Gamblers and Gambling

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 fashion. 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 amusements 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 unblushing 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 perishing, 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 damnable 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 appetite. 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 noble 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 AMUSEMENT, 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. Amusement 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 lust 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 amusement 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 shore? 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 amusement 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 anticipates and fears the result of both. Why is he here? He is a whole-souled fellow, and is afraid to seem ashamed of any fashionable 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 passing 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 superstitious 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 cock 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 passed over them thus. At length they rise without words; some, with a satisfaction which only makes their faces brightly haggard, scrape 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 damned too, if I choose; whose business is it?"

Scene the third. Years have passed 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 multitude 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.

In our civil economy we have Legislators to devise and enact wholesome laws; Lawyers to counsel and aid those who need the laws' relief; and Judges to determine and administer the laws. If Legislators, Lawyers, and Judges are gamblers, with what hope do we warn off the young from this deadly fascination, against such authoritative examples of high public functionaries? With what eminent fitness does that Judge press the bench, who in private commits the vices which officially he is set to condemn! With what singular terrors does he frown on a convicted gambler with whom he played last night, and will play again to-night! How wisely should the fine be light which the sprightly criminal will win and pay out of the Judge's own pocket!

With the name of Judge is associated ideas of immaculate purity, sober piety, and fearless, favorless justice. Let it then be counted a dark crime for a recreant official so far to forget his reverend place, and noble office, as to run the gantlet of filthy vices, and make the word Judge, to suggest an incontinent trifler, who smites with his mouth, and smirks with his eye; who holds the rod to strike the criminal, and smites only the law to make a gap for criminals to pass through! If God loves this land, may he save it from truckling, drinking, swearing, gambling, vicious Judges!1

With such Judges I must associate corrupt Legislators, whose bawling patriotism leaks out in all the sinks of infamy at the Capital. These living exemplars of vice, pass still-born laws against vice. Are such men sent to the Capital only to practise debauchery? Laborious seedsmen – they gather every germ of evil; and laborious sowers – at home they strew them far and wide! It is a burning shame, a high outrage, that public men, by corrupting the young with the example of manifold vices, should pay back their constituents for their honors!

Our land has little to fear from abroad, and much from within. We can bear foreign aggression, scarcity, the revulsions of commerce, plagues, and pestilences; but we cannot bear vicious Judges, corrupt Courts, gambling Legislators, and a vicious, corrupt, and gambling constituency. Let us not be deceived! The decay of civil institutions begins at the core. The outside wears all the lovely hues of ripeness, when the inside is rotting. Decline does not begin in bold and startling acts; but, as in autumnal leaves, in rich and glowing colors. Over diseased vitals, consumptive laws wear the hectic blush, a brilliant eye, and transparent skin. Could the public sentiment declare that PERSONAL MORALITY is the first element of patriotism; that corrupt Legislators are the most pernicious of criminals; that the Judge who lets the villain off, is the villain's patron; that tolerance of crime is intolerance of virtue, – our nation might defy all enemies and live forever!

And now, my young friends, I beseech you to let alone this evil before it be meddled with. You are safe from vice when you avoid even its appearance; and only then. The first steps to wickedness are imperceptible. We do not wonder at the inexperience of Adam; but it is wonderful that six thousand years' repetition of the same arts, and the same uniform disaster, should have taught men nothing! that generation after generation should perish, and the wreck be no warning!

The mariner searches his chart for hidden rocks, stands off from perilous shoals, and steers wide of reefs on which hang shattered morsels of wrecked ships, and runs in upon dangerous shores with the ship manned, the wheel in hand, and the lead constantly sounding. But the mariner upon life's sea, carries no chart of other men's voyages, drives before every wind that will speed him, draws upon horrid shores with slumbering crew, or heads in upon roaring reefs as though he would not perish where thousands have perished before him.

Hell is populated with the victims of "harmless amusements." Will man never learn that the way to hell is through the valley of DECEIT? The power of Satan to hold his victims is nothing to that mastery of art by which he first gains them. When he approaches to charm us, it is not as a grim fiend, gleaming from a lurid cloud, but as an angel of light radiant with innocence. His words fall like dew upon the flower; as musical as the crystal-drop warbling from a fountain. Beguiled by his art, he leads you to the enchanted ground. Oh! how it glows with every refulgent hue of heaven! Afar off he marks the dismal gulf of vice and crime; its smoke of torment slowly rising, and rising forever! and he himself cunningly warns you of its dread disaster, for the very purpose of blinding and drawing you thither. He leads you to captivity through all the bowers of lulling magic. He plants your foot on odorous flowers; he fans your cheek with balmy breath; he overhangs your head with rosy clouds; he fills your ear with distant, drowsy music, charming every sense to rest. Oh ye! who have thought the way to hell was bleak and frozen as Norway, parched and barren as Sahara, strewed like Golgotha with bones and skulls reeking with stench like the vale of Gehenna, – witness your mistake! The way to hell is gorgeous! It is a highway, cast up; no lion is there, no ominous bird to hoot a warning, no echoings of the wailing-pit, no lurid gleams of distant fires, or moaning sounds of hidden woe! Paradise is imitated to build you a way to death; the flowers of heaven are stolen and poisoned; the sweet plant of knowledge is here; the pure white flower of religion; seeming virtue and the charming tints of innocence are scattered all along like native herbage. The enchanted victim travels on. Standing afar behind, and from a silver-trumpet, a heavenly messenger sends down the wind a solemn warning: There is a way which seemeth right to man, but the end thereof is death. And again, with louder blast: The wise man foreseeth the evil; fools pass on and are punished. Startled for a moment, the victim pauses; gazes round upon the flowery scene, and whispers, Is it not harmless?– "Harmless," responds a serpent from the grass! – "Harmless," echo the sighing winds! – "Harmless," re-echo a hundred airy tongues! If now a gale from heaven might only sweep the clouds away through which the victim gazes; oh! if God would break that potent power which chains the blasts of hell, and let the sulphur-stench roll up the vale, how would the vision change! – the road become a track of dead men's bones! – the heavens a lowering storm! – the balmy breezes, distant wailings – and all those balsam-shrubs that lied to his senses, sweat drops of blood upon their poison-boughs!

Ye who are meddling with the edges of vice, ye are on this road! – and utterly duped by its enchantments! Your eye has already lost its honest glance, your taste has lost its purity, your heart throbs with poison! The leprosy is all over you, its blotches and eruptions cover you. Your feet stand on slippery places, whence in due time they shall slide, if you refuse the warning which I raise. They shall slide from heaven, never to be visited by a gambler; slide down to that fiery abyss below you, out of which none ever come. Then, when the last card is cast, and the game over, and you lost; then, when the echo of your fall shall ring through hell, – in malignant triumph, shall the Arch-Gambler, who cunningly played for your soul, have his prey! Too late you shall look back upon life as a MIGHTY GAME, in which you were the stake, and Satan the winner!