“But I don’t gamble by means of dice,” interrupted Lewis, “I play, and bet, on billiards, which is a game of skill, requiring much practice, judgment, and thought.”
“That makes no odds, my lad,” continued the Captain. “There is no connection whatever between the rolling of a ball and the taking away of a man’s money, any more than there is between the turning of a dice and the taking of a man’s money. Both are dishonourable subterfuges. They are mere blinds put up to cover the great and mean fact, which is, that I want to get possession of my neighbour’s cash.”
“But, Captain,” retorted Lewis, with a smile—for he had now entered into the spirit of the argument—“you ignore the fact that while I try to win from my friend, I am quite willing that my friend should try to win from me.”
“Ignore it? no!” cried Captain Wopper. “Putt it in this way. Isn’t it wrong for me to have a longing desire and itching fingers to lay hold of your cash?”
“Well, put in that simple form,” said Lewis, with a laugh, “it certainly is.”
“And isn’t it equally wrong for you to have a hungering and thirsting after my cash?”
“Of course that follows,” assented Lewis.
“Well, then,” pursued the Captain, “can any agreement between you and me, as to the guessing of black or white or the turning of dice or anything else, make a right out of two wrongs?”
“Still,” said Lewis, a little puzzled, “there is fallacy somewhere in your argument. I cannot see that gambling is wrong.”
“Mark me, my lad,” returned the Captain, impressively, “it is no sufficient reason for the doing of a thing that you cannot see it to be wrong. You are not entitled to do anything unless you see it to be right. But there are other questions connected with gambling which renders it doubly mean—the question, for instance, whether a man is entitled to risk the loss of money which he calls his own, but which belongs to his wife and children as much as to himself. The mean positions, too, in which a gambler places himself, are numerous. One of these is, when a rich man wins the hard-earned and much-needed gains of a poor one.”