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 metallic[metallic] 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 consciousness[consciousness] 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.