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.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:
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.”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”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 metallicmetallic 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 consciousnessconsciousness 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:
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.”
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
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,
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.
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 gladitorialgladitorial 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.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.”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: