Part 1 (2/2)

I. It diseases the mind, unfitting it for the duties of life. Gamblers are seldom industrious men in any useful vocation. A gambling mechanic finds his labor less relishful as his pa.s.sion for play increases. He grows unsteady, neglects his work, becomes unfaithful to promises; what he performs he slights. Little jobs seem little enough; he desires immense contracts, whose uncertainty has much the excitement of gambling--and for the best of reasons; and in the pursuit of great and sudden profits, by wild schemes, he stumbles over into ruin, leaving all who employed or trusted him in the rubbish of his speculations.

A gambling lawyer, neglecting the drudgery of his profession, will court its exciting duties. To explore authorities, compare reasons, digest, and write,--this is tiresome. But to advocate, to engage in fiery contests with keen opponents, this is nearly as good as gambling. Many a ruined client has cursed the law, and cursed a stupid jury, and cursed everybody for his irretrievable loss, except his lawyer, who gambled all night when he should have prepared the case, and came half asleep and debauched into court in the morning to lose a good case mismanaged, and s.n.a.t.c.hed from his gambling hands by the art of sober opponents.

A gambling student, if such a thing can be, withdraws from thoughtful authors to the brilliant and spicy; from the pure among these, to the sharp and ribald; from all _reading_ about depraved life, to _seeing_; from sight to experience. Gambling vitiates the imagination, corrupts the tastes, destroys the industry--for no man will drudge for cents, who gambles for dollars by the hundred; or practise a piddling economy, while, with almost equal indifference, he makes or loses five hundred in a night.

II. For a like reason, it destroys all domestic habits and affections.

Home is a prison to an inveterate gambler; there is no air there that he can breathe. For a moment he may sport with his children, and smile upon his wife; but his heart, its strong pa.s.sions, are not there. A little branch-rill may flow through the family, but the deep river of his affections flows away from home. On the issue of a game, Tacitus narrates that the ancient Germans would stake their property, their wives, their children, and themselves. What less than this is it, when a man will stake that property which is to give his family bread, and that honor which gives them place and rank in society?

When _playing_ becomes desperate _gambling_, the heart is a hearth where all the fires of gentle feelings have smouldered to ashes; and a thorough-paced gamester could rattle dice in a charnel-house, and wrangle for his stakes amid murder and pocket gold dripping with the blood of his own kindred.

III. Gambling is the parent and companion of every vice which pollutes the heart, or injures society.

It is a practice so disallowed among Christians, and so excluded by mere moralists, and so hateful to industrious and thriving men, that those who practise it are shut up to themselves; unlike lawful pursuits, it is not modified or restrained by collision with others. Gamblers herd with gamblers. They tempt and provoke each other to all evil, without affording one restraint, and without providing the counterbalance of a single virtuous impulse. They are like snakes coiling among snakes, poison and poisoning; like plague-patients, infected and diffusing infection; each sick and all contagious. It is impossible to put bad men together and not have them grow worse. The herding of convicts promiscuously, produced such a fermentation of depravity, that, long ago, legislators forbade it. When criminals, out of jail, herd together by choice, the same corrupt nature will doom them to growing loathsomeness, because of increasing wickedness.

IV. It is a provocative of thirst. The bottle is almost as needful as the card, the ball, or the dice. Some are seduced to drink; some drink for imitation, at first, and fas.h.i.+on. When super-excitements, at intervals, subside, their victim cannot bear the deathlike gloom of the reaction; and, by drugs or liquor, wind up their system to the glowing point again. Therefore, drinking is the invariable concomitant of the theatre, circus, race-course, gaming-table, and of all amus.e.m.e.nts which powerfully excite all but the moral feelings. When the double fires of dice and brandy blaze under a man, he will soon be consumed. If men are found who do not drink, they are the more noticeable because exceptions.

V. It is, even in its fairest form, the almost inevitable _cause of dishonesty_. Robbers have robbers' honor; thieves have thieves' law; and pirates conform to pirates' regulations. But where is there a gambler's code? One law there is, and this is not universal, _pay your gambling debts_. But on the wide question, _how is it fair to win_--what law is there? What will shut a man out from a gambler's club? May he not discover his opponent's hand by fraud? May not a concealed thread, pulling the significant _one_;--_one, two_; or _one, two, three_; or the sign of a bribed servant or waiter, inform him, and yet his standing be fair? May he not cheat in shuffling, and yet be in full orders and canonical? May he not cheat in dealing, and yet be a welcome gambler?--may he not steal the money from your pile by laying his hands upon it, just as any other thief would, and yet be an approved gambler?

May not the whole code be stated thus: _Pay what you lose, get what you can, and in any way you can!_ I am told, perhaps, that there are honest gamblers, gentlemanly gamblers. Certainly; there are always ripe apples before there are rotten. Men always _begin_ before they _end_; there is always an approximation before there is contact. Players will play truly till they get used to playing untruly; will be honest, till they cheat; will be honorable, till they become base; and when you have said all this, what does it amount to but this, that men who _really_ gamble, really cheat; and that they only do not cheat, who are not _yet_ real gamblers? If this mends the matter, let it be so amended. I have spoken of gamesters only among themselves; this is the least part of the evil; for who is concerned when lions destroy bears, or wolves devour wolf-cubs, or snakes sting vipers? In respect to that department of gambling which includes the _roping-in_ of strangers, young men, collecting-clerks, and unsuspecting green-hands, and robbing them, I have no language strong enough to mark down its turpitude, its infernal rapacity. After hearing many of the scenes not unfamiliar to every gambler, I think Satan might be proud of their dealings, and look up to them with that deferential respect, with which one monster gazes upon a superior. There is not even the expectation of honesty. Some scullion-herald of iniquity decoys the unwary wretch into the secret room; he is tempted to drink; made confident by the specious simplicity of the game; allowed to win; and every bait and lure and blind is employed--then he is plucked to the skin by tricks which appear as fair as honesty itself. The robber avows _his_ deed, does it openly; the gambler sneaks to the same result under skulking pretences. There is a frank way, and a mean way of doing a wicked thing. The gambler takes the meanest way of doing the dirtiest deed. The victim's own partner is sucking his blood; it is a league of sharpers, to get his money at any rate; and the wickedness is so unblus.h.i.+ng and unmitigated, that it gives, at last, an instance of what the deceitful human heart, knavish as it is, is ashamed to try to cover or conceal; but confesses with helpless honesty, that it is fraud, cheating, _stealing_, _robbery_,--and nothing else.

If I walk the dark street, and a peris.h.i.+ng, hungry wretch meets me and bears off my purse with but a single dollar, the whole town awakes; the officers are alert, the myrmidons of the law scout, and hunt, and bring in the trembling culprit to stow him in the jail. But a worse thief may meet me, decoy my steps, and by a greater dishonesty, filch ten thousand dollars,--and what then? The story spreads, the sharpers move abroad unharmed, no one stirs. It is the day's conversation; and like a sound it rolls to the distance, and dies in an echo.

Shall such astounding iniquities be vomited out amidst us, and no man care? Do we love our children, and yet let them walk in a den of vipers?

Shall we pretend to virtue, and purity, and religion, and yet make partners of our social life, men whose heart has conceived such d.a.m.nable deeds, and whose hands have performed them? Shall there be even in the eye of religion no difference between the corrupter of youth and their guardian? Are all the lines and marks of morality so effaced, is the nerve and courage of virtue so quailed by the frequency and boldness of flagitious crimes, that men, covered over with wickedness, shall find their iniquity no obstacle to their advancement among a Christian people.

In almost every form of iniquity there is some shade or trace of good.

We have in gambling a crime standing alone--dark, malignant, uncompounded wickedness! It seems in its full growth a monster without a tender mercy, devouring its own offspring without one feeling but appet.i.te. A gamester, as such, is the cool, calculating, essential _spirit_ of concentrated avaricious selfishness. His intellect is a living thing, quickened with double life for villany; his heart is steel of fourfold temper. When a man _begins_ to gamble he is as a n.o.ble tree full of sap, green with leaves, a shade to beasts, and a covert to birds. When one _becomes_ a thorough gambler, he is like that tree lightning-smitten, rotten in root, dry in branch, and sapless; seasoned hard and tough; nothing lives beneath it, nothing on its branches, unless a hawk or a vulture perches for a moment to whet its beak, and fly screaming away for its prey.

To every young man who indulges in the least form of gambling, I raise a warning voice! Under the specious name of AMUs.e.m.e.nT, you are laying the foundation of gambling. Playing is the seed which comes up gambling. It is the light wind which brings up the storm. It is the white frost which preludes the winter. You are mistaken, however, in supposing that it is harmless in its earliest beginnings. Its terrible blight belongs, doubtless, to a later stage; but its consumption of time, its destruction of industry, its distaste for the calmer pleasures of life, belong to the very _beginning_. You will begin to play with every generous feeling. Amus.e.m.e.nt will be the plea. At the beginning the game will excite enthusiasm, pride of skill, the love of mastery, and the love of money. The love of money, at first almost imperceptible, at last will rule out all the rest,--like Aaron's rod,--a serpent, swallowing every other serpent. Generosity, enthusiasm, pride and skill, love of mastery, will be absorbed in one mighty feeling,--the savage l.u.s.t of lucre.

There is a downward climax in this sin. The opening and ending are fatally connected, and drawn toward each other with almost irresistible attraction. If gambling is a vortex, playing is the outer ring of the Maelstrom. The thousand pound stake, the whole estate put up on a game--what are these but the instruments of kindling that tremendous excitement which a diseased heart craves? What is the _amus.e.m.e.nt_ for which you play but the _excitement_ of the game? And for what but this does the jaded gambler play? You differ from him only in the degree of the same feeling. Do not solace yourself that you shall escape because others have; for they _stopped_, and _you go on_. Are you as safe as they, when you are in the gulf-stream of perdition, and they on the sh.o.r.e? But have you ever asked, _how many_ have escaped? Not one in a thousand is left unblighted! You have nine hundred and ninety-nine chances _against_ you, and one for you; and will you go on? If a disease should stalk through the town, devouring whole families, and sparing not one in five hundred, would you lie down under it quietly because you have one chance in five hundred? Had a scorpion stung you, would it alleviate your pangs to reflect that you had only one chance in one hundred? Had you swallowed corrosive poison, would it ease your convulsions to think there was only one chance in fifty for you? I do not call every man who plays a gambler, but a gambler in _embryo_. Let me trace your course from the amus.e.m.e.nt of innocent playing to its almost inevitable end.

_Scene first._ A genteel coffee-house,--whose humane screen conceals a line of grenadier bottles, and hides respectable blushes from impertinent eyes. There is a quiet little room opening out of the bar; and here sit four jovial youths. The cards are out, the wines are in.

The fourth is a reluctant hand; he does not love the drink, nor approve the game. He antic.i.p.ates and fears the result of both. Why is he here?

He is a whole-souled fellow, and is afraid to seem ashamed of any fas.h.i.+onable gaiety. He will sip his wine upon the importunity of a friend newly come to town, and is too polite to spoil that friend's pleasure by refusing a part in the game. They sit, shuffle, deal; the night wears on, the clock telling no tale of pa.s.sing hours--the prudent liquor-fiend has made it safely dumb. The night is getting old; its dank air grows fresher; the east is grey; the gaming and drinking and hilarious laughter are over, and the youths wending homeward. What says conscience? No matter what it says; they did not hear, and we will not.

Whatever was said, it was very shortly answered thus: ”This has not been gambling; all were gentlemen; there was no cheating; simply a convivial evening; no stakes except the bills incident to the entertainment. If anybody blames a young man for a little innocent exhilaration on a special occasion, he is a superst.i.tious bigot; let him croak!” Such a garnished game is made the text to justify the whole round of gambling, Let us, then, look at

_Scene the second._ In a room so silent that there is no sound except the shrill c.o.c.k crowing the morning, where the forgotten candles burn dimly over the long and lengthened wick, sit four men. Carved marble could not be more motionless, save their hands. Pale, watchful, though weary, their eyes pierce the cards, or furtively read each other's faces. Hours have pa.s.sed over them thus. At length they rise without words; some, with a satisfaction which only makes their faces brightly haggard, sc.r.a.pe off the piles of money; others, dark, sullen, silent, fierce, move away from their lost money. The darkest and fiercest of the four is that young friend who first sat down to make out a game! He will never sit so innocently again. What says he to his conscience now? ”I have a right to gamble; I have a right to be d.a.m.ned too, if I choose; whose business is it?”

_Scene the third._ Years have pa.s.sed on. He has seen youth ruined, at first with expostulation, then with only silent regret, then consenting to take part of the spoils; and finally, he has himself decoyed, duped, and stripped them without mercy. Go with me into that dilapidated house, not far from the landing, at New Orleans. Look into that dirty room.

Around a broken table, sitting upon boxes, kegs, or rickety chairs, see a filthy crew dealing cards smouched with tobacco, grease and liquor.

One has a pirate-face burnished and burnt with brandy; a shock of grizzly, matted hair, half covering his villain eyes, which glare out like a wild beast's from a thicket. Close by him wheezes a white-faced, dropsical wretch, vermin-covered, and stenchful. A scoundrel-Spaniard, and a burly negro, (the jolliest of the four,) complete the group. They have spectators--drunken sailors, and ogling, thieving, drinking women, who should have died long ago, when all that was womanly died. Here hour draws on hour, sometimes with brutal laughter, sometimes with threat, and oath, and uproar. The last few stolen dollars lost, and temper too, each charges each with cheating, and high words ensue, and blows; and the whole gang burst out the door, beating, biting, scratching, and rolling over and over in the dirt and dust. The worst, the fiercest, the drunkest, of the four, is our friend who began by making up the game!

_Scene the fourth._ Upon this bright day, stand with me, if you would be sick of humanity, and look over that mult.i.tude of men kindly gathered to see a murderer hung! At last, a guarded cart drags on a thrice-guarded wretch. At the gallows' ladder his courage fails. His coward-feet refuse to ascend; dragged up, he is supported by bustling officials; his brain reels, his eye swims, while the meek minister utters a final prayer by his leaden ear. The prayer is said, the noose is fixed, the signal is given; a shudder runs through the crowd as he swings free. After a moment, his convulsed limbs stretch down, and hang heavily and still; and he who began to gamble to make up a game, and ended with stabbing an enraged victim whom he had fleeced, has here played his last game,--himself the stake!

I feel impelled, in closing, to call the attention of all sober citizens to some potent influences which are exerted in favor of gambling.

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