Lucrative
Gambling

It is only at gambling that we can observe, from moment to moment, all the phases of despair; from time to time there occur new ones--strange, eccentric, or terrible. After having lost quietly, and even with serenity, half his fortune, the father of a family staked the remainder, and lost it without a murmur. Facere solent extrema securos mala.[9] The bystanders looked at him; his features changed not; only it was perceived that they were fixed. It seemed that he was unconscious of life. Two streams of tears trickled from his eyes, and yet his features remained the same. He was literally a weeping statue. The spectators were seized with fright, and, although gamesters, they melted into pity.

[9] 'Great calamities render us CARELESS.'

At Bayonne, in 1725, a French officer, in a rage at billiards, jammed a billiard-ball in his mouth, where it stuck fast, arresting respiration, until it was, with difficulty, extracted by a surgeon. Dusaulx states that he was told the fact by a lieutenant-general, who was an eye-witness.

It is well known that gamblers, like dogs that bite a stone flung at them, have eaten up the cards, crushed up the dice, broken the tables, damaged the furniture, and finally 'pitched into' each other--as described by Lucian in his Saturnalia. Dusaulx assures us that he saw an enraged gambler put a burning candle into his mouth, chew it, and swallow it. A mad player at Naples bit the table with such violence that his teeth went deep into the wood;thus he remained, as it were, nailed to it, and suddenly expired.

The other players took to flight; the officers of justice visited the place; and the corpse was deprived of the usual ceremony of burial.[10]

[10] Gazette de Deux-Ponts, du 26 Novembre, 1772.

The following strange but apparently authentic fact, is related in the Mercure Francois (Tome I. Annee 1610). 'A man named Pennichon, being a prisoner in the Conciergerie during the month of September, 1610, died there of a wonderfully sudden death. He could not refrain from play. Having one day lost his money, he uttered frightful imprecations against his body and against his soul, swearing that he would never play at cards again. Nevertheless, a few days after, he began to play again with those in his apartment, and on a dispute respecting discarding, he repeated his execrable oaths. And when one of the company told him he should fear the Divine justice, he only swore the more, and made such confusion that there had to be another deal. But as soon as three other cards were given him, he placed them in his hat, which he held before him, and whilst looking at them, with his elbows on the table and his face in the hat, he so suddenly expired that one of the party said--"Come, now play," and pushed him with his elbow, thinking he was asleep, when he fell down dead upon the floor.'

In some cases the effect of losses at play is simply stupefaction. Some players, at the end of the sitting, neither know what they do nor what they say. M. de Crequi, afterwards Duc de Lesdiguieres, leaving a gambling party with Henry IV., after losing a large sum, met M. de Guise in the court-yard of the castle. 'My friend,' said he to the latter, 'where are the quarters of the Guards now-a-days?' M. de Guise stepped back, saying, 'Excuse me, sir, I don't belong to this country,' and immediately went to the king, whom he greatly amused with the anecdote.

A dissipated buck, who had been sitting all night at Hazard, went to a church, not far from St James's, just before the second reading of the Lord's Prayer, on Sunday. He was scarcely seated before he dozed, and the clerk in a short time bawled out amen, which he pronounced A--main. The buck jumped up half asleep and roared out, 'I'll bet the caster 20 guineas!' The congregation was thrown into a titter, and the buck ran out, overwhelmed with shame.

A similar anecdote is told of another 'dissipated buck' in a church. The grand masquerade given on the opening of the Union Club House, in Pall Mall, was not entirely over till a late hour on the following Sunday. A young man nearly intoxicated--certainly not knowing what he was about-reeled into St. James's church, in his masquerade dress, with his hat on. The late Rev. Thomas Bracken, attracted by the noise of his entrance, looked directly at him as he chanced to deliver the following words:--'Friend! how camest thou in hither, not having on a wedding garment?' It seemed so to strike the culprit that he instantly took off his hat and withdrew in confusion.

At gambling, a winner redoubles his caution and sang-froid just in proportion as his gambling adversary gets bewildered by his losses, becoming desperate; he takes advantage of the weakness of the latter, giving him the law, and striving for greater success. When the luck changes, however, the case is reversed, and the former gambling loser becomes, in his turn, ten times more pitiless-like that Roman prefect, mentioned by Tacitus, who was the more inexorable because he had been harshly treated in his youth, co immmitior quia toleraverat. The joy at winning back his money only makes a gamester the more covetous of winning that of his adversary. A wealthy man once lost 100,000 crowns at gambling, and begged to be allowed to go and sell his property, which was worth double the amount he had lost. 'Why sell it?' said his adversary; 'let us play for the remainder.' They played; luck changed; and the late loser ruined the other.

Sometimes avidity makes terrible mistakes; many, in order to win more, have lost their all to persons who had not a shilling to lose. During the depth of a severe winter, a gambling gamester beheld with terror the bottom of his purse. Unable to resolve on quitting the gambling table--for players in that condition are always the most stubborn--he shouted to his valet--'Go and fetch my great sack.' These words, uttered without design, stimulated the cupidity of those who no longer cared to play with him, and now they were eager for it. His luck changed, and he won thrice as much as he had lost. Then his 'great sack' was brought to him: it was a bear-skin sack he used as a cloak!

In the madness of gambling the player stakes everything after losing his money--his watch, his rings, his clothing; and some have staked their ears, and others their very lives-instances of all which will be related in the sequel.

Not very long ago a publican, who lost all his money, staked his public-house, lost it, and had to 'clear out.' The man who won it is alive and flourishing.

'The debt of honour must be paid: 'these are the terrible words that haunt the gambling gamester as he wakes (if he has slept) on the morning after the night of horrors: these are the furies that take him in hand, and drag him to torture, laughing the while.

What a 'sensation' it must be to lose one's all! A man, intoxicated with his gains, left one gambling house and entered another. As soon as he entered he exclaimed, 'Well, I am filled, my pockets are full of gold, and here goes, odds or even?' 'Odds,' cried a player. It was odds, and the fortunate winner pocketed the enormous sum just boasted of by the other.

On the other hand, sudden prosperity has deranged more heads and killed more people than reverses and grief; either because it takes a longer time to get convinced of utter ruin than great good fortune, or because the instinct of self- preservation compels us to seek, in adversity, for resources to mitigate despair; whereas, in the assault of excessive joy, the soul's spring is distended and broken when it is suddenly compressed by too many thoughts and too many sensations. Sophocles, Diagoras, Philippides, died of joy. Another Greek expired at the sight of the three crowns won by his three sons at the Olympic games.

Many fine intellects among gambling players have been brutified by loses; others, in greater number, have been so by their gambling winnings. Some in the course of their prosperity perish from idleness, get deranged, and ruin themselves after ruining others. An instance is mentioned of an officer who won so enormously at gambling that he actually lost his senses in counting his gains. Astonished at himself, he thought he was no longer an ordinary mortal; and required his valets to do him extraordinary honours, flinging handfuls of gold to them. The same night, however, he returned to the gambling house, and recovered from his madness when he had lost not only all his gains, but even the value of an appointment which he held.

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