robbing the dancing night of as many hours as you can.

34. As to GAMING, it is always _criminal_, either in itself, or in its
tendency. The basis of it is covetousness; a desire to take from others
something, for which you have given, and intend to give, no equivalent.
No gambler was ever yet a happy man, and very few gamblers have escaped
being miserable; and, observe, to _game for nothing_ is still gaming,
and naturally leads to gaming for something. It is sacrificing time, and
that, too, for the worst of purposes. I have kept house for nearly forty
years; I have reared a family; I have entertained as many friends as
most people; and I have never had cards, dice, a chess-board, nor any
implement of gaming, under my roof. The hours that young men spend in
this way are hours _murdered_; precious hours, that ought to be spent
either in reading or in writing, or in rest, preparatory to the duties
of the dawn. Though I do not agree with the base and nauseous
flatterers, who now declare the army to be _the best school for
statesmen_, it is certainly a school in which to learn experimentally
many useful lessons; and, in this school I learned, that men, fond of
gaming, are very rarely, if ever, trust-worthy. I have known many a
clever man rejected in the way of promotion only because he was addicted
to gaming. Men, in that state of life, cannot _ruin_ themselves by
gaming, for they possess no fortune, nor money; but the taste for gaming
is always regarded as an indication of a radically bad disposition; and
I can truly say, that I never in my whole life knew a man, fond of
gaming, who was not, in some way or other, a person unworthy of
confidence. This vice creeps on by very slow degrees, till, at last, it
becomes an ungovernable passion, swallowing up every good and kind
feeling of the heart. The gambler, as pourtrayed by REGNARD, in a comedy
the translation of which into English resembles the original much about
as nearly as Sir JAMES GRAHAM'S plagiarisms resembled the Registers on