you have played, and so you go in as an old player. This may be as
far as the matter ever goes with you. But here is one who is more
impulsive than you; his surroundings are entirely different. He learns
to play, and comes to revel in it. A passion is created for the game.
He is shrewd; soon learns the tricks, and one evening--purely by
chance, as it seems to him--he wins his first five dollars. Strange
possibilities with cards lay hold upon him. He is consumed by that
passion. He plays for business, for keeps; he has become a professional
gambler. Ah! this is no finespun tale; it is being worked out every
year in our country, all over the world. Among many things for which
I have to thank my father and mother not the least is, that they would
allow no gamblers, nor gambling, nor the instruments of gambling
about our home. Better keep a pet rattlesnake for your child than a
deck of cards; for if he gets poisoned by the snake he may be cured;
but if the passion for card-playing should happen to seize him, there
is little chance of a cure. The inmates of our penitentiaries to-day,
almost to a man, testify that "card-playing threw them into bad company,
led them into sin, and was one of the causes of their downfall." Dr.
Talmage was asked if there could be any harm in a pack of cards. He
Said: "Instead of directly answering your question, I will give you as
My opinion that there are thousands of men with as strong a brain as
you have, who have gone through card-playing into games of chance,
and have dropped down into the gambler's life and into the gambler's
hell." A prisoner in a jail in Michigan wrote a letter to a temperance
paper, in which he gives this advice for young men: "Let cards and
liquor alone, and you will never be behind the gates." Friends, not
every one who touches liquor is a drunkard, but every drunkard
touches liquor; so not every one who plays cards is a professional
gambler, but every professional gambler plays cards. Is there nothing
significant about these facts. "A word to the wise is sufficient." "In