III.
GAMBLING.

CARD-PLAYING

GAMBLING has become a moral plague of modern society. In one
form or another it has entered the rank and file of every department
of life--in private parlor over cards; in hotel drawing-room over
election reports; in college athletic grounds over brains and brawn; in
the counting-room over the price of stocks; in the racing tournament
over jockeying and speed; in the Board of Trade hall over future prices
of the necessaries of life; in the den of iniquity at dice; in the drinking
saloon at the slot-machine; in the people's fair at the wheel of fortune;
in the gambling den itself at every conceivable form of swindling trick
and game. Gambling has come to be almost an omnipresent evil. In
treating this subject, it is our purpose to point out something of the
nature of its evil, not only that we may be kept from it but that we may
save others whom it threatens to destroy.

Gambling grows out of a misuse of the natural tendency to take risks.
A social vice is some social right misused. Men have the social right
to congregate to talk over measures of social and economic welfare.
But if they discuss measures which oppose the principles of free
Government, their meeting together becomes a crime against the
State. A personal vice is some personal right misused. As some one
has put it, "Vice is virtue gone mad." It is a personal right and a
personal virtue to be charitable, even beneficent. But since justice
comes before mercy, if one uses for charity that which should be
used in payment of debt, his virtue of beneficence becomes a vice
of theft. So it is with gambling. It is giving the natural tendency