Part 13

Many papers that are most rapidly increasing to-day are unscrupulous. The facts are momentous and appalling. And I put young men and women and Christian parents and guardians on the look-out. This stuff cannot be handled without pollution. Away with it from parlor, and shop, and store! There is so much newspaper literature that is pure, and cheap, and elegant; shove back this leprosy from your door.

Mark it well: a man is no better than the newspaper he habitually reads.

You may think it a bold thing thus to arraign an unprincipled printing-press, but I know there are those reading this who will take my counsel; and, in the discharge of my duty to God and man, I defy all the hostilities of earth and hell!

Representatives of the secular and religious press! I thank you, in the name of Christianity and civilization, for the enlightenment of ignorance, the overthrow of iniquity, and the words you have uttered in the cause of God and your country. But I charge you in the name of God, before whom you must account for the tremendous influence you hold in this country, to consecrate yourselves to higher endeavors. You are the men to fight back this invasion of corrupt literature. Lift up your right hand and swear new allegiance to the cause of philanthropy and religion. And when, at last, standing on the plains of judgment, you look out upon the unnumbered throngs over whom you have had influence, may it be found that you were among the mightiest energies that lifted men upon the exalted pathway that leads to the renown of heaven. Better than to have sat in editorial chair, from which, with the finger of type, you decided the destinies of empires, but decided them wrong, that you had been some dungeoned exile, who, by the light of window iron-grated, on scraps of a New Testament leaf, picked up from the hearth, spelled out the story of Him who taketh away the sins of the world.

IN ETERNITY, DIVES IS THE BEGGAR!

THE FATAL TEN-STRIKE.

While among my readers are those who have passed on into the afternoon of life, and the shadows are lengthening, and the sky crimsons with the glow of the setting sun, a large number of them are in early life, and the morning is coming down out of the clear sky upon them, and the bright air is redolent with spring blossoms, and the stream of life, gleaming and glancing, rushes on between flowery banks, making music as it goes. Some of you are engaged in mercantile establishments, as clerks and book-keepers; and your whole life is to be passed in the exciting world of traffic. The sound of busy life stirs you as the drum stirs the fiery war-horse. Others are in the mechanical arts, to hammer and chisel your way through life; and success awaits you. Some are preparing for professional life, and grand opportunities are before you; nay, some of you already have buckled on the armor.

But, whatever your age or calling, the subject of gambling, about which I speak in this chapter, is pertinent.

Some years ago, when an association for the suppression of gambling was organized, an agent of the association came to a prominent citizen and asked him to patronize the society. He said, "No, I can have no interest in such an organization. I am in no wise affected by that evil."

At that very time his son, who was his partner in business, was one of the heaviest players in "Herne's" famous gaming establishment. Another refused his patronage on the same ground, not knowing that his first book-keeper, though receiving a salary of only a thousand dollars, was losing from fifty to one hundred dollars per night. The president of a railroad company refused to patronize the institution, saying--"That society is good for the defence of merchants, but we railroad people are not injured by this evil;" not knowing that, at that very time, two of his conductors were spending three nights of each week at faro tables in New York. Directly or indirectly, this evil strikes at the whole world.

Gambling is the risking of something more or less valuable in the hope of winning more than you hazard. The instruments of gaming may differ, but the principle is the same. The shuffling and dealing of cards, however full of temptation, is not gambling, unless stakes are put up; while, on the other hand, gambling may be carried on without cards, or dice, or billiards, or a ten-pin alley. The man who bets on horses, on elections, on battles--the man who deals in "fancy" stocks, or conducts a business which extra hazards capital, or goes into transactions without foundation, but dependent upon what men call "luck," is a gambler.

It is estimated that one-fourth of the business in London is done dishonestly. Whatever you expect to get from your neighbor without offering an equivalent in money or time or skill, is either the product of theft or gaming. Lottery tickets and lottery policies come into the same category. Fairs for the founding of hospitals, schools and churches, conducted on the raffling system, come under the same denomination. Do not, therefore, associate gambling necessarily with any instrument, or game, or time, or place, or think the principle depends upon whether you play for a glass of wine, or one hundred shares in Camden and Amboy. Whether you employ faro or billiards, rondo and keno, cards, or bagatelle, the very idea of the thing is dishonest; for it professes to bestow upon you a good for which you give no equivalent.

This crime is no newborn sprite, but a haggard transgression that comes staggering down under a mantle of curses through many centuries. All nations, barbarous and civilized, have been addicted to it. Before 1838, the French government received revenue from gaming houses. In 1567, England, for the improvement of her harbors, instituted a lottery, to be held at the front door of St. Paul's Cathedral. Four hundred thousand tickets were sold, at ten shillings each. The British Museum and Westminster Bridge were partially built by similar procedures. The ancient Germans would sometimes put up themselves and families as prizes, and suffer themselves to be bound, though stronger than the persons who won them.

But now the laws of the whole civilized world denounce the system. Enactments have been passed, but only partially enforced. The men interested in gaming houses wield such influence, by their numbers and affluence, that the judge, the jury, and the police officer must be bold indeed who would array themselves against these infamous establishments. Within ten years the House of Commons of England has adjourned on "Derby Day" to go out to bet on the races; and in the best circles of society in this country to-day are many hundreds of professedly respectable men who are acknowledged gamblers.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars in this land are every day being won and lost through sheer gambling. Says a traveller through the West--"I have travelled a thousand miles at a time upon the Western waters and seen gambling at every waking moment from the commencement to the termination of the journey." The South-west of this country reeks with this abomination. In New Orleans every third or fourth house in many of the streets is a gaming place, and it may be truthfully averred that each and all of our cities are cursed with this evil.

In themselves most of the games employed in gambling are without harm. Billiard-tables are as harmless as tea-tables, and a pack of cards as a pack of letter envelopes, unless stakes be put up. But by their use for gambling purposes they have become significant of an infinity of wretchedness. In New York city there are said to be six thousand houses devoted to this sin; in Philadelphia about four thousand; in Cincinnati about one thousand; at Washington the amount of gaming is beyond calculation. There have been seasons when, by night, Senators, Representatives, and Ministers of Foreign Governments were found engaged in this practice.

Men wishing to gamble will find places just suited to their capacity, not only in the underground oyster-cellar, or at the table back of the curtain, covered with greasy cards, or in the steamboat smoking cabin, where the bloated wretch with rings in his ears deals out his pack, and winks in the unsuspecting traveller,--providing free drinks all around,--but in gilded parlors and amid gorgeous surroundings.

This sin works ruin, first, by unhealthful stimulants. Excitement is pleasurable. Under every sky, and in every age, men have sought it. The Chinaman gets it by smoking his opium; the Persian by chewing hashish; the trapper in a buffalo hunt; the sailor in a squall; the inebriate in the bottle, and the avaricious at the gaming-table.

We must at times have excitement. A thousand voices in our nature demand it. It is right. It is healthful. It is inspiriting. It is a desire God-given. But anything that first gratifies this appetite and hurls it back in a terrific reaction is deplorable and wicked. Look out for the agitation that, like a rough musician, in bringing out the tune, plays so hard he breaks down the instrument!

God never made man strong enough to endure the wear and tear of gambling excitement. No wonder if, after having failed in the game, men have begun to sweep off imaginary gold from the side of the table. The man was sharp enough when he started at the game, but a maniac at the close. At every gaming-table sit on one side Ecstasy, Enthusiasm, Romance--the frenzy of joy; on the other side, Fierceness, Rage, and Tumult. The professional gamester schools himself into apparent quietness. The keepers of gambling rooms are generally fat, rollicking, and obese; but thorough and professional gamblers, in nine cases out of ten, are pale, thin, wheezing, tremulous, and exhausted.

A young man, having suddenly heired a large property, sits at the hazard-table, and takes up in a dice-box the estate won by a father's lifetime sweat, and shakes it, and tosses it away.

Intemperance soon stigmatizes its victim--kicking him out, a slavering fool, into the ditch, or sending him, with the drunkard's hiccough, staggering up the street where his family lives. But gambling does not, in that way, expose its victims. The gambler may be eaten up by the gambler's passion, yet only discover it by the greed in his eyes, the hardness of his features, the nervous restlessness, the threadbare coat, and his embarrassed business. Yet he is on the road to hell, and no preacher's voice, or startling warning, or wife's entreaty, can make him stay for a moment his headlong career. The infernal spell is on him; a giant is aroused within; and though you bind him with cables, they would part like thread; and though you fasten him seven times round with chains, they would snap like rusted wire; and though you piled up in his path, heaven-high, Bibles, tracts and sermons, and on the top should set the cross of the Son of God, over them all the gambler would leap like a roe over the rocks, on his way to perdition.

Again, this sin works ruin by killing industry.

A man used to reaping scores or hundreds of dollars from the gaming-table will not be content with slow work. He will say, "What is the use of trying to make these fifty dollars in my store when I can get five times that in half an hour down at 'Billy's'?" You never knew a confirmed gambler who was industrious. The men given to this vice spend their time not actively employed in the game in idleness, or intoxication, or sleep, or in corrupting new victims. This sin has dulled the carpenter's saw, and cut the band of the factory wheel, sunk the cargo, broken the teeth of the farmer's harrow, and sent a strange lightning to shatter the battery of the philosopher.

The very first idea in gaming is at war with all the industries of society. Any trade or occupation that is of use is ennobling. The street sweeper advances the interests of society by the cleanliness effected. The cat pays for the fragments it eats by clearing the house of vermin. The fly that takes the sweetness from the dregs of the cup compensates by purifying the air and keeping back the pestilence. But the gambler gives not anything for that which he takes.

I recall that sentence. He does make a return; but it is disgrace to the man that he fleeces, despair to his heart, ruin to his business, anguish to his wife, shame to his children, and eternal wasting away to his soul. He pays in tears and blood, and agony, and darkness, and woe.

What dull work is ploughing to the farmer, when in the village saloon, in one night, he makes and loses the value of a summer harvest? Who will want to sell tape, and measure nankeen, and cut garments, and weigh sugars, when in a night's game he makes and loses, and makes again, and loses again, the profits of a season?

John Borack was sent as mercantile agent from Bremen to England and this country. After two years his employers mistrusted that all was not right. He was a defaulter for eighty-seven thousand dollars. It was found that he had lost in Lombard street, London, twenty-nine thousand dollars; in Fulton street, New York, ten thousand dollars; and in New Orleans, three thousand dollars. He was imprisoned, but afterwards escaped and went into the gambling profession. He died in a lunatic asylum.