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![A]
[A] The general eminent integrity of the Bench is unquestionable—and no remarks in the text are to be construed as an oblique aspersion of the profession. But the purer our Judges generally, the more shameless is it that some will not abandon either their vices or their office.
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!