The youth who bathes in pleasure’s limpid stream
At well-judged intervals, feels all his soul
Nerved with recruited strength; but, if too oft
It chills his languid virtue.
—Mason.
My boy and my son, I advise you not to touch a card. Don’t learn the game or watch one. One of my companions fell dead in a gambling house by a pistol shot from his own gun. His name was “Ben” Miller. His partner “Froom” Featherly, said to me, “I wish I lay there with poor Ben. When I learned to play cards at mother’s dining room table she never thought it would come to this. Gambling is so fixed in my mind that I cannot stop.” Drunkenness is insanity of the stomach, gambling is insanity of the morals.
CHAPTER XVII
Be Cautious of Baneful Amusements
It is related that during the reign of the bluff King Hal, there lived a knight named Sir John Giffard, of Chillington, who possessed a beautiful leopard. One day the animal escaped from its cage, and Sir John and his son at once gave chase, for they knew that the leopard would spare no human being it might meet. At the top of a hill, a mile from his house, the worthy knight saw the animal about to attack a woman and child. Sir John was armed with a bow and arrow, and rather breathless through running; his son, fearing his shot might be too weak, shouted, “Take aim, draw strong!” Never was surer aim taken, for Sir John pierced the leopard’s heart, and saved the woman and her babe. In consideration of this brave and skilful deed, the Giffards of Chillington adopted as their crest a leopard’s head and an archer with a bent bow, with the motto, “Take aim, draw strong.”
This is what many good and great men have done in regard to some amusements, the influences of which have proved destructive to character. To enjoy oneself is a divine right, provided such enjoyment does not injure health, weaken morals or lead others to place a false estimate on living.