"I strive in vain to set the evil forth.
The words that should sufficiently accurse
And execrate the thing, hath need
Come glowing from the lips of eldest hell.
Among the saddest in the den of woe,
Most sad; among the damn'd, most deeply damn'd."
Once on a time, before the dark catalogue of vices was made complete by the
wicked inventions of men, or the evil made to counterbalance the good in
the world, the Arch Enemy of mankind, deeply sensible of the vantage-ground
occupied by the antagonistic Being, and anxiously casting about him for the
means of securing an equilibrium of power, called around him a small
company, consisting of those of his Infernal subjects whom he had
previously noted for their excellence, in subtility and devilish invention,
and, after fully explaining his wants and wishes to his keenly appreciating
auditory, made proclamation among them, that the Demon who should invent a
new vice, which, under the name and guise of Pastime, should be best
calculated to seduce men from the paths of virtue, pervert their hearts,
ruin them for earth and educate them for hell, should be awarded a crown of
honor, with rank and prerogative second only to his own. He then, with many
a gracious and encouraging word to incite in them a spirit of emulation,
and nerve them for exertion in the important enterprise thus set before
them, dismissed them, to go forth among men, observe, study, and come again
before him on a designated time, to report the results of their respective
doings, and submit them to his decision. Eager to do the will of their lord
and Lucifer; as well as to gain the tempting distinctions involved in his
award, the commissioned, fiend-group dispersed, and scattered themselves
over the earth, which was understood to be their field of operations. And,
after noting, as long as they chose, all the different phases of human
society, the secret inclinations of those composing it, their follies,
weaknesses, and points most vulnerable to temptation, they each returned to
the dark dominions whence they came, to cogitate in retirement, concoct and
reduce to form those schemes for securing the great object in view, which
their observations and discoveries on earth had suggested.
At the time appointed for the hearing and decision, the demoniac
competitors again assembled before their imperial arbiter; not this time in
secret conclave, but in the presence of thousands of congregated fiends,
who, having been apprised of the new plan about to be presented for
peopling the Commonwealth of Hell with recruits from earth, had come up in
all directions from their dismal abodes, to hear those plans reported, and
witness the awarding of the prize for the one judged most worthy of
adoption. Lucifer then mounted his throne, commanded silence, and ordered
the competitors to advance and present, in succession, such plans as they
would lay before him for his consideration and decision. They did so; and
one of them, a young and genteel-looking devil, to whom, from a suppose
congeniality of tastes and feelings with the objects of his care, had been
especially assigned the duty of supervising the fashionable walks of
society, now stepped confidently forward and said:
"I present for your consideration, most honored Lucifer, I present FASHION
as one of those social institutions of men which might the most easily
become, with a little fostering at our hands, to us the most productive of
vices, under a name least calculated to alarm. It already holds an almost
omnipotent sway over the wealthier, or what they call the higher, classes
of society, who hesitate at no sins that can be committed with its
sanction; and the disposition is every day growing stronger and stronger,
among all classes, to fall in with its behests. Encourage its progress,
make its rule absolute with all, and the world's boasted morality would
trouble us, devils, no more. This would be the direct and natural result
among the most wealthy, who would leave no vice unpracticed, no sin
uncommitted, provided they could excuse themselves under plea that it was
fashionable. With those of more limited means the effect would be still
better; for devotion to Fashion would beget extravagance--extravagance,
poverty--poverty, desperation--desperation, crime; so with all classes, the
result, for our purpose, would be equally favorable and _much the same_.
The new vice I therefore propose is the one to be made out of, and go under
the name of, FASHION."
"There may be something in this conception," said Lucifer, thoughtfully,
after the speaker had closed; "but is it safe against all contingencies?
What if the world should take it into their heads to make it fashionable to
be good?"
"Not the least danger of that," rejoined the other, promptly. "That is a
contingency about as likely to happen as that your highness should turn
Christian," he added, with a sardonic grin.
"You are right," responded Lucifer; "and, as your scheme comes within the
rule, on the score of originality, we will reserve it for consideration."
"My plan," said the next demon who spoke, "consists in inciting man to the
general use of intoxicating drinks, under the plea of taking a social
glass; for, let the use of these become general, and all men were devils
ready made, and---"
"True, most true!" interrupted Lucifer; "but that is not new. That is a
vice I invented myself, as long ago as the time Noah was floating about in
the ark, and the first man I caught with it was the old patriarch himself.
Since then it has been my most profitable agent in the earth, bringing more
recruits to my kingdom than all the other vices put together. But our
present movement was to insure something new. The plan, therefore, does not
come within the rule, and must be set aside."
"The new vice which I propose," said the third demon who came forward, "is
involved in the general cultivation of music, which I contend would render
men effeminate, indolent, voluptuous, and finally vicious and corrupt, so
that whole nations might eventually be kept out of heaven and secured for
hell through its deteriorating influences."
"I am not a little dubious about trying to make a vice out of music, which
would be all reliable for our purposes," remarked Lucifer, with a negative
shake of the head. "I fear it might prove a sword which would cut both
ways. It may, it is true, be doing a pretty fair business just now in some
localities; but methinks I already see, in the dim vista of the earth's
future, a cunning Wesley springing up, and exhorting his brethren 'Not to
let the Devil have all the good tunes, but appropriate them to the service
of the Lord.' Now if the religious world should have wit enough, as I
greatly fear me they would, to follow the sagacious hint of such a leader,
they might make music an agency which would enlist two followers for the
white banner of Heaven where it would one for the red banner of Hell. The
experiment would be one of too doubtful expediency to warrant the trial.
The proposition, therefore, cannot be entertained."
Many other methods of creating an efficient new vice were then successively
proposed by the different competitors; but they were all, for some
deficiency, or want of originality, in turn, rejected, till one more only
remained to be announced; when its author, an old, dark-eyed demon, who was
much noted for his infernal cunning, and who, conscious perhaps of the
superiority of his device, had contrived to defer its announcement till the
last, now came forward, and said:
"The scheme I have devised for the accomplishment of the common object of
the patriotic enterprise which your Highness has put afoot, proposes a new
vice, which, passing under the guise of innocent pastime, will not only, by
itself, be fully equal to any other of the many vices now known among men,
for its certainty to lure them to its embrace, fascinate, infatuate,
deprave, and destroy them, but will insure the exercise and combine the
powers of them all. It addresses itself to the intellectual by the implied
challenge it holds out to them to make a trial of their skill; it appears
to the unfortunate in business as a welcome friend, which is rarely turned
away; it presents to pride and vanity the means of gratification that are
not to be rejected; it holds out to avarice an irresistible temptation; it
begets habits of drunkenness; and thus insures all the fruits of that
desolating vice; it engenders envy, hatred, and the spirit of revenge; in
short, it brings into play every evil thought and passion that ever entered
the head and heart of man, while it the most securely holds its victims,
and most speedily hunts them down to ruin and death."
"The name? the name?" eagerly shouted an hundred voices from the excited
fiend-throng around.
"The name," resumed the speaker, in reply, "the name by which I propose to
christen this new and terrible device of mine, to counteract the power of
virtue, and curtail the dominions of Heaven, is GAMBLING!"
"Gambling! Gambling!" responded all hell, in thunders of applause; "and
Gambling let it be," shouted Lucifer, as the prize was thus awarded by
acclamation to the distinguished inventor of Gambling.
From this supposable scene among the demons, we pass, by no unnatural
transition, to a kindred one among men.
In a back, secluded room, in the third story of a public house in Boston,
of questionable respectability, there might have been found, a few hours
after the dispersion of the party before described, a small band of men
sitting around a table, intently engaged in games of chance, in which money
was at stake; while on a sideboard stood several bottles of different kinds
of liquors, with a liberal supply of crackers and cigars. Of this company,
two, who have been already introduced to the reader,--Mark Elwood and Gaut
Gurley,--seemed to be especially pitted against each other in the game. It
was now deep into the night, and Elwood said something about going home.
But his remark being received only with jeers by the company, he sank into
an abashed silence and played on. Another hour elapsed, and he spoke of it
again, but less decidedly. Another passed, and he seemed wholly to have
forgotten his purpose; for he, as well as all the rest of the company, had,
by this time, become intensely absorbed in the play, allowing themselves no
respite or intermission, except to snatch occasionally a glass of liquor
from the sideboard, in the entrancing business before them. And, as the
sport proceeded, deeper and deeper grew the excitement among the infatuated
participants, till every sense and feeling seemed lost to every thing save
the result of each rapidly succeeding game; and the heat of concentrated
thought and passion gleamed fiercely from every eye, and found vent, in
repeated exclamations of triumph or despair, from every tongue, according
to the varying fortunes of the parties engaged. On one side was heard the
loud and exultant shout of the winner at his success, and on the other, the
low bitter curse of the loser at his disappointment; the countenance of the
one, in his joy and exultation, assuming the self-satisfied and domineering
air of the victor and master, and the countenance of the other, in his
grief and envy, darkening into the mingled look of the demon and the slave.
And thus played on this desperate band of gamesters till morning light,
which, now stealing through the shutters of their darkened room, came and
joined its voiceless monitions with those which their consciences had long
since given them, in warning them to break up and return to their families,
made wretched by their absence. So completely, however, had they abandoned
themselves to the fatal witcheries of the play, that they heeded not even
this significant admonition; but, with uneasy glances towards the windows,
to note the progress of the unwelcome intrusions of day, turned with the
redoubled eagerness often shown by those who know their time is limited to
their hellish engagement.
Through the whole night, Fortune seemed to have held nearly an even scale
between Elwood and his special adversary, Gaut Gurley, contrary to the
evident anticipations of the latter, and despite all his attempts to secure
an advantage. Thus far, however, he had signally failed in his purpose;
and, at the last game, Elwood had even won of him the largest sum that had
as yet been put at stake between them. This seemed to drive him almost to
madness; and in his desperation he loudly demanded that the stakes should
be doubled for the next trial. It was done. The game was played, and Gurley
was again the loser.
"I will now stay no longer," said Elwood, rising. "I was forced here
to-night, as you well know, Gurley, against my will, and against all
reason, to stop your clamor for a chance to win back what you absurdly
called your money lost at our last sitting; though Heaven knows that what I
then won was but a pitiful fraction of the amount you have taken from me,
within the last two years, in the same or in a worse way. I have now given
you your chance,--yes, chance upon chance, all night,--till your claim has
been a dozen times cancelled; and, I repeat I will stay no longer."
"You shall!" fiercely cried Gurley, with an oath. "You shall stay to give
me another chance, or I will brand you as a trickster and a sneak!"
"Gentlemen," said Elwood, turning to the company, in an expostulating tone,
"gentlemen, I appeal to you all if I have not--"
"I will have no appeal," interrupted Gurley, in a voice trembling with
rage. "I say I _will_ have another chance, or--"
"Take it, then," hastily interposed Elwood, as if unwilling to let the
other finish the sentence; "take it: what will you have the stakes?"
"Double the last."
"Double?"
"Yes, double!"
"Have your own way, then," said Elwood, with forced composure, taking up
and shuffling the cards for the important game.
The stake was for a thousand; and the trembling antagonists played as if
life and death hung on the event. And the whole company, indeed, forgetful
of their own comparatively slight interest, in the momentous one thus put
at stake, at once turned their eyes on the two players, and watched the
result with breathless interest. That result was soon disclosed; when, to
the surprise of all, and the dismay of Gaut Gurley, the victory once more
strangely fell to the lot of Mark Elwood, who, gathering up the stakes with
trembling eagerness, hastily rose from the table, as if to depart.
"What in the name of Tophet does all this mean?" fiercely exclaimed Gurley,
throwing an angry and suspicious look round the table upon those who had
doubtless been, at other sittings, his confederates in fleecing Elwood.
"Yes, what is the meaning of this? I ask _you_, and _you_, sir?"
"Better ask your own partner," said one of the men addressed, with a
defiant look.
"Elwood? Pooh!" exclaimed Gaut, with a bitter sneer.
"And why not?" responded the former. "He may have as good luck as the best
of us, as it appears he has had. And hark ye, Gaut, you look things at us
that it might not be safe for you to say in this room."
"Gentlemen, you will all bear me out in leaving, now," here interposed
Elwood, beginning to make towards the door.
"Stop, sir!" thundered Gaut. "You are not a-going to sneak off with all
that money in your pocket, by a d--d sight!"
"Why not, sir?" replied Elwood; "why not, for all you can say?"
"Because I have lost, sir!" shouted Gurley, hoarse with rage. "I have lost
three games running,--lost all I have. I demand a fair chance to win it
back; and that chance I will have, or I'll make you, Mark Elwood, curse the
hour you refused it."
"Gaut Gurley, you insatiate fiend!" exclaimed Elwood, in a tone of mingled
anger and distress; "you it was who first led me into this accursed habit
of play, by which you have robbed me of untold thousands yourself, and been
the means of my being robbed of thousands more by others. You have brought
me to the door of ruin before, and would now take all I have to save me
from absolute bankruptcy."
"Whining hypocrite!" cried Gurley, starting up in rage. "Do you tell that
story when you have my last dollar in your pocket? But your pitiful whining
shall not avail you. If you leave this room alive, you leave that money
behind you."
"Stop, stop!" here interposed one of the company, who had noted what had
inadvertently fallen from Elwood, in his warmth, respecting his apprehended
bankruptcy; "stop, no such recriminations and threatenings here! I can show
Elwood a way to dispose of a part of his money, at least, without bringing
on _any_ one the charge of robbing or being robbed. Here is a note of your
signing, Mr. Elwood,--a debt of honor,--for a couple of hundreds,
contracted in this very room, you will remember. You may as well pay it."
"I have a similar bit of paper," said another, coming forward and
presenting a note for a still larger sum.
"And I, likewise," said a third, joining the group, with an additional
piece of evidence of Elwood's folly, in the shape of a gambling note; "and
I shall insist on payment with the rest, seeing the money cannot be
disposed of between you and Gaut without a quarrel and danger of
bloodshed."
With a perplexed and troubled air Elwood paced the room a moment, without
uttering a word in reply to the different demands that had so unexpectedly
been made upon him. He glanced furtively towards the door, as if
calculating the chances of escaping through it before any one could
interpose to prevent him. He then glanced inquiringly at the company for
such indications of sympathy or forbearance as might warrant the attempt;
but in their countenances he read only that which should deter him from
resorting to any such means of escaping the dilemma in which he now found
himself. And, suddenly stopping short and turning to the new claimants for
his money, he said:
"Well, gentlemen, have your way, then. I had hoped to be permitted to carry
away money enough to meet my bills and engagements of to-day,--at least, as
much as I brought here. But, as I am not to be allowed that privilege, hand
on your paper, every scrap of my signing, and you shall have your pay."
A half-dozen notes of hand were instantly produced and thrown upon the
table, and the holder of each was paid off in turn; the last of whom drew
from Elwood nearly every dollar he had in his possession.
"There, gentlemen," he exclaimed, with a sort of desperate calmness, "in
this line of deal, at least, my accounts are all squared. I am quits with
you all."
"Not with me, by a d--d sight!" exclaimed Gurley, no longer able to
restrain his rage at being thus baulked in his desperate purpose of getting
hold of Elwood's money, by fair means or foul, before permitting him to
leave the room. "Not with me, sir, till the amount of that last stake,
which was just enough to make me whole, is again in my pocket; and I'll
follow you to the gates of hell, but I'll have it!"
Cowering and trembling beneath the threats and fiendish glances of the
other, Elwood siezed his hat, and rushed from the room.
On escaping from this "den of thieves," and gaining the street below,
Elwood's first thought was of home and his shamefully neglected family, and
he turned his steps in that direction. But, before proceeding far, he began
to hesitate and falter in his course. He became oppressed with the feelings
of a criminal. He was ashamed to meet his family; for, fully conscious that
his looks must be haggard, his eyes red and bloodshot, and his whole
appearance disordered, he knew his return in such a plight, at that hour in
the morning, would betray the wretched employments of the night, especially
to his keen-sighted brother, on whose assistance he now doubly depended to
save him from ruin. He therefore changed his course, and was proceeding
towards his store, when he met his confidential clerk, who was out in
search of him, and who, in great agitation, informed him that his drafts of
yesterday had all been returned dishonored; that bills were pouring in, and
the holders clamorous for their pay. Struck dumb by the startling
announcement, it was some moments before Elwood could collect his thoughts
sufficiently to bid his clerk return, and put off his creditors till the
next day, when he would try to satisfy them all. And, having done this, he
turned suddenly into another street, wound his way back to the inn he had
just left, took a private room, locked himself in, and for a while gave way
to alternate paroxysms of grief, remorse, and self-reproaches. After
exhausting himself by the violence of his emotions, he threw himself upon a
bed, and, thinking an hour's repose might mend his appearance, so as to
enable him the better to disguise the cause of his absence, on his return
to his family, which he now concluded to defer till towards dinner-time, he
fell into a slumber so profound and absorbing, that he did not awake till
the shadows of approaching night had begun to darken his room.
Leaping from his couch, in his surprise and vexation at having so overslept
himself, he hastily made his toilet, and immediately set out for home,--a
home which, for the first time in his life, he now dreaded to enter. To
that wretched home we will now repair, preceding his arrival, to relate
what had there occurred in his absence.