John Philip Quinn

“ Will the fleeting hours spent with unscrupulous men, adepts in trickery and confidence games, touts and tipsters, skilled in marked cards, bogus boxes, wheels of (mis) fortune and loaded dice, adroit in fascinating the unwary with hollow smiles and lying speeches, like honey mingled in the hemlock’s poisoned draught—will these repay the willing serf of Satan for a life wasted and a soul passed into hell? Surely not all the pleasures of this high domed, blossoming world heaped in the balance can outweigh the loss of heaven. ”

“ It is in the glitter and glamour of all its brilliant external attributes that England finds the pride with which she claims the turf as her peculiar national institution; it is in the ruined reputation, the blasted life, the broken heart, the wreck of happiness, the loss of honor and the headlong course to crime, which are to be traced by the tears of women and the wails of children, in the blighted homes throughout the land, that we recognize in the turf and all that pertains to it, England’s national curse, that must surely sooner or later invite and evoke a national retribution. ”

“ True respectability would be forgetfulness of the past, and the gambler never forgets. Such is the successful gamester—the “retired gamester.” And to secure that much of success how many thousands of victims are in his train? His charities are a sham, like the subscriptions of Monte Carlo on Riviera; like the proffered relief to flood sufferers by the Louisiana lottery. While the wail of the unhappy and the lost is heard at the wheel, the cruel game goes on without mercy. The very existence of these splendid dens of dishonesty and inhumanity, are a menace to men. ”

“ Stand where the healing trees trail their branches in the crystal river of life; or walk amidst the asphodel and amaranth that deck the fadeless green of the Paradise of the Saints, and you will not find one spot so dear, so precious to our race, as that Judean hill whereon hangs one whose holy hands were nailed for our salvation on the cross. There, where wondering heaven bends to look pityingly on the exalted one, where dumb nature strives with darkened skies to hide the shame, where man, mad with rage, curses the Christ, and woman, bowed with sorrow, bewails her lord. ”

“ Next we find him in snuggeries, curtained from basement bar-rooms, studying the cards at midnight, robbing unwary verdants. Conscience is seared as with a hot iron. His heart is flint. He strives with drink to banish thoughts of home, heaven and God; grows morose, cunning, merciless; works a little, hurries again to the feverish excitement of the game, herds with greasy disreputables in foul dens, amid the reek of pipes and hideous blasphemy. Soiled, ill-kempt, rag-clad, he nears the bottom of the slant. ”

“ I have seen it done—seen the drunkard snap his shackles—the bondman of habit leap out of his old sins with a mighty effort, and begin a new life.
The truth is seeking an entrance into your heart, even as the sunbeams seek entrance into a long disused and darkened room. How patiently they play about the door, peeping into every crevice, slipping wedges of gold through the shutters and laying bars of bullion on the dusty floor. “Let us in,” they cry, “we will cast out the devils of gloom, disease, dirt, dampness. ”

“ Born in New England, he emigrated to the West while a mere youth, and has “grown up” with Chicago. Endowed by nature with indomitable pluck and marvelous energy, he has carved out his own success. He is beyond question the largest operator on the floor of ’Change in the city of his choice, and his ventures are as bold as they are gigantic. In a business enterprise he fears no foe, as he recognizes no friend, and his tall, spare form looms up as a tower of granite in the midst of the turbulent waves of speculation which surge around him. ”

“ Here one jostles against the decrepit old man, once a millionaire, but who having sunk his fortune in the maelstrom of some great Board of Trade, now passes his waking hours before these blackboards, reckoning that a red-letter day upon which he wins five dollars. And here, too, may be encountered the successful business man, keen of eye, quick of step, alert of perception, who has been drawn hither partly through a desire for speedy wealth, partly through an inordinate craving for the excitement which is not to be found in the legitimate walks of trade. ”

“ If a man loses one fortune, he may accumulate another; if he lose a hand, he has another; if an eye, he can still make his way, but if his soul is lost, all is lost.
How can a sane man risk this soul and gamble with Belial, knowing the total renunciation of all joy that must follow its loss—to trudge forever the vassal of the slave of slaves through a sunless, starless eternity. ”

“ The loser feels that fate is a sentient being—a hag whom he must tear with his nails. Her blow has been twice as harsh as if he had not hoped, and it falls on one ill-prepared to receive it. There lies but one escape, and that is death. Hence the excitement with which professional gamblers behold the loss of their means of livelihood. Where suicide does not follow, the most painful blows are often delivered by the gambler upon his own temples and forehead. He has no pity on himself for losing money that he ought to have kept. ”

“ Rise up, shake off this dark enchantment—dash down the dice, shred the cards into the flames—pass out into the pure air, and while there yet is hope ask heavenly help to break your heavy chains.
Yours is the very insanity of crime; like the imprisoned eagle who might swim the blue sky and bathe in the sun, you are caged in a dungeon’s walls. Nature cannot furnish nor the imagination create a figure of speech to parallel your unfortunate condition.
Let us go back to first principles and ask, “What is a man? What was the Maker’s design when he fashioned man?” ”

“ Look on another picture of the home where gambling and kindred evils have never entered. This couple started with little and have had a full share of adversity, but hand in hand, with steady effort, unflagging, unflinching, they have climbed to midlife, to business success, to easy circumstances, to honor, respect, influence, and troops of friends.
’Tis a winter evening; the wind howls in the lonely streets and bites to the bone. Belated people steady themselves in the gale, hurrying homeward. ”

“ For gambling, as Charles Kingsley has said, is almost the only thing in the world in which the honorable man is no match for the dishonorable man. The scrupulous man is weaker, by the very fact of his scruples, than he who has none. When a man begins to play he may have a high feeling of honor, but what right has honor to sit at a gaming-table? There’s the rub. When he wins he will consider it folly not to extend the hours of play, and will begin an expense that he did not indulge before. With greater expense, he will be keener at the game—more zealous to win. ”

“ The many fashionable people who play cards for a little money extract from the game a little amusement, but a certain per centum of those who thus begin so modestly move on to a financial and mental ruin. The taste for games of chance grows as days pass, and the one who played a little passes on until he plays much. Soon the heart, mind and face are those of the gambler.
The gambling room is based upon fraud. The philosophy is simply that of craft against innocence. It is a well known fact that a large part of the human race is simple-minded. ”

“ Let not this seducer of youth corrupt your morals, pull down your fortune and cloud your future by his false promises. Let the downward career of others prove effectual warning. Rouse not this ungovernable lust for gain by hazard in your breast. Let the lottery, faro bank, pool room, race course, all such places be as pest houses to you, unless you are prepared to brave God’s intolerable scorn.
Remember that the man who, through any device of chance or knavery, takes money without giving anything in return, belongs in the class with the swindler and the thief. ”

“ Tenderly nurtured in the surroundings of a home of wealth and luxury, of which she was the pride and pet, gifted with rare graces of mind and person, and endowed with education and accomplishments unusual even for one of her age and station, through the anxious care of parents ambitious for her future, brilliant in wealth and station, May Harvey had reached the bloom of womanhood singularly unspoiled by her advantages and surroundings, and possessed a sweet amiability of disposition and a gentle and loving way that endeared her to all who were brought into contact with her. ”

“ The third count in this black indictment is that gaming not only dethrones God and degrades man, but destroys the most blessed of all human institutions, the home.
Gamblers flock together as naturally as lean-necked vultures; they hunt in packs like coyotes, and intermingle like a knot of clammy vipers that crawl in the dank gloom of a sunless canyon. They have no share in the sweet sanctities of the fireside, and desire vehemently to be elsewhere. Even when the gamester sits at his own table, or embraces his own children, his heart is in another place. Physical contact is not intimacy. ”

“ What would your father think, your employer say, if they knew that you were a gamester, spending your evenings where these human swine whet their tusks? Who sinks so low in the mire of infamy as the man who is kicked out of business or society with the millstone of gambling hung to his neck? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Suddenly, with a mighty shout, shall their leaden souls be wakened to their shame. The shining Angel, with one sandal on the heaving earth, and the other in the swelling sea, shall cry in trumpet tones that split the silence of earthly crypts and sea deep caves, “Awake, ye dead, and come to judgment!” Then, impelled by a resistless force, shall all souls sweep into the bright light of the great white throne. ”

“ He mingles with the moral refuse of the land, plunges deeper in degradation, becomes an inmate in these habitations of cruelty, and with all the pith and marrow of mankind sucked out, with blood poisoned and bone rotted, he consorts with drunken sailors, filthy women and skulking vagrants, playing with unsteady hand for the few coins he can gather, till death with the besom of a nameless disease sweeps his foul carcass into the pauper’s grave. ”

“ Nor is the unvarying routine of prison life calculated to draw a man from that self-contemplation which is at once the most tiresome and the most dangerous of all mental exercises. I shall never be able to recall without a shudder those wearisome days of bootless toil, rendered all the more unbearable by the alternation of those dark nights of loneliness;—nights whose bleak shadows were deepened rather than dispelled by memories of home, of wife and child, and of all that the heart holds dear. ”

“ The banker, with the cashier of his competitor, are jostling with a frowsy bootblack; the business man discusses the board with the pickpocket; the thief and gambler is everywhere. The odor of state prison associations is upon many. The pimp, the bummer, the thug, the midnight housebreaker and the daylight lawbreaker, all mingle in the throng with the representatives of business probity and youthful innocence—with the prop and stay of one family, and with the hope and pride of another household. ”

“ The man who plays against the gambler is called a “producer,” and what can that mean but fool or victim—a victim whose greed is his ruin. Despising respectable men who play with him as greedy fools, the gambler must oppose honest men (who will not play) as foes. Hating all men, he must hate women; therefore marriage is rare among the “profession.” If he secures a fortune, so that he may “retire” from hazard, it will be seen that he owns and enslaves both men and women, and never aids the emancipation of society. ”

“ In fact, it is a matter worthy of comment that intemperance and gaming usually go hand in hand. Like twin monsters they stalk through the land with giant strides, leaving despair and ruin in their track. They supplement each other in the work of destruction. Liquor inflames the passions, stimulates the imagination, blunts the moral sense, and impairs the reasoning powers of the mind. The natural result is that the victim of the alcohol habit is easily incited to patronize the gaming hell. ”