One of the three great annual Hindu festivals is in memory of the occasion when three of the Hindu gods sat down to gamble. Krishna, the guileful god, won. This festival is celebrated by universal gambling. Indeed, the people believe that unless they gamble at this time, they will be born as rats, or take some other undesirable form in the next life.
After the festival is over, thousands of families have to start life again from the very bottom without a stick of furniture, as all has been lost at gambling.
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Gambling, Some Results of—See [Juvenile Court Experience].
GAME OF GREED
Ask a great money-maker what he wants to do with his money—he never knows. He doesn’t make it to do anything with it. He gets it only that he may get it. “What will you make of what you have got?” you ask. “Well, I’ll get more,” he says. Just as, at cricket, you get more runs. There’s no use in the runs, but to get more of them than other people is the game. And there’s no use in the money, but to have more of it than other people is the game. So all that great foul city of London there—rattling, growling, smoking, stinking—a ghastly heap of fermenting brickwork, pouring out poison at every pore—you fancy it is a city of work? Not a street of it! It is a great city of play; very nasty play, and very hard play, but still play. It is only Lord’s cricket-ground without the turf—a huge billiard-table without the cloth, and with pockets as deep as the bottomless pit; but mainly a billiard-table, after all.—John Ruskin.
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GATE, THE, OF STARS
H. Aide writes this apt fancy of the stars:
“Stars lying in God’s hand,