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.”

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.