is hatched. Handle it
not.
Climbing a slippery pass in the Alps, one comes to a narrow icy path
with a great rock on the one hand, and a deep gorge on the other. It is
called by the guides the “Hell Place,” and you are asked to creep
cautiously there, a slip is destruction. The green cloth of the gaming
table is the moral hell place to many souls; to this, sorrowing
relatives, weeping wives, heart-broken mothers can point and say, “There
my boy slipped, there my husband fell, lost property, position, honor,
all.” At the foot of this slant is the prisoner’s cell, the maniac’s
cage, the suicide’s grave; at the top the smiling decoy, shod with adder
skin, or the smooth tongued gamester, waiting to lure men to the fatal
hazard.
Some will read these words who are already acquainted with the
beginnings of this honeyed vice. They have shuffled the satanic pack,
booked the bet, and perhaps pinched themselves in purse to pay the lost
wager, or have now in pocket the coins won at gambling. Take these coins
out and look at them; they are unclean, polluted.
Once, when the plague ravished an English village, the wretched people
resorted to the bank of the stream near by, to get bread left there for
them. They tossed the coins for payment into the brook where they were
found hours afterwards by those who sold the food. They thought the
water had cleansed the pestilent contagion from the coins. Perhaps it
had, but no brook, river or sea hath tide medicinal enough to cleanse
the curse from money won at gaming. It is cankered. It is blood-stained
and tear-rusted. It will curse him that wins and him that loses.
My friend, you are yet only a novice in this black art. Let me, by all
rational appeal, abjure you to abstain. It is the father of falsehood,
forgery and fraud, and the covetous human heart is the mother of this
ill-gotten brood.
Can you specify _one_ instance where the gains of gambling have brought
comfort or contentment? What would your father think, your employer say,
if they knew that you were a gamester, spending your evenings where
these human swine whet their tusks? Who sinks so low in the mire of
infamy as the man who is kicked out of business or society with the
millstone of gambling hung to his neck? Bitter is the ban and black is
the brand put on the wretch whose hardened forehead is set against the
hissing of that word “gambler.”
Who are the associates a man finds at races and the card table? Are they
not the Pariahs, social lepers whose touch is pollution? Would a man
take his sisters or his children among these white-fanged wolves; are
they not nameless at the hearth, unknown where high-toned and virtuous
people meet? Think of the vile talk, the impure jest, the unclean
associations. You cannot stoop to this. What can money buy, though you
won every wager, that will repay you for the loss of wifely love,
childhood’s trust, the father’s proud faith in his boy.
Consider the malign vicissitudes of this sport, see the ruined,
forsaken, nerveless gambler, wrecked and wretched at last; abandoned to
the gibes of men, and the anger of God; crawling into a lazaretto to
die. Mother, with dimpled hands upheld to you at evening, and fair head
pillowed on your bosom, think not, “My bonnie boy is safe.” This fiend
spares none. He will seek this braw lad to destroy him. With devilish
cunning he will even persuade you to aid in your son’s downfall; to
teach him in the social game, to use the leprous papers of the pit, on
which is inscribed the voiceless litany of woe.
Hell’s utmost anguish surely has no deeper depth than that of the mother
who sees her son a degraded, sodden gamester, and remembers that she
taught him to handle the implements of his ruin. If a mother can front
the judgment and say, “I never countenanced the evil, I bitterly opposed
it always, to the utmost of my power,” she may feel when her dear son is
lost, the most unspeakable regret, but she escapes the remorse which
eats the heart of her who unwittingly fostered the serpent which
compassed her child’s destruction. Let us ring our children round with
circles of flame across which none of these man hawks can come. Let us
make home the happiest place on earth. With mirth, laughter, music,
books, friends; a safe refuge, a snug harbor, a shadow of a great rock,
and a citadel for defence of our dear ones from this pitiless foe.
Let me sketch the career of an upright, kindly village youth who longs
for a wider field of action. He has mastered the elements of business as
practiced in the rural community; he desires to try his talents in the
busy world, and chooses a mighty city as the field of his endeavor. A
roaring center of commercial activity; its streets a throbbing ganglion
of business nerves; its mart the engorged plexus of traffic, where the
best and the worst have habitation.
As I see this young fellow, with face like an open book, standing for
the first time in the city’s streets, I am reminded of a scene I once
witnessed in the country. I stood on the edge of a wood looking across a
beautiful meadow. It was a perfect day in June, and all the world seemed
at peace. Crickets were chirping in the grass, the yellow-hammer was
tapping on a tree above, the cattle were grazing brisket-deep in the
lush grass, the birds were singing as if to breathe were music. All
nature looked lovely. Far away across the brook, on a dead tree, I
noticed a number of buzzards, waiting for the sight of something on
which they might gorge their unclean appetites.
I think of this as I watch him alone on the city’s street at evening,
gazing into a window where the light falls on diamonds, opals, rubies;
amid the din of the city, near the theaters and saloons, where music
throbs, lamps flare, cabs rattle, and through these noises comes a voice
in modulated semi-tones from one standing at his side, who asks: “Did
you hear of the big winning last night.” “No, sir, where was it?” “Up
the street, at old Brad’s place, No. 197. A fellow won $6,000 in two
hours. I am going up to try my luck. Come along, just for the fun of the
thing.” He goes. The front of the house is dark; a red light burns over
the stairway door—danger signal over a bottomless abyss. He is void of
understanding; a private key, pass word, or patron of the game is needed
to secure entrance. The panel of the door slips aside, a whisper, then a
reply. The door opens, upstairs they go. Men seated and standing
scarcely look up—wheels click—dice rattle—cards shuffle—glasses
clink—sooty servants glide with trays, and bottles—cheap stucco statuary
appear through the smoke—muttered curses tell of losses. He is led to
the faro table, where a mastiff-faced man deals cards, and after he has
sipped a little liquor, which is freely offered, he tells his guide that
he has never played. He is informed that a man always wins his first
bet—fortune favors first play. Men put chips in his hands, saying, “Play
this bet for me.” “But I don’t know the cards,” he replies. “Put the bet
down on any card, it will surely win.” Down it goes—it wins—and as they
rake in the gains, he thinks, “I might have won a month’s salary in a
moment.” Lightly as snowflakes fall the cards; deft the touch; swift the
shuffle. It seems so simple. He carries money saved from a father’s
toil, a sister’s earnings offered to help him secure his stock of goods
to start business. Mother has helped him, saying, “David will help me
when I need his help. I will have a strong son to lean on when my old
feet dip down falteringly to the cold river of death.”
As he hesitates there on the porch of Perdition, he is about to bid
farewell to peace, farewell to prospects of success, farewell to the
promise of his young manhood, farewell to the prayers of his parents.
Pray, mother! with clasped hands kneeling at this very hour under the
pictures in your boy’s room. Pray, “God be gracious to my boy. Gird him
round with mercy.” Sing, sister, sing! Sitting alone where the moon-
light falls on thy fingers as they wander over the keys, sing soft and
low the very hymn you sang at parting, “God be with you till we meet
again.” Sing! maiden, till the tears falling fast tell the fears
uprising in thy heart.
Look, old father, down the road where the peaceful world lies
transfigured in the mellow beams of the moon; down the road where he
went away so cheery, brave, tender, looking backwards from the coach
with many a wave of the hand and fond goodbye. Listen, father to the
whip-poor-will in the copse answering the katydid in the hedge, frogs
shrilling from the swamp, an owl hooting from the woods; the air grows
cold, a chilling sense of discomfort shakes thy frame.
Ah, if thou couldst see thy son now, thy hope, thy pride—among knaves.
He stakes his means—he wins—he has doubled his fund. Good, good—his face
glows, his pulses are rhythmic to the music of success. Excited,
confident, reckless, he loses—doubles his loss—forgets all prudence,
unrolls the savings of years on the little farm—mother’s needle,
father’s plow, sister’s music lessons, earned that hoard. He piles it on
the board with burning eyes set on the cards, watches them coming one by
one. Oh, unpicturable horror! Money, honor, parental hopes—all earthly
and eternal weal staked on that hazard. The Sphinx-faced scoundrel slips
the card—the young man hears the word “Lost!”—sees the sharpers laugh as
the dealer draws in his all. The room swims before his sight; madness
seizes him as the sneering taunt, “Another sucker done up,” smites him
like a lash across the face.
Frenzied, he clears the table at a bound, his brown fingers close around
the white throat of the lean-faced hellion who has robbed him. Like a
tiger uncaged he hurls him to the floor, and fronts the crowd of
desperadoes with blazing face. In vain are all his struggles; many leap
on him, he is beaten, kicked, hustled down stairs, where, hatless and
bruised, he madly pounds the heavy door till his hand is a mass of
bleeding pain. All in vain. He turns helplessly at last to the street,
and through the gray light of dawn finds his room. For hours he hangs on
misery’s brink; haggard remorse sits opposite and suggests suicide.
Swift as a homing dove his thoughts fly to the farm.
He sees his father in the furrow, his mother in the doorway, her face as
radiant as the morning. She gathers a few honeysuckles for his empty
room, to her it is a sanctuary now, and he liked them so, and ’twill
seem as though he was coming home soon.
An organ beneath his room strikes up an air heavy with old memories; the
tune of “The Old Folks at Home,” quavers through his window. With a
shuddering cry—“A gambler! a gambler! Oh, God, be merciful; let me die,”
he falls by the bedside and burning tears are vain to staunch the hurt
in his heart.
He is now in a whirlpool; return seems impossible. You have seen an
apple tree in May, rosy in pink and white blossoms, murmurous with bees,
glad with birds and glorious with sunshine. In one night the frost kills
the bloom; next day the tree hangs with damp, blighted blossoms and
blackened buds, an unlovely spectacle.
Few escape the bitter end who begin a gamester’s career.
Next we find him in snuggeries, curtained from basement bar-rooms,
studying the cards at midnight, robbing unwary verdants. Conscience is
seared as with a hot iron. His heart is flint. He strives with drink to
banish thoughts of home, heaven and God; grows morose, cunning,
merciless; works a little, hurries again to the feverish excitement of
the game, herds with greasy disreputables in foul dens, amid the reek of
pipes and hideous blasphemy. Soiled, ill-kempt, rag-clad, he nears the
bottom of the slant. One night, crazed with vile rum, he mingles in a
fight with fellow outcasts; blood is shed; the alarm brings the
clattering patrol wagon, and through the red of early dawn he rides to a
cell in murderer’s row. Convicted, condemned, he goes to prison for
life—years pass—his sorrowing parents think him dead. He _is_ dead. He
died that night when he climbed the stairs to “Old Brad’s den.”
His post is to open and close a gate in the prison yard. Seven years in
stripes, taciturn, sullen, he stands there. His soul starves, his heart
stagnates, his face becomes stupidly half-human, despair feeds on his
mind.
One day two visiting gentlemen see him, they recognize him and speak,
holding out a hand which he will not take, trying to stir hope within
him. They talk to him of freedom and home. He makes no sign of pleasure;
hopeless vacuity rests on his imbruted face. He stares at his gate,
shuts it, and says, “Seven years dead, seven years dead.” There he
stands, and will stand, till carried to the little graveyard of the
prison, touching at last the lowest level of the slant on which the
gambler stands.
I charge you with a jealous affection, born of an unfeigned brotherhood,
and based on many years study of the effects of this vice. Beware of the
beginning of gambling. Have no commerce with the monster iniquity.
First of all, because it _dethrones God_. Seek its victims in the ranks
of bankrupt merchants, in the cells of criminals, in the cellars of
shame, or garrets of poverty; talk with them, or with those who have
suffered through them, and you will find that the sad sequence of misery
began with this heinous affront to God, viz: a practical denial of His
very existence and a setting up in His place a blind deity called
Chance, before whom they bowed, and on whose favor they risked their
all. Even if in their darkened minds the votaries of gaming allow God to
exist, they deny His government of the affairs of men. They flee away
from all works that can win the help of Jehovah, and ask only the help
of fortune. This is heathenry of the worst sort. The farmer plows,
plants, cultivates, and hopes that the God of nature will help him by
sending sun, rain and dew, that together they may produce the harvest.
The sailor, by the march of the constellations and the veracity of the
magnetic needle which God offers for his guidance, comes at last to
port. The mason builds his wall by the laws of God, and his plumb line
and level bear eloquent witness that he wishes to base his work on the
certain laws which steadfastly bind the worlds together. These men,
however much they ignore God in their speech, keep faith with Him in
their work, knowing full well that they can only succeed in any task by
keeping in line with His laws. Thus they have yoked the elements to the
car of progress. The gambler, however, mocks at God’s laws and
insolently banishes Him. He asks no help from fixed laws ordained by the
Father to bless his children; he scorns the co-operation of Nature, sets
up a fetish called Fortune, and grovelling, courts its smiles. I know of
no form of paganism more base than this, and it is not surprising that
in the worship of this block-eyed god, the most obscene rites and
debasing superstitions are practiced. Dreams, charms, spells,
incantations, black art, even the help of the powers of darkness have
been used in wooing his favor. The most frightful depths of moral and
mental depravity are touched in this shameful business. The negro who
sells stolen articles to buy lottery tickets has some gruesome
cabalistic secret which he fondly hopes will bring the favor of fortune;
the lady who cons the dream-book in her room to learn which number to
buy, and fancies her night vision of a gallows tree or a burning Bible
will bring propitious fate, are alike far from reason and from God.
Frogs, spiders, beetles, graveyard grass, rabbits killed in burial
places, pieces cut from a shroud or slivers from a coffin will insure
winnings. Some put the ticket in the cold hand of a corpse, and the
lowest level of blasphemous sacrilege is touched when the bread of the
sacrament is carried secretly home to be used as a sort of magic aid to
conjure the desired gain. Can anything more awful be conceived by the
human mind—nay, could the most malignant devil desire a more direct
insult to God than this? First the Creator is asked to abdicate His
throne to this monstrous usurper, then the sacred symbols of His Son’s
sacrificial death are offered to propitiate the unclean and unholy thing
set up in His place. This is the iniquity of Balshazar’s feast repeated
in our time. The sacred vessels of His holy worship are employed in the
service of sensual lust or abandoned carnality. What shall be the
outcome of all this depravity? If these souls seeking the brief success
of the gamester deliberately turn away from God and practice harlotry
with the princes of hell, wantoning with the powers of the pit in
unblushing shame, who will paint their last estate when his vengeance
finds them out?
The traveller in Egypt who explores with Arab guides the dismal mummy
pits by the Nile finds some startling experiences in these caverns of
the dead. More fearsome than the dark labyrinths where the bodies lie
wrapped in linen and smeared with ghastly hideousness, more terrible
than the gloomy grottos where cadavorous mortality swathed in silence
waits the resurrection trump, is that grisly cave where the bats, the
unclean birds, make their home. Into this the hardiest guides dare not
go. The uncanny creatures invade it in myriads, and with their
fluttering, furry vans, would quench the light and drive out the bravest
intruder. If one desires a sight of these birds, he stands in the
sunlight at noon close to the rocky ledge which walls the gardens of the
Pharoahs. A shiek, musket in hand, steps a few paces into the vault. His
gun is fired directly into the Plutonian chamber with a roar as if an
earthquake was shaking the knees of the eternal hills. Then a dark
torrent of winged things, with a sound as of a mighty wind, sweeps out
into the light, fluttering the sweet air into horror with leathern
wings. They fly about in circles and dart back, pained and dazzled by
the light, into their obscene home. Some in blindness, eager to escape
the sun, dash themselves against the rocky lintel and posts of the
entrance, and fall broken and mangled at your feet, as tremblingly you
shrink from the bruised clots fluttering in dying spasms about you.
Such shall be the condition of these poor blinded souls who choose
darkness rather than day, leaving the light of the smile of heaven to
dwell in the gloomy precincts where the gamester’s deity sits in grim
mockery and receives the worship of his clans. Suddenly, with a mighty
shout, shall their leaden souls be wakened to their shame. The shining
Angel, with one sandal on the heaving earth, and the other in the
swelling sea, shall cry in trumpet tones that split the silence of
earthly crypts and sea deep caves, “Awake, ye dead, and come to
judgment!” Then, impelled by a resistless force, shall all souls sweep
into the bright light of the great white throne.
Some who have looked at the cross on that lone Syrian hill, shall see
one beloved seated thereon, and shall sing for very joy as they press
nearer for his greeting. Others who come from the confines of Godless
unbelief will be dazzled into blindness by the glory of his presence.
Then shall they call upon the rocks to fall upon them, and say to the
hills, “Hide us from the face of the Lamb.” Frenzied, they will essay to
flee back into their former holes, dashing their souls, bruised and
ruined, against the adamantine front of God’s eternal laws, and drop
shrieking into Perdition, where the Prince of gamesters, catching them
to himself, will say, “Souls are stakes. The game is done. All these I
have won.”
Not only does gambling dethrone God, but it _degrades man_. In this evil
work it is the most certain and effectual of all vices. It commonly
works in iniquitous league with other sins, but alone it eats out
honesty, affection and virtue from the heart, and leaves it as empty as
a dead man’s hand.
When this vice has had free course through the moral nature for a few
years, the man is a mere shell, a human husk, within all is punk and
hollowness.
The law by which the force of gravitation acts is not more resistless or
irrevocable than this law of gaming. Other vices give their devotees
intervals of rest, intermissions growing briefer until the last stages
bring woe upon the heels of woe to drive the victim to his doom. The
gambling demon, once admitted to the mind, never leaves. He haunts his
slaves every waking hour, and flits on filthy wings athwart his dreams,
spectre-like he walks at his side, keeping pace for pace with his prey.
The swift result of his influence is complete moral atrophy.
Ask yourself this question: Where is the dearest spot to man in all the
wide creation’s bound? Search all the stars that God has spilled like
jewels through the blue abyss. Roam from bloom to bloom of that tree
once enrapt in primeval night, which, at his word, burst into blossoms
of worlds like this. Yea, visit heaven itself, explore the city which
has foundations whose builder and maker is God; the city of the jewelled
walls and gates of pearl. Stand where the healing trees trail their
branches in the crystal river of life; or walk amidst the asphodel and
amaranth that deck the fadeless green of the Paradise of the Saints, and
you will not find one spot so dear, so precious to our race, as that
Judean hill whereon hangs one whose holy hands were nailed for our
salvation on the cross. There, where wondering heaven bends to look
pityingly on the exalted one, where dumb nature strives with darkened
skies to hide the shame, where man, mad with rage, curses the Christ,
and woman, bowed with sorrow, bewails her lord. There, on that most
sacred spot in all the universe, in the holiest hour ever marked on the
dial of time, when heaven, earth and hell are quick with interest, who
is it sits unmoved, unobservant, unstirred, concerned only with the
game? Ruthless gamblers sit beneath the lowering skies, and on the
palsied earth they shake the dice to win the garments of the man of
sorrows.
This infamy was needed to make Christ’s death as ignominious as a demon
could desire. Only Apollyon could suggest the shameful scene on which
the dying eyes of the Son of man rested, as the crowning demonism of it
all. A group of gamblers bending over the few robes which were all his
possessions. O, Satan, that was a monster stroke to embitter his last
hour! No other being but a gambler could have put a fit climax to that
day’s iniquity.
As I think on the merciless nature of the abandoned gamester, I am
reminded of the story told of a petrified forest in Idaho. “Yes,” said
the yarn spinner, “you can see trees standing there petrified, bushes
and vines, leaves and buds and all, petrified, and there stands a hunter
with his gun up. He has just shot a hawk in the air, and the hawk hangs
dead in the air, petrified.” “O, that’s too much,” remarked a bystander,
“the law of gravitation would bring the hawk down.” “Not at all,” said
the other, “the law of gravitation is petrified too.”
In the gambler’s nature all natural feelings seem petrified. He never
relents or pities. His drink is fen-water, his meat is adder’s flesh.
Innocent men are the victims of his callous covetousness. Women and
children are deprived of the money needed for the comforts and even the
necessities of life. Trust funds and moneys belonging to others swell
his ill-gotten gains, and as revealed in the pathetic history of the
author of this volume, he is such a thrall to sin that a father’s
pleading, a mother’s prayers, even that best blessing which God can give
a man, a true, chaste woman’s wifely love, are forgotten to follow this
evil passion that rages like a fire in his bosom. He is like a strong
swimmer enmeshed in treacherous seaweeds which seem so easily broken,
but cling to hands and feet more strongly than chains, and at last wrap
him in death as he goes with a despairing cry down to lie in the ooze at
the bottom.
If all who have been ruined in temporal and eternal things by it could
rise and walk in sad procession through the land, the spectacle would
appal the stoutest heart. If all the names of the men undone by this art
could be written on the cards used to-day in gaming, every one would be
signed across with the blood-red autograph of a doomed soul.
The fountains of Monaco seem to drip tears, and in the odorous shrubbery
the wind sighs like the echo of the last cry of the bond slave led
captive from its sinks of sin. Were it not for the stupifying spell
gambling throws on all its thralls, the licentious associations and
scrofulous surroundings of the play might stir the soul to escape from
its condemnation. Fathers have wept over lost sons; tender children over
disgraced fathers, downcast sisters have beseechingly invoked vengeance
on a brother’s destroyers, and wives with little ones clinging to their
skirts have implored with tearful eloquence the gamester to break the
bonds that held him. All in vain. He mingles with the moral refuse of
the land, plunges deeper in degradation, becomes an inmate in these
habitations of cruelty, and with all the pith and marrow of mankind
sucked out, with blood poisoned and bone rotted, he consorts with
drunken sailors, filthy women and skulking vagrants, playing with
unsteady hand for the few coins he can gather, till death with the besom
of a nameless disease sweeps his foul carcass into the pauper’s grave.
Of all men, he seems to me the most spectral and bloodless, the most
effectually blighted and paralyzed. How the virtuous person shrinks from
one who is pointed out as a gambler. If you wish to see what nature
thinks of this vice, look into his face. Women of fair fame shun him.
Children avoid him on the street, and men pass him with averted faces.
Burns, in his strange poem of “Tam O’Shanter,” tells how the tipsy hero
peers into “Alloways auld haunted kirk,” and watches the witches’
unearthly dance, taking note of what lay upon the holy table. Surely
’tis a chilling catalogue as he writes it:
“A murderer’s bones in gibbet irons,
Two span-long wee unchristened bairns
A garter which a babe had strangled,
A knife a father’s throat had mangled
Whose own son had him of life bereft,
The gray hair yet stuck to the heft.”
Now fancy another son of this murdered father using this bloody knife as
a plaything. Such the cards used in gaming seem to me—hideously stained
with the blood of loved ones, and I would as soon think of rattling the
handles of my baby’s coffin for music, as shuffling the cards for
pleasure. I can appreciate the feeling of that man who was one of a
shipload of passengers wrecked on the Atlantic coast some five years
ago. In the bitter freezing night they clung to the rigging, and when
about to let go and die, one put his hand in his pocket and took out the
cards they had been playing with and tossed them into the angry sea,
saying, “Boys, I don’t want to go into the presence of God with a deck
of cards in my pocket.” More than one “happy couple” have I married only
to see the wife deserted that the husband might throw their all into the
whirlpool of chance. More than one little home have I seen engulfed in
this maelstrom. Many a servant cheats his master, many an employe robs
his employer; many a wife abstracts part of her husband’s earnings, thus
breeding domestic strife, to cast it all into the coffers of the lottery
or the policy shop.
I personally know a man once bright, respected and promising, who takes
some of the money his wife earns teaching music, to play faro. Not long
ago a man supposed to have a competence died. His heirs found his estate
had been squandered, nothing was left save several hundred lottery
tickets, which told the story of his folly and his children’s beggary.
What merchant wants a gambler for a clerk? What boss wants a gambler for
a workman? What foreman wants a gambler for an apprentice? What family
wants a gambler for a doctor? What firm wants a gambler for a salesman?
What railway wants a gambler for a conductor? What boy would wish to
learn so disgraceful a trade? At the time that I was apprenticed to the
bricklaying trade, I knew a lad who began to herd with gamesters. He
learned that trade, I learned mine. He earned money; so did I. I was
proud of mine, and now I hold up my hands and say, “If my voice should
fail, I have an honest trade in my fingers by which I can win my bread.”
I take my little ones in this very city to the walls where I worked. I
show them the courses of brick their father laid, and proudly tell the
story of my toil. Can this other man do likewise? Can he hold up his
hands before men and say, “I have an honest trade in my fingers”? Can he
take his children and show them his work, and tell them with glad face
the story of his apprenticeship? No, no; his face crimsons when his
trade is mentioned, and though he spent more years at it than I did at
mine, he is ashamed of his work to-day.
Young men, learn an honest trade which tends toward manliness. Be
content with simple life and frugal means until you can rise honorably
to luxuries. Acquire no money by sinful methods. Do not begin gaming as
a relaxation, for it will soon become a business. Avoid pool-rooms,
race-courses, faro banks, cockfights, policy shops, lotteries, raffles,
betting of every form. All such things are perilous. Where one grows
rich, one hundred grow poor, and the one who wins is poorest of all. No
man is as pitiably poor as the man who has money won by gambling. This
form of evil doing will tempt you everywhere, on rail train and
steamboat, in hotels, clubs and barber shops; in the loft of the barn,
or the carpeted parlor. On the race-track and fair grounds, week days
and Sundays, day and night, winter and summer, at home or abroad, in
public and private, it will meet you. The suave snob, the seedy
scoundrel, will inveigle you, try to win your confidence, borrow or
lend, lead or drive; coax or threaten, sometimes with words smooth as
butter, then with words that smite like hail. Stand fast, my son. “When
sinners entice thee, consent thou not.” Money unearned is blessingless.
God’s law is this: If man gets anything from nature he must give labor.
If he gets anything from his neighbor he must give a fair equivalent.
Only money gotten in this way can bring a blessing.
What does the gambler give his victim in return for his money? Nothing.
One of these gold pieces would make the weary wife smile, but the
impassive harpy with the cold face and the fire of Gehenna in his heart
cuts and deals, shuffles and sorts, then takes all, giving no return but
a sneer.
If you think to beat him at his own game, you will know your folly when
over your head the waves of misery have met. His motto is: “There is a
fool born every minute.” His place is called a “Hell,” and the name fits
it like a kid glove. His victim is called a “lamb,” he is led to be
fleeced, and driven forth to shiver. The thorough-bred gambler suckled
snow for mother’s milk, and all the blood in his frozen heart could be
carried in a bottomless cup. There is consolation for other woes, but
for losses in gambling there is none. No man will pity you. None will
sympathize with you, the very best you can hope for is that they will
not laugh as they pass you by.
Do you say that you must have excitement, something to break the dull
monotony of existence? Well, if you wish to break the monotony of food,
you need not take arsenic, nor break the monotony of drink by prussic
acid. Guard yourself just here; the love of excitement ruins thousands.
The jaded mind needs a fillip. One tries the play; the death scene in
the fourth act excites him. Another tries rum or brandy, another the
impure novel; another opium or morphine; another travels to far lands;
another lechery; another gambling, and the last is the worst of all.
There are wholesome excitements which never enslave and have no bad
reaction; which develop, broaden and brace the whole being, but keep
clear of gamblers, they are a pack of scullions, experts at thievery,
masterhands at cheating. Gyved diabolists who would rape your soul of
all that makes life blessed.
I stood in this city beside the coffin of a lovely babe; sweeter child
the sunshine never kissed. The mother sat dissolved in tears, with a
bright boy holding to her gown. Women tried to comfort her; then I
tried. I spoke of the little spirit safe in the arms of Jesus, but
lifting her streaming eyes, she said sadly, “It is not the baby’s death,
sir, I can endure that. I would not have her back in this cold world. It
is my husband’s absence. Oh, that he did not come at this hour to help
me.” I questioned the neighbors in the room, and they said, “Her husband
is a gambler, does not come home for weeks. She sent him word of the
child’s death, but he came not.” Standing there by that lily bud broken
from the stem, I thought, “How can a man be so heartless as to stain the
forehead of his child with such a wrong” Heartless? A gambler carries a
cinder where the heart should be.
A wife, almost demented with grief, about to be cast out of her house
for unpaid rent, went to the mousing scamps who had filched her
husband’s money for years, and in broken accents asked for help. With
ribaldry, the underlings scoffed her out of their room, while the
metallic faced dealer sat with the veto of silence on his mouth, till
she staggered to the street _mad_, and is to-day a maniac.
An old father receives a letter telling of his son’s downfall, and his
aged form falls prone upon the floor of the village post office where he
reads the letter. When gentle hands restored him to consciousness he
opened his eyes, and when they said, “We thought you were dead.” “Would
God I had died,” he replied. “Life is naught to me now.” For years
afterward that old man, with mind dethroned, went about the village,
writing in the snow or the sand, on the walls and fences, the name of
his lost son.
I would like to open the seven vials of the wrath of the Most High and
spill them on this nefarious industry. Every day the press tells of some
official, treasurer, agent or partner who has fallen or fled, a ruined
man, and uncounted thousands suffer their shame unknown.
It is on record that one lottery drawing in London was followed by the
suicide of fifty persons who held blank tickets. What rapacious
miscreants they must be who ply this trade of spoilation.
As I study the character of this obdurate and unprincipled human wolf, I
see only one trait that is worthy of praise; the zeal and strategy
displayed in his gross rascality.
As I contrast this with the apathy of many of the virtuous men who seek
to lead the people in ways of rectitude, I recall the reply of the
Scottish fisherman to the listless angler who caught nothing, while the
old hand was steadily filling the creel. “What is the difference,
Sandy?” asked the dawdler, “between your fishing and mine?” “Dinna ye
ken the difference, mon? You are fishin’ for fun and I’m fishin’ for
fish.” Would that we who work in the laudable employment of saving and
reforming men, were as busy and as full of resources as these
reprehensible foes of society!
Perhaps the young man who reads these words will ask, “How can I keep my
mind from defilement and escape the lure of these soul destroyers?”
There is only one sure way, and then there is one not so sure. By the
simple moral integrity of your soul and a happy bias of natural
temperament you may stand firm amid all temptations and come through
unscathed. Some have been able to come forth conquerors with these
weapons, but many have failed.
The better way, the surer way, is to make a friend and associate early
in life of Him who is mighty to save; to cling close to Him with
tremorless trust, and take from Him such blameless pleasures as shall
make this and all other vicious indulgences seem mean. Remember the
mythical story of the sirens who decoyed men to death. When the wise
Ulysses had to sail hard by the enchanted isle, he bound the sailors
fast to the mast with knotted ropes, and when the ravishing strains of
their music floated over the waves they could only tug at their cords,
they could not go to their death. The sweet singer Orpheus had to steer
his boat over the same dangerous course, but he tied no man. He left
them bodily free to leap into the sea and swim to their destruction, but
he bound their souls with chords of such heavenly harmonies struck from
his lute, that they sailed heedless under the lee of the fateful island,
steeped in such ecstacy of melody that they heard not one note of the
siren’s song.
It is well to bind the passions and lusts with strong vows and good
resolutions. It is best of all to have the soul bound by the heaven-born
spell which fills the whole being with delight. This bliss ineffable
makes earthly and carnal joys seem contemptible, and drowns every evil
desire in the great cry from the heart’s depths:
“Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nearer to Thee.”
The third count in this black indictment is that gaming not only
dethrones God and degrades man, but destroys the most blessed of all
human institutions, the home.
Gamblers flock together as naturally as lean-necked vultures; they hunt
in packs like coyotes, and intermingle like a knot of clammy vipers that
crawl in the dank gloom of a sunless canyon. They have no share in the
sweet sanctities of the fireside, and desire vehemently to be elsewhere.
Even when the gamester sits at his own table, or embraces his own
children, his heart is in another place. Physical contact is not
intimacy. He may kiss the wife of his bosom and be as far from her as
the east is from the west. Judas kissed Christ, yet at that moment one
was in heaven and the other in hell. He hurries away to boon companions,
and to the familiar scenes his soul covets. In vain the little ones
beseech him to abide at home, in vain the wife entreats him to continue
at work, in vain the mother asks the comfort of his presence, the help
of his strong arm. He hopes to make a great winning some day, to buy a
fine house for his family, then to make amends, turn over a new leaf,
and soberly take up the duties of manhood. Some lucky hazard, some
windfall, wager or lot will lift him to the level of his dreams.
Meanwhile he sinks deeper, debauches himself more and more, till home
becomes a hateful place; he deserts his family, or in self-defense is
forbidden to cross the sill of the house he has desecrated.
I have gone on missions of comfort to the homes of the drunkard, the
bankrupt, the convict, the dying, but never have I seen on woman’s face
such unutterable grief and pitiable misery as in the home of the
gambler. A cyclone cannot level, nor a fire consume a home so surely as
gambling. The infatuated bondman to this vice will let the fire go out
on the hearth where his helpless brood crouches in the cold. He will let
them ask mother in the lampless twilight with tear-stained faces, why
papa does not come. How can the wife tell the weans, what delays his
steps?
Was ever woman’s love insulted as he insults it? If some pure passion
for art or high scientific research detained him, she would smile, and
explain it to the little ones. If profound books or merciful work of
benevolence kept him late; if some grave problem of social welfare held
him from her arms for awhile, she could bide the time, but the indignity
put on her is this, that a loving, virtuous wife with all womanly charms
and gentle ministries, waits unheeded while he consorts with
disreputable dicers, and the clinging kisses of sweet-lipped babes are
forgotten that he may enjoy the company of a lot of heartless card
mongers hanging on the frayed edges of society.
When a man will toss away the priceless jewel of wifely love to clutch a
bubble like this, turn from a warm, throbbing, palpitant, gentle help-
meet to herd with jackals, he puts a shameful affront on her, one that
he will have to answer for at the bar of God.
The deluded man is chasing a phantom and hoping to find a happiness that
ever eludes him. He could find happiness at home in domestic helpfulness
and fatherly endearments. He is like the Scandinavian lover who coveted
a kiss from his sweetheart, and said, “I wish I could, some day, find
the lost whistle of the Fairy Queen. She has promised to grant one wish
to the man who finds it.” “Well,” said the maiden, “if you did find it,
what would your wish be?” “It would be this,” said the timid youth,
“that I might have one kiss from your red lips.”
“Then the maiden laughed out in her innocent glee,
What a fool of yourself, with that whistle you’d make,
For only consider how silly ’twould be
To sit there and whistle for what you might take.”
The autobiography of the author of this book shows plainly that he had
true happiness within his reach. He had wealth, talents, friends, good
personal presence, and best of all, a beautiful and gracious wife who
truly loved him. Here are all the elements of happiness, yet he went
longing for something else, blind to the joys he might have had.
If I should ever write a book on “How to be miserable,” (though married)
I would put down as the first condition, let the husband take to
gambling. It will assuredly overturn the home, and without a home, man
can have but little bliss in this world.
On the terraced lawn of one of the great English schools there are these
Latin words, cut in the turf, visible from afar, “Dulce Domum”—“Sweet
Home.” There they tell this sad story: A cruel head master, who had in
those days almost unlimited power, kept a bright boy, a widow’s only
son, at the school during the long summer vacation as punishment for
some shortcoming. The lad saw all the others go away to their homes, saw
the gates fastened, and he was forced to remain with his keepers. He
knew his mother waited his coming; he asked the master with tears, the
other boys all joining in the petition, that he might go home. “No, no,”
was the stern reply, “you must remain.” No one was permitted to visit
from the outside during vacation, and all the weary weeks the lad walked
alone on the lawn or wept beneath the trees. His feet wore in the grass
the rude outlines of the words “Sweet Home” as he paced in sorrow all
the summer days. When school opened, the boy was dying of a broken
heart, the mother was allowed to enter, she saw but the pale wreck of
her noble son, sinking into death. He knew her not, but as she bent
above his white face, she heard the words “Sweet Home, Sweet Home.” He
was going home indeed, and no heartless master could hinder him now.
When all was over, the boys marched with spades to the lawn and cut the
letters he had traced with his feet, and they abide there to this day,
eloquently telling of the love the human heart has for home. This refuge
and strong tower, gaming would utterly destroy.
Beginning with the specious plea of amusement, the player soon finds the
game grows tasteless as an egg without salt unless there is a stake—at
first a small stake, a few dimes or a dollar. Then comes the race track,
the raffle, the lottery. Life’s duties seem dull, hilarious comradeship
cheers him on, the perverted mind loathes clean food.
Sunday is the chosen day for this transgression. If the man works at all
he slights his job, longs for a rainy day or break-down in the machinery
to let him off; quarrels with his overseer, hastens to the card table to
sit till late at night; looks on the foxiest tricksters around him with
deference, thinks it a fine thing to be called a “sport,” smells of
tobacco and brandy, is put by society in moral quarantine, barred out of
desirable and helpful company, grows more reckless and with all his
honor raveled to dirty shreds, becomes a hanger on, a roper, steerer, or
double-faced decoy to lure others to the sacrifice.
These are the usual gradations. Now, he is an Ishmael, with only two
motives of action, hatred of society, and fierce lust for gain. These
burn in his breast till the suicide’s draught, or the crack of some
outraged victim’s pistol puts an end to the man who could date his
downfall to the day he took up cards for amusement.
He who might have been the head of a happy household goes down to death,
his highest hopes being that he may be permitted to creep back
“To the vile dust from which he sprung,
Unwept, unhonored and unsung.”
His brother gamesters buy a wreath of flowers for his cheap coffin, and
the blossoms wither as the baleful breath of these men falls on them
when they file by for a farewell look. Poor lilies, you are out of
place. A bunch of nightshade twisted with thorns were fitter for that
casket. The preacher tries hard to say something consolatory, gives it
up and dismisses the group, his soul sick within him as he thinks on the
outcast’s doom and the fate of his fellows, already hurrying away to
their den for another game. Such is the end of a sinful life wasted in
gambling and associate vices.
What has become of the woman he married? He took her from a loving home,
out of the shelter of a mother’s love. Well do we remember the night of
the wedding feast. There are weddings as sad as funerals. This was one.
We saw the traces of dissipation on him then. We, who were older and
wiser, trembled for her. She was so young, so beauteous, so full of
love’s content. They stood there radiant beneath the bridal arch, while
a sister’s fingers woke from the piano the wedding march. The eager
witnesses looked on, the elders moist eyed and prayerful, the younger
folks with quickened pulses studied her face. Nothing of fear was there;
only affection, truth and purity. Solemnly the responses were given—just
a tremor in her low-spoken but firm “I will.” Then the wedding circlet
on her finger gleamed, the binding words, “Till death do us part.” The
burst of gratulation, hands outheld, kisses, laughter, smiles and tears,
some quiet talk, friendly admonition, and “good night.”
Away to the great city, where he is tempted in the store, tempted on the
street, tempted in the park, tempted on every hand. Now, he is away all
night. She with her child, suffers on in silence; only her babe and her
God see her nightly tears. Poverty’s bread is bitter, and love spurned
makes the heart bleed. From cosy home to narrow flat, from flat to
noisome tenement, from tenement to damp cellar, driven, forsaken at
last, two rooms over an alley stable her only shelter. See her come home
from her fruitless endeavor to find him in his haunts, chilled, weak,
fainting, she comes to the stable door. With a burst of anguish beyond
control she lifts her babe, lays the child in an empty manger, falls
upon the straw kneeling and with lifted hands, her wan face white as a
winter moon, implores her God to help her utter need. “Come to me,
Lord,” she cries, “I am desolate, forsaken, ready to perish: only a
stable for a dwelling, Lord. Only a manger wherein to lay my babe. Thou,
O Christ, knowest my distress. Thy mother in a stable clasped thee, and
Thou, like my helpless little one, wert laid here. Let me reach Thee,
let my failing hands find Thy garment’s hem. Thou art good, O God, good
beyond all telling. Have I not suffered? See how weak, helpless,
deserted I am! Help me, I cry!”
To this, and far worse than this, come those whom this fell plague has
bereft of the strong staff and support of home.
Look on another picture of the home where gambling and kindred evils
have never entered. This couple started with little and have had a full
share of adversity, but hand in hand, with steady effort, unflagging,
unflinching, they have climbed to midlife, to business success, to easy
circumstances, to honor, respect, influence, and troops of friends.
’Tis a winter evening; the wind howls in the lonely streets and bites to
the bone. Belated people steady themselves in the gale, hurrying
homeward. Within this home a glowing fire, with tropic heat and rosy
light, paves a plaza of gold across the parlor floor. An astral lamp
sheds soft brilliance on the heaped books and on the pictured walls. A
lad romps in the firelight, another cons a magazine, a maid of twelve
plays while her elder sister sings. The father, looking into the fire,
ponders on the past. A chord of music wakes him from his reverie; they
are singing “The Palace of the King;” he glances at the wife and says
softly, “Alice, sit here a while.” Together they sit and talk of God’s
goodness and love till the room broadens into the very vestibule of
heaven, and they, through the door ajar, can almost look into the palace
of the King. For fifteen years, true to the vows made to each other,
true to the vows made to God, they have kept clear of vice and walked
humbly, and as the happy wife leads in prayer amid the household, round
the family altar, she thanks God that these agencies of the great hater
of the soul have no power over Him who is the head of her happy
household.
The fourth and last charge I bring against gambling is as heavy as any
yet stated, and is the direct and final result of the other three.
_It damns the victim’s soul._
Can the transient delights of a few years of idleness and sensual
gratification atone for an eternity of banishment from hope and heaven?
Will the poor pleasures of the voluptuary, the theater and wine cup, the
fast pace, the boughten smiles of wantons, the flashing pin, the showy
clothes, the jingling fob, the curled mustache, and the whole empty
round which the successful gamester treads, solace him for the loss of
his immortal soul? Will the fleeting hours spent with unscrupulous men,
adepts in trickery and confidence games, touts and tipsters, skilled in
marked cards, bogus boxes, wheels of (mis)fortune and loaded dice,
adroit in fascinating the unwary with hollow smiles and lying speeches,
like honey mingled in the hemlock’s poisoned draught—will these repay
the willing serf of Satan for a life wasted and a soul passed into hell?
Surely not all the pleasures of this high domed, blossoming world heaped
in the balance can outweigh the loss of heaven.
Is there anything in fallacious hopes, unstable judgment, despairing
ventures or desperate ruin, attended by parental grief, rejected love,
and never dying remorse, to make men seek the blandishments of iniquity?
Let not this seducer of youth corrupt your morals, pull down your
fortune and cloud your future by his false promises. Let the downward
career of others prove effectual warning. Rouse not this ungovernable
lust for gain by hazard in your breast. Let the lottery, faro bank, pool
room, race course, all such places be as pest houses to you, unless you
are prepared to brave God’s intolerable scorn.
Remember that the man who, through any device of chance or knavery,
takes money without giving anything in return, belongs in the class with
the swindler and the thief. Remember that on the track of this evil
follow defalcations, embezzlements, breaches of trust, false entries,
forgeries, misappropriation of trust funds and crimes innumerable.
Rebuke its insidious flattery with stern face, and do not tamper with
the lightest fringe of it.
What palpable political offence is perpetrated on common morality, and
what a tension is put up on the minds of the toiling poor, when such
corporations as the Louisiana lottery are licensed by the state to
torture the people with glittering visions of wealth easily obtainable,
and thus induce them to undergo more grinding poverty that every
possible pittance may be laid on the altar of this fat idol to be swept
into the wallets of the managers.
The burglar and pirate are respectable citizens compared to these
vampires. Even the bookmaker, who controls not only the horse, but the
jockey on whose skill you fondly hope to get a fair chance to win, is
honorable by comparison. I had despaired of finding a match for the
lottery shark, until I saw the man who would juggle with corn and wheat,
cornering the necessities of life, using the increase on the price of
the poor man’s loaf to line his pocket, and by combination of capital
and shrewd manipulations of contingencies, making the sewing woman’s oil
a little dearer that he might pile his own full board, and indulge in
more luxurious or wasteful excess.
I fear these men are nursing a Carracas earthquake under the social
system of this fair land.
Let every man to whom my words come, touch not the unclean thing, for,
“Vice is a monster of such hideous mien,
That to be hated needs but to be seen.
But seen too oft, familiar with his face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.”
This embrace means death for two worlds. Not even the strongest can get
free once the shackles are locked on the limbs.
See Manoah’s boy, the brown babe who played beneath the mulberry trees
of Judea while his parents reaped the barley and the durrha. Favorite of
Jehovah, he grew in stature and strength, till he was the dread of
Israel’s foes. When proud Philistia lifted its insolent mouth with
curses to God, no angel legion hung pendulous like a white avalanche of
wrath above them. No militant host from the blue sky burst to avenge the
affront. God summoned this youth, whose neck was like a stag’s for
brawn, and o’er whose massive shoulders swept the black terror of his
hair, and bade him smite them. How they fled like sheep before him. How
he rent the tawny lion jaw from jaw in mid air, as it leaped on the
lover faring down to Timnath. Yet, this hero was led decked to the
slaughter, blinded and undone by wicked associates; haltered like a
beast, he trudged the weary round in the prison house of his foes,
because he had not the wisdom to shun evil company.
As I meditate on the ruin of the fine young fellows who come up every
year to this city and to all cities, knowing that these words will be
tossed by the press into hundreds of quiet rural communities, I am
resolved now to put my best energies and most earnest entreaties into
this last appeal to young men. You are thinking of coming up to the
city. You are set on this purpose; you will not be gainsayed or denied.
I do not wish to hinder you if you come, seeking a broader field of
usefulness and better opportunities for true success. If you come for
pleasure, for mere money getting, or seeking entertainment of the baser
sort, stay! We have too many now of that kind. Better your native hills
encircled you, and all your days were spent where you were born, than
come to the city on such an errand. But if you come to do rightly, live
honestly, act manfully and fear God, all will be well. There is need of
such men everywhere.
When you are ready to bid farewell to the old place, when you have taken
a last look at the old bridge and the stream, the orchard and the lower
meadow, when you have seen the swallows in the dusk of the old barn, the
bucket in the old well, the pin in the old gate post and the bee hive in
the old garden for the last time, when you have plucked a cluster of
bloom from the honey locust and a few sweet pinks from the side of the
path, and have kissed your sisters and cheered your father with the
promise, “I will be home for Christmas,” while the stage is coming up
the hill and your best boy friend holds your satchel at the roadside,
dear boy, turn for a moment, climb up the stairs where mother is—you
know the room, the room which is the holy of holies in any house,
“Mother’s room”—kneel with her by the bed, and let that last tender
prayer sink like a plummet into the crystal depths of your unpolluted
soul. Take the little Bible she gave you out of your pocket, and ask her
to write upon the fly leaf the single word that Duncan Matheson, the
evangelist, wanted engraved upon his tombstone—the one word, “Kept.”
Now, with the chrism of that trusting mother’s kiss upon your forehead,
come on, you are ready for battle—of such stuff are freedom’s young
apostles made. The kings of commerce are always looking for well favored
and spotless young men.
On the cars coming here you may meet the gambler. He will enter into
conversation with you, he is well-informed and companionable. His genial
manner and friendly style will impress you; by and by he will invite you
into the smoking car to take a hand in a game of cards. Resent the
implied indignity. Tell him you would rather get out and ride in a
cattle car the balance of the way than mix fraternally with his breed.
He will not withstand the fire in your eye, and the scorn in your
speech. He will skulk off with a low oath, half hissed between his
teeth. He will, however, have a higher opinion of the intelligence of
the young man he mistook for a greenhorn, and you will be on better
terms with yourself, and feel no accusing pangs of self-reproach from
your conscience.
You will meet him or his mate afterwards on the street, in depots,
restaurants, lobbies and offices. He will be affable and solicitous.
Never exchange civilities with him, let your indignation burn at his
approach, use the scourge of righteous wrath on him, and he will flee
from your presence.
You will soon learn that while the gambler works hand in glove with
every evil doer, his favorite co-worker and sharer in his unholy
earnings is the scarlet woman. It would be safe to say that one-third of
all the lost women of our cities are affiliated with men who live by
schemes of chance and by the knavery which accompanies such trades. And
thus, hand in hand, the sharper and the soiled dove, the sediment of
society, the dregs of moral abomination, go down the broad road
together. Keep far from this pair.
“Do good, my friend, and let who will be clever,
Do noble things, not dream them all day long.
And so make life and death and that vast forever,
One grand sweet song.”
Think not that there are no high-toned and godly young men in these
great cities. Here are many of heroic mould, born and bred in the din of
the town. They have kept their hands as stainless, their speech as pure,
their hearts as gentle, as any reared in the quiet hamlets of the
country. They are men of mettle, grounded in good principles,
established and fixed, not fluctuating and unreliable.
A wise writer says when a young man has learned that he can be depended
on, he is already of some account in the world. These young men have
learned that. They have many pleasures and choice delights, but they
reject the gamblers’ villainous bribes and flee his contaminating
society, well aware, by the testimony of many unimpeachable witnesses,
that his primrose path, which seemed so pleasant to the eye, ends in a
labyrinth of remorse, whence the reprobate can no more return to
fellowship with men.
There is in some parts of the West a periodical disease called the ague.
It passes through phases of chills, sweats, nausea, discoloration and
fever. When the fever seems to be grilling the sufferer, he sometimes
has a slight delirium and vividly imagines that he is two persons—two
separate and distinct personalities of the Jekyll and Hyde type—one is a
kindly, courteous, clean man, ready to help anyone, quick to befriend
and forward all who need his aid. The other is a cringing, envious,
scowling loafer. The sick man sees these two sitting, one on each side
of the bed, and each of them is he. A strange delusion, is it not? Yet,
not so visionary as you might suppose. It is strictly scriptural and
squares with experience.
The evil nature and the good are present in every man. His breast is the
arena of a gladitorial combat between these two. St. Paul says, “I keep
my body under.” That is, he held his carnal nature down under the feet
of his spiritual nature.
In this fight the devil squires the evil, low-browed, lustful half of
you. It is possible with help from on high, to beat these allies. St.
John says, “I write unto you, young men, because you are strong, and
have overcome the wicked one.”
What young men did then they can do to-day—master Satan and control the
lower part of their natures, letting the higher and better part
predominate, thus securely laying hold on eternal life.
The so-called pleasure of a life of sin is but a cup of cordial offered
a condemned man on the way to execution; a feast of Damocles with the
naked sword, thread-hung above the head; a dipping the hand in
Belshazzar’s dainty dish, while the Divine finger writes the soul’s woe
upon the wall.
In all this article I have been like one who anchors buoys above sunken
rocks in the channel where many have gone down. I have been hanging red
lamps above the slime pits of the city’s streets.
As the Alpine dwellers set a cross on the brink of a torrent or the
verge of an abyss, to mark the spot where men have met death, so I have
tried to lift up the symbol of salvation and keep the wayfarer from
destruction.
If a man loses one fortune, he may accumulate another; if he lose a
hand, he has another; if an eye, he can still make his way, but if his
soul is lost, all is lost.
How can a sane man risk this soul and gamble with Belial, knowing the
total renunciation of all joy that must follow its loss—to trudge
forever the vassal of the slave of slaves through a sunless, starless
eternity.
A spot is shown at Niagara where a child was dashed to death. A father,
intending to give his child a slight fright, lifted her over the flood.
A paroxysm of fear twisted the little one in his hands. She
slipped—fell, her death shriek filling him with anguish as the seething
flood swept the babe from his sight forever. Fool! fool! you say. Right;
he was a fool, but what accusation will be brought against the man who
stands at last, abashed and guilty, charged with flinging his soul into
insatiable hell. Even when the gambler’s soul is saved, much that makes
this life good is lost forever. The author of this volume has to drink
this cup of bitterness to the dregs. His wicked life made a false charge
seem plausible. A crime was fathered on him of which he was innocent. No
virtues rose to plead trumpet tongued in his behalf; he had been a
wrong-doer from early youth, so he was made to suffer. O, if he could
live life over; the door is shut. O, if he could go among men, where
talents and present longings fit him to go; the door is shut. O, if the
one fair babe who once climbed to his knee could but smile up to him now
and bruise his name to sweetness on his baby lips in the fashion of the
old times. If that white hand could lay its benediction on his brow,
with the silk soft touch of long ago. Alas, the door is shut. If that
wife, so dear to him through all the dishonored years, could be
restored, could walk with him hand in hand through the evening shadows
across the home-leading fields where their babe waits their coming at
the gate. O, that it could be. How immeasurable the loss entailed by him
who is taken in the gamblers’ toils.
Perchance, these words may come under the eye of one whose brow bears
already the stigma of this craft.
Brother, there must be hidden somewhere in your heart a remnant of your
early purity. Drop the implements of your calling; let my hand slip into
yours; come apart where we can sit and talk together. Pardon me if I
press the question home to your conscience. What is to be the outcome of
all this? Shake off the palsy of years, I pray you, and essay an answer.
I wait to hear your own verdict on your case. You cannot always be blind
to the havoc you are making; you cannot always be deaf to the piteous
cries that go up to heaven’s chancery from women and children, kenneled
in extreme want by reason of your profession. You blandly ask me Cain’s
question: “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
Listen to Tennyson’s answer, adapted to your sneering philosophy, that
each must look out for himself:
“Mark thou the bound, define it well,
For fear that this philosophy
May push beyond the mark and be
Procuress to the lords of hell.”
Of all arts there is but one more hated of men than yours, that of the
procuress, who flings shrinking innocence into the arms of lust. You may
only mean to strip away from man his temporal possessions. This is
atrocious. But, my friend, do you not see that the secondary result is
to put the souls of men and women into the grip of the demon, whose
unsated lust ever asks for more? Above the brand of gambler must be
stamped “Procurer for Perdition,” a soul-hunting hound, who, with the
filthy pack, runs helpless ones into the dungeon of the lords of hell.
Rise up, shake off this dark enchantment—dash down the dice, shred the
cards into the flames—pass out into the pure air, and while there yet is
hope ask heavenly help to break your heavy chains.
Yours is the very insanity of crime; like the imprisoned eagle who might
swim the blue sky and bathe in the sun, you are caged in a dungeon’s
walls. Nature cannot furnish nor the imagination create a figure of
speech to parallel your unfortunate condition.
Let us go back to first principles and ask, “What is a man? What was the
Maker’s design when he fashioned man?” After creation was completed from
chaos to order, from darkness to light, from the lowest polyp, through
crinoid batrachian, reptile, fish, bird, to the highest mammals, God
paused to consider what likeness the Prince of this earthly creation
should wear. He was to be the link binding heaven and earth, animal and
angel, material and spiritual, so that an unbroken chain of life might
exist from the loftiest archangel to the lowest monad, related to both
spheres and completing all; his body from one world, his soul from the
other.
“What fashion shall he be formed in?” Was the question which seemed to
give the Creator pause. None of the lower creatures would do for a
model, as he must govern them and be superior to them. Surely some of
the angelic or seraphic ones will be chosen as the pattern! They were
mighty, beatific and holy; in favor with God and obedient to his
behests.
If some shining one from beside the throne, who had been wrapt in the
serene presence of the Uncreate, had been chosen, what an honor to be
like him! But such a one is not selected. As our Father in Heaven thinks
of his Child that is to be, we hear the mysterious declaration, “Let us
make man in _our_ image, after _our_ likeness.” And so it was.
Consider the supreme honor done us in this act. God could find no being
but himself fit to be thy pattern, and wilt thou for whom he passed the
hierarchs of glory by, stoop to such groveling ingratitude as to ignore
him and humiliate thy brother man?
Oh, that I could inspire you to cast these cords far from you, and rise
toward that mark set for you by our kind and ever present Lord. Come out
from among these Philistines.
I would as soon expect to grow a plant under the dripping of vitrol or
in the fumes of sulphur as in such a place, and if you willfully persist
in impiety, you must expect retribution to overtake your impenitence and
the last door of hope will be shut.
Remember:
“There is woe whose pang
Outlasts the fleeting breath.
Oh, what eternal horrors hang
Around the second death.”
Perhaps you came out of a religious home and had a legacy of faithful
prayers; a pious parent dedicated you to God in infancy, and as the
baptisimal drops fell on your baby brow, they fervently hoped that your
nature might know the inward cleansing of which that rite was the
outward sign.
All the riches of Midas would not give you such pleasure as the memories
of that dear old couple, if you were in the way they trod so long. Oft
in the village church, or at the cottage altar, your father, bowed with
white hair and dim eye, lifted his voice in supplication for you. Oft he
led you o’er the hill on Sabbath Day, pensive, rejoicing, giving you
good counsel in quiet tones, or telling at dusk with open Bible, and the
family in a circle about him, some rich story of Holy Writ, which now
comes back at times in the quaint old-fashioned words to your
remembrance as you trample daily on the truth he taught you. A verse of
some melodious hymn sung by your mother floats up out of the past,
sweeter than opera strains to you.
Can the driveling ditties and sentimental songs affected by your
associates drown the cadence of that tender old voice crooning the songs
of Zion? Often she looked in your eyes. They were not bloodshot then,
not dim with vigils at the iniquitous game, but pure and deep as the
wells of Gaza; your face was as the dawn to her, your forehead candid
and fair.
What dreams she had of your useful and exalted career. Has it all come
to this? Are you not glad the saintly old couple are asleep on the
hillside under the yew trees, with eyes closed and hands folded in the
long rest! Could you revisit that place you would not care to meet old
friends, they might ask annoying questions and start vain regrets. You
would just slip out half a mile to that burial ground, every step
seeming to make your burden heavier, every moment to aggravate your
unbearable guilt. Once there, by those two graves, alone, unseen of man,
you would bow and put your face in the grass, weeping that you could get
no nearer to the beloved ones. This you would do, and it would be the
manliest thing you have done for many a miserable month.
There is a manlier yet. That old couple is not there; they are nearer to
you than that in spirit, they are not far from you now. Better than
tears to them would be the solemn resolution to leave this moment and
for aye the guilty men and evil trade which have brought you low.
Give me thy hand, man! Look level in my eyes! Gird up thy loins, there
is help nigh.
Break away! Break away! All may yet be forgiven and atoned for. Pluck up
heart. You shall yet praise God with all your ransomed powers. Your
heart shall cast forth its idols, and shall let all its tendrils of
affection curl and twine about the Cross. Your soul shall adore Him and
have one object of worship. He shall have full dominion over you. Your
mind with all its renewed faculties shall exult in liberty. Even your
body shall share in the general joy and fulfill all its functions with a
glad obedience unknown before.
A traveler who had put a girdle round the earth and studied many
nations, was asked to relate the most thrilling incident of his long and
eventful life. He hesitated long, hushed in thought, and said: “It
occurred just before the civil war. I was crossing from this country to
Canada in a ferry boat. The captain knew me, as I had often crossed with
him. Midstream he touched my arm and said, ‘Come with me, I will show
you something worth seeing.’ I followed him to the dark coal hole of the
craft, and when my eyes became accustomed to the gloom, I saw crouching
in a corner a black man, an escaped slave. Helped through the North by
friends, he was nearing liberty; for no shackles could come, no slave
hunter tread the soil where floated the flag of England. As the boat
neared the shore the captain beckoned to him, and while we all gazed on
him he crept to the bow, impatient to gain the shore. Never on any face
have I seen such burning eagerness. As the keel touched the gravel, with
a mighty shout he bounded into the water, waded ashore, all dripping,
and turning his great eyes to the heavens, his chest heaving with
emotion, he cried, ‘O God! O God! At last! At last! I’se free! I’se
free!’
“There,” said the traveler, “I saw the greatest spectacle of my life, a
soul springing full statured from slave to man in an hour.”
Surely ’twas a stirring sight, but there is an escape more moving yet—to
see the slave of evil habits long driven by his task master, cross the
line to moral manhood and break into the larger liberty of the gospel.
I have seen it done—seen the drunkard snap his shackles—the bondman of
habit leap out of his old sins with a mighty effort, and begin a new
life.
The truth is seeking an entrance into your heart, even as the sunbeams
seek entrance into a long disused and darkened room. How patiently they
play about the door, peeping into every crevice, slipping wedges of gold
through the shutters and laying bars of bullion on the dusty floor. “Let
us in,” they cry, “we will cast out the devils of gloom, disease, dirt,
dampness. Let us in.”
Every dawn they come again to plead, every sundown they go reluctantly
away. At last, the master from within flings open the door, pushes wide
the shutters, lifts the windows, and in they rush to rinse every nook,
cleanse every corner, reveal every stain, and they will not be satisfied
till all is renewed, swept and garnished within.
You wonder, like the prodigal, sometimes, if you would be received if
you returned. Listen to that broken column of marble, lying there among
the rubbish. I thought I heard it laugh. There it is again. Listen! Hear
it saying, “Oh, happy stone that I am.” Others sneer and say, “What is
there to give you happiness, lying there forsaken, among the debris of
this old temple?” “I rejoice,” replies the blackened pillar, “not for
what I am, but for what I am to be. The great sculptor, Angelo, was here
to-day. He measured me, he made a mark on me. I heard him say as he
looked at me, ‘This will do.’”
“A block of marble caught the beam of Bunarrotti’s eyes,
Which lighted in their darkling depths like meteor lighted skies,
And one who stood beside him listened, smiling as he heard,
‘For I will make an angel of it,’ was the sculptor’s word.
Then chisel sharp, and mallet strong, that stubborn block assailed,
And blow by blow, and pang by pang, the prisoner unveiled;
A brow was lifted, pure and high, a waking eye outshone
And as the master swiftly wrought, a smile broke through the stone.
Beneath that chisel’s edge, the hair escaped in flowing rings,
And plume by plume were slowly freed, the sweep of half furled wings,
The stately bust, the shapely limbs their stony fetters shed,
And where the shapeless block had been, an angel stood instead.
Oh, blows that smite, oh, pangs that pierce this shrinking heart of
mine,
What are ye but the Master’s tools, forming a work divine?
Oh, hope that crumbles at my feet, oh, joy that mocks and flies,
What are ye but the bond that keeps my spirit from the skies?
Sculptor of souls, I lift to Thee my cumbered heart and hands,
Spare not the chisel, set me free, however dear the bands;
How blest if all these seeming ills which turn my heart to Thee,
Shall only prove that Thou wilt make an angel out of me.”
Even within the vilest sinner, there is a glorious possibility. Once in
the hands of Christ, hidden beauty will shine forth and deformity will
disappear. So beautiful will he make the soul that it will be fit for
the inheritance of the saints in light.
Weep not over misspent youth, much may yet be done, even now. Crippled
as you are, you may have a little work to show in return for His love.
You may never have as much as others, but there is this consolation, you
may love Him as dearly, obey Him as implicitly, follow Him as closely,
and suffer for Him as gladly, as any of His church.
Sometimes I think you can know Him better for your very misery. Hear the
ninety and nine telling the praises of the Good Shepherd; how he has led
them, folded them, defended them. When all have spoken in concurrent
testimony, the lost sheep, crippled, scarred, torn, speaks in tones low
and full of pathos: “All you have said is true, but none of you know the
dear Shepherd as I know him. I am the most unworthy of all, yet into the
hills, among the wolves, in the dark night, through the cold streams, He
came seeking me. I was bleeding, mangled on the rocks, ready to die.
Through the pelting of the pitiless storm I heard Him call my name,
saying, ‘Come home, come home.’ Tenderly he lifted me, gently bound up
my wounds, patiently he carried me all the way. Ah, you know something
of His love, _but I know nothing else.”_
So it is. There is room in His mercy for all, and if there is no other
gate into the city of refuge that you dare to enter, hold my hand and
together we will go into this one, which he opened for us.
“Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for
they shall be filled.”
[Illustration: Robt McIntyre]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transcriber’s Note
This text, frankly, is rife with errors. It is often not possible to
attribute the errors of spelling and punctuation to the author or the
printer. Generally, obvious punctuation errors (missing periods,
unbalanced quotation marks, etc.) have been corrected, and noted in the
table below.
Typographical mistakes (e.g. inverted or transposed letters, doubled
syllables on line breaks, ‘halt’ for ‘half’, etc.) are also corrected
and noted.
Spelling errors are more problematic. Where other instances of a word
are spelled correctly (by our standards),they are noted and corrected.
The Single instances are noted, but remain uncorrected. Many very
obvious mistakes (e.g., conspicious, sufficent, countenaces) have been
corrected. The goal was to render the text readable while preserving as
accurately as possible the author’s intent.
In passages of extended quotation, the author (or printer) regularly
fails to be consistent in the use of quotations marks, either failing to
include the opening mark on continuing paragraphs, or neglecting to nest
them properly using single marks.
In the section of Part I, Chapter II on “Hindoos”, a quoted narrative
beginning on the bottom of p. 75 abandons the use of enclosing double
quotation marks for each paragraph by the top of p. 77.
A quote purportedly from the _Eclectic Magazine_ of May, 1885, beginning
on p. 148, fails to clearly finish, with a confusion of quotation marks
making that a matter of speculation. That volume of the magazine has no
article regarding gambling (which might have allowed a correct scope for
the passage).
On pp. 431-437, a letter and an extended description of various gambling
devices uses only a single opening quotation, and is distinguished from
the main text only by the use of a smaller font.
Beginning on p. 178, a passage from the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ of 1796
is quoted, but the quotation marks are inconsistently applied. These
have been corrected for clarity. There are several points, where the
author lapses into paraphrase, that are left intact here.
Rather than attempting to regularize the punctuation of these passages,
the text is given as printed.
The author employs borrowed French words usually without providing
accents.
The name ‘Petitt’ is also found as ‘Pettit’ and since the former was
more frequently the case, the several instances of the latter were
corrected.
On p. 474, there are several paragraphs which repeat verbatim a passage
appearing on p. 472, beginning with ‘Lottery playing has always...’ and
ending three paragraphs later with ‘...so popular among the people at
large as was the Havana Lottery.’ This is without doubt a typesetting
error, and the redundant passage has been removed. The removed
paragraphs occurred here.
In discussing the South Sea Bubble, the author repeatedly refers to
Tobias Smollet as ‘Smallet’ or ‘Smallett’. Each variant has been
retained and noted.
Hyphenation of compound words follows the text. Where the hyphen appears
on a line or page break, it is kept or discarded in keeping with other
instances.
Inconsistencies in the punctuation of the Index are corrected without
further mention here.
The references in this table are to the page and line in the original.
8.11 “knowledge of good and evil.[’/”] Replaced.
10.35 “Striking the White Dove[”] Added.
14.48 “Ropers” and [“]Steerers” Added.
18.25 “Straddles”[—]Fictitious Added.
24.34 his policy [to-]toward gambling, 404. Removed.
37.4 it may serve to illus[s]trate Removed.
40.42 failed to d[e/i]scover the right one. Replaced.
50.25 as thereupon made again[s]t me Added.
51.32 cared little[.] Added.
54.8 The latter was cor[r]oborated by his wife Inserted.
55.28 They had kind[s] words for us Removed.
55.29 in that hour of our humil[i]ation Inserted.
55.32 by that ma[t]chless orator Inserted.
56.22 he proceeded to Indian[o/a]polis Replaced.
97.33 gamble for ‘Loukouni,’ _sic_ Loukoumi?
60.8 a Young Men’s Christian Association[”] Removed.
63.7 [“/‘]God bless mamma and papa ... Replaced.
63.8 ... and everybody. Amen.[’]” Inserted.
58.43 such a [grievious] wrong, _sic_ grievous
75.43 more a matter of chance[.] Added.
79.16 [“]What waste of words Added.
84.38 who were conspic[i/u]ous for Replaced.
85.5 Two Ta[n/ou]ist priests Replaced.
87.36 It consisted of three sixes on the Replaced.
_te[rr/ss]esarae_
89.23 at the battle of [Acton]? _sic_ Actium
94.15 which pierced the mirror behind him.[”] Added.
97.6 advertisements of the [sanitive] properties _sic_ sanative
98.6 they can earn money so easily?[’] Added.
102.23 described them as [“]arrayed _sic_: unclosed
quote.
112.12 is now the only social entertainment[s] of the Removed.
salons
110.22 [“]Her husband, Added.
110.28 [“]There was an expression Added.
110.36 [“]Another figure at the gaming table Added.
111.2 that she was an Englishwoman.[”] Added.
117.12 is the last and sole represen[ta]tive of the Inserted.
class
117.17 a suffic[i]ent guarantee Inserted.
120.3 to violence, drunken[n]ess and gaming Inserted.
122.27 the oldest magistrate in the [parliment] _sic_ parlement
or parliament
122.41 in fullness of their te[r]merity Removed.
123.40 to such a noble position,[”] Added.
127.23 A large propor[tion] of the patrons Missing.
128.19 some sort of lia[i]son Inserted.
128.36 has long been ended.[”] Added.
129.41 of the game on a Mississipp[p]i river boat Removed.
131.4 he said[,] “until one evening in 1872 Added.
135.6 in other European countries[.] Added.
136.9 do not play for gain but for pleasure.[”] Added.
141.1 and his footman told me so,” he replied.[”] Removed.
141.33 the catastrophe of Sir [, ——/ ——,] who has Comma moved.
frittered away
141.39 but there was nothing done.[”] Added.
143.19 are said to be fully £150,000 ($750,000[.)/).] Transposed.
144.7 [‘/“]The ‘hells’ generally Replaced.
145.19 accumulated a col[l]ossal fortune Removed.
148.10 another occas[s]ion he kept the bank Removed.
148.28 succ[c/e]eded in winning back Replaced.
150.38 which the police raid from time to time.[”] Removed.
152.19 “Roulette, £1,000 in the bank[.]” Added.
154.40 If the caster throws d[ue/eu]ces or aces Transposed.
155.23 portrayed on the countena[n]ces of the players Inserted.
156.30 they are at their own homes.[’] Added.
160.23 as [Smallett] has truly called it _sic_ Smollett
162.1 says [Smallet], _sic_ Smollett
162.30 Smallett gives us _sic_ Smollett
163.6 interfered with the usefuln[e]ss of servants Inserted.
163.38 under a pen[alty] of 40s Completed.
163.43 a monthly penalty of 40s. for every default.[”] Added.
166.25 he hastily decamped[.] Added,
170.40 to jeopardize them again[.] Added.
173.3 he soon bec[o/a]me an ensign Replaced.
174.16 [“]When King James ascended Removed.
174.15 was very glad of his absence.” Added.
174.30 by which those famil[i]ar with the tricks Inserted.
178.12 the latter apol[i/o]gized for becoming Replaced.
intoxicated
179.4 where I am to be found.[”/’] Replaced.
179.24 [”]Mr. Justice Rooke summed up the evidence Added.
179.26 [“/‘manslaughter[’/” Replaced.
179.41 was another eminent Englishm[e/a]n Replaced.
179.43 [“/‘]We played a good deal at Replaced/Added.
[“/‘]Goosetree’s[’]”
180.10 [“/‘]What, Wilberfor[c]e is that you?[”/’] Corrected/inserted.
180.16 Miles’ and ‘Evans’[,] Brooks[,] Boodle’s, Added.
White’s and Goosetree’s.
181.10 “Twenty-five guineas,[”] answered the alderman. Added.
182.12 The cases of Lords Halifax, Ang[el/le]sey Transposed.
186.32 and by the [decrepted] old negro _sic_ decrepit
189.14 the will of the people[.] Added.
196.2 (“Make your play, gentlemen!” “Nothing more Added.
goes!”[)]
198.13 to pull from the ends like “rakes[:/.]” Replaced.
200.4 which will be explained[.] Added.
201.21 to the grating of the finger nails[.] Added.
201.40 in advance of the de[s/c]k Replaced.
207.1 Here’s your money old man.[”] Added.
208.17 entered the ap[p]artment Removed.
212.22 Close[,] one of the best known Added.
214.2 one of the “peculiar institutions[”] Added.
216.24 [“]When a player puts in that much Removed.
218.18 instead of saying [‘/“]I bet,” Replaced.
219.31 which may [h/b]e held by players Replaced.
222.33 a moral impossibility for the unsoph[ist]icated Inserted.
226.26 until number 3 has “staked” his [“]pile.” Added.
227.19 the person to who[w/m] he wishes to give Inverted.
230.44 In some of the succe[e]ding paragraphs Inserted.
236.27 he bet wildly on his adve[r]sary’s deal Inserted.
236.39 the foot of the operator accident[al]ly slipped Inserted.
242.4 a liberal supply of worthless checks[.] Added.
244.29 and the [apperture] in the box _sic_ aperture
246.39 While a rouge et no[u/i]r table Replaced.
248.9 marked “[B/R],” is for wagers on the red Replaced.
248.24 the first and last hal[t/f] of the numbers Replaced.
252.15 is thus enabled t[e/o] win through fraud Replaced.
254.7 Two it[e/i]nerant sharpers Replaced.
254.14 and that—to use a colloqu[i]alism— Inserted.
257.10 holding neither face cards no[t/r] tens Replaced.
260.3 it makes not the sligh[t]est difference Inserted.
264.9 I’m your man for twenty or so.[’]” Removed.
266.37 “Briefs” may also be advantageou[s]ly used Inserted.
267.42 “just a little higher.[”] Added.
268.1 [“]When a “gudgeon” displays Removed.
270.4 the kingdom of Great Brit[ia/ai]n Transposed.
271.22 with absolute certain[i]ty Removed.
271.39 that will fill the d[a/e]aler[’]s hand Replaced/Inserted.
272.4 they already hold nineteen or twenty[,/.] Replaced.
273.15 in the land of the Pharoahs _sic_ Pharaohs
273.29 will be treated _seriatum_ _sic_ seriatim
274.10 on the corresponding squares on the cloth[,/.] Replaced.
275.3 has never [occured] to him _sic_ occurred
275.21 “the old army [“]game,” Removed.
277.36 the other dice is in[s]cribed Inserted.
282.29 that his luck may not ap[p]ear Inserted.
284.5 of an immense n[e/u]mber of “fakirs,” Replaced.
287.37 as explained above[.] Added.
288.29 the “book-keeper[”] occasionally brings Added.
290.36 By simply pressing on this [mechanicism] _sic_ mechanism
295.40 (as shown in fig. [1/2]) Corrected. Fig.
2 is unlabelled.
369.37 the hair escaped i[u/n] flowing rings Inverted.
300.12 a “[a ]sure winner” for the manipulator Removed.
301.32 the proprietor knows [t/w]hat number Replaced.
309.31 and will also give him a gratuit[i]ous chance Removed.
312.15 The inherent [villany] of such a transaction _sic_ villainy
312.26 is substantially as describ[e]d below Inserted.
314.35 “Why,[”] man, Mississippi is a big State, Removed.
314.36 What city?[”] Added.
316.2 from the hands of his friend[.] Added.
316.16 with which the sc[r]oundrels have taken Removed.
318.35 [‘/“]Beyond a question.” Replaced.
320.26 He said, ‘An Indian ain’t got any rights Replaced.
anyhow[,/.]
321.19 and sell it outright[./?]” Replaced.
321.33 the height of the ho[n/u]ses Inverted.
331.11 by members of the fraternity as “send”[.] Added.
334.22 as they lie upon the table[.] Added.
336.18 in having a second conf[i]ederate Removed.
338.14 the“agent[”] of the gift distribution scheme Added.
341.4 he (the sharper) ia the[;] agent Removed.
341.30 submits to his loss without a [murmer]. _sic_ murmur
353.18 bet on a certainty.[”] Removed.
353.40 you shentlemen’s want nohow?[”] Added.
355.28 The “soap man” t[u/a]kes his position Replaced.
357.15 with the fleet-f[l]ooted runner. Removed.
357.18 he is glad that his “uncle[”] Added.
361.39 [“]I thought as much,” Added.
366.35 My inborn proclivities were towards physic[i]al Removed.
cowardice
367.30 in a small Missouri village[.] Added.
370.30 without attracting their attention.[tion.] Removed.
371.17 that his [custodion] was a devotee _sic_ custodion
373.39 His next mess[s]age to his father Removed.
374.36 and offer to stake them for $2.00[.] Added.
374.40 as good a “bottom dealer” [w]as there [w]as in Removed/Added.
the country
376.9 give me a nick[le/el]’s worth. Transposed.
377.19 he accosted us[.] Added.
378.17 O[’i/’]ive got the wrong man.[”] Transposed/Added.
382.41 than between two meals[,/.] Replaced.
383.49 She replied, “[‘] might be buried in it.” Removed.
384.1 and then started for home[,/.] Replaced.
384.2 seemed to be “turned around[”] to me Added.
389.24 receiving their stipul[ l/ulat]ed proportion Replaced.
390.31 property of this de[cs/sc/ription Transposed.
395.6 Not[h]withstanding all this lavish outlay Removed.
399.20 [harrassing] them night and day _sic_ harassing
404.6 had the power to enfor[c]e his behest Inserted.
405.7 one outside watchman at $20[:/;] Replaced.
407.37 Keplinger’s patent [00] _sic_
409.28 St[au/ua]rt Eddy Transposed.
411.28a he s[au/ua]vely asked Transposed.
411.28b “how can I accom[m]odate you? Removed.
415.4 He sprang from [s/a] good New England family Replaced.
417.28 power of long-sustain[e]d application Inserted.
418.6 Ex[ -]Governor Jenkins, of Colorado Added.
426.35 “[‘]The players Removed.
427.14 [‘/“]That’s all right,” answered Allriver. Replaced.
427.16 “I’ve inquired into that[,]” Added.
433.13 loaded dice come i[s/n] sets of “9” Replaced.
440.3 “Ed.[’/”] Moses sauntered up Replaced.
440.9 is drinking the mellow[i/e]st “bourbon” Replaced.
440.30 and a few dime[s] Added.
441.41 [being] a favorite resort for stock-brokers _sic_ became?
441.42 overcome their old time sporting proclivities[.] Added.
442.3 chiefl[l]y “brace” Removed.
446.35 A large p[or/ro]portion of these “touts” Transposed.
447.6 to a president[i]al election Inserted.
451.8 sc[h]edule of rates Inserted.
452.18 the fair was for some[ ]time the question Inserted.
452.41 who for some[ ]time tried without success Inserted.
457.39 of the third mun[i]cipality Inserted.
459.11 McGrath, Sherwood and Pet[ti/it]t were the first Transposed.
461.11 Davis, McGrath and Pet[ti/it]t, in particular Transposed.
461.37 (which came in a few weeks[)] Added.
464.30 Mr. Shak[e]speare Removed.
468.33 has not proved more re[num/mun]rative Transposed.
469.30 as affording even greater fluc[ut/tu]ations Transposed.
470.30 the tangible result [that was/was that] in the Words
single year transposed.
471.2 was accustomed, now and then[,] to “take a Added.
little flyer.”
471.6 More[o]ver the business Inserted.
476.17 “Age cannot wither nor custom sta[t/l]e” Replaced.
477.27 The “sports” had become politic[i]ans Inserted.
477.32 the sentiment in the legislature again[s]t Inserted.
gaming
478.8 Temporary [abberation] of mind _sic_ aberration
478.40 unprecedented and unparal[el/le]led in history Transposed.
479.3 they found the [i/I]ndians racing ponies Capitalized.
479.32 until some[ ]time in or about 1872 Inserted.
480.1 in each instance has ignomin[i]ously failed Inserted.
480.25 most of the dealers and [supernumeries] _sic_
supernumeraries
483.7 being permitted to “sit,[’/”] Replaced.
491.8 applicants for admiss[s]ion are subjected Removed.
492.8 There is then another outcry[,] they are ordered Added.
504.19 a very prominent Republican politic[i]an Added.
505.2 a great devotee of the game[.] Added.
507.4 patronized almost exclusively by the _elite[.]_ Added.
509.28 burned out an extensive gam[b]ling establishment Inserted.
511.13 Professional gam[e]sters Inserted.
511.35 a remarkable degree the [effrontry] _sic_ effrontery
511.40 assemble for the same purpose in each other[’]s Added.
rooms[.]
512.23 to lose it again[.] Added.
515.17 and “chuc[h/k]-a-luck,” were not neglected Replaced.
516.14 was immediately resumed[,/.] Replaced.
517.27 at the sailor[’s/s’] boarding houses Transposed.
520.23 the infatuation of the habit s[ie/ei]zed upon Transposed.
him
521.10 is certain that in [t]he history of gambling Added.
522.23 For[r]ester about 20 years ago Inserted.
523.15 a part of his entertainment[.] Added.
526.2 they are fug[u/i]tives and outcasts Replaced.
535.10 were to be calm[l]y and quietly Inserted.
537.31 But, [sa/as] in all other trades Transposed.
537.32 The habitues and[c / c]ustomers Transposed.
538.9 “Steerers[”] were numerous Added.
538.36 corral[l]ing some of the large profits Inserted.
542.13 drawing the capital prize[.] Added.
544.25 to promote and foster gambling[,/.] Replaced.
545.43 “Sock” Ri[el]le]y Transposed.
547.35 whose steps take hold on hell[.] Added.
549.34 and at first with var[r]ying success. Removed.
557.13 [I]t became generally recognized Added.
561.8 that is, the individu[a]l chances Inserted.
565.4 to have been a large field of favorites[.] Added.
573.23 to individual policeme[u/n] Replaced.
577.20 the sale of commodit[i]es Inserted.
579.6 It follows that he is natu[u/r]ally Replaced.
584.20 is incomprehensible to the uni[ni]tiated Inserted.
587.26 was the outgrowth of disappointed[,] self- Removed.
seeking
590.32 jammed with a[u/n] excited throng Inverted.
595.23 the [“]dissemination of valuable commercial Added.
596.4 the self-stultification went even farther[,/.] Replaced.
596.35 spots upon the b[ody] Restored.
596.36 the very heart of so[cial] morals Restored.
601.14 the fungus-like excres[c]ence Inserted.
607.13 Astronomy helped make Newton[;/,] art made Replaced.
Angelo,
613.2 every released convict[,/.] Replaced.
613.5 [s/S]ir, tell them this Capitalized.
615.9 I never cou[n]tenanced the evil Inserted.
615.40 the big winning last night.[”] Added.
620.33 within all is punk and hollowness[.] Added.
623.30 I can win my bread.[”] Added.
625.12 forehead of his child with such a wrong[”] Added.
625.17 while the meta[l]lic Inserted.
625.22 to con[s]ciousness Inserted.
633.43 One grand sweet song.[”] Added.
634.27 [gladitorial] combat _sic_
634.29 his spiritual nature[.] Added.
634.33 the wicked one.[”] Added.
636.6 define it well[./,] Replaced.
636.32 the loftiest archang[le/el] Transposed.
639.23 [“] for what I am not Added.
640.22 _but I know nothing else._[”] Added.