The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1881-12-22
PLAQUES.
The Plague of Gambling in This
Country.
Sermon Preached in Brooklyn Tabernacle
on Sunday, December 4, 1881, by
Rev. 7. Dewitt TaImage.
sUBJECT-"LoTTERIEs."

perty is being disposed of. He had no
real estate, for he was born in a strang
er's barn and buried in a borrowed
sepulcher. His personal property was
insignificant. His shoes were all worn
out in the long journey of the worlds
redemption, but there still adhered some
value TO his coat. Who shall have it?
The ruffians toss up in lottery to see.
There, there. have itp' cries one of
the human butchers. All the lotteries
of that day and of this day were born
under the hOOfs of those wretches. There
was born the Royal Havana Lottery, in
which, probably, some of you have had
tickets. There was born the great Reed
& Company Lottery of New York, with
tickets 81 each, or ten tickets for $40;
the Topeka, Kansas, and Laramie City,
Wyoming Territory, lotteries manipu-
lated by Russell Il Co.; the Louisville
Lottery Association, with diamonds,
watches and jewels by the bushel; the
Georgia Lottery for the East and West;
the Louisiana State Lottery, sanctioned
by the influential names of Generals
Beauregard and Early, and the Kentucky
Lotteries, for the benefit of the
State Schools in the town of Frank
fort. There were born all the To-
teries which have swindled and
are swindling multitudes of peO-
pie. Since the first to the last, all of
them, without one exception, frauds, ig-
nominiOus and Internal frauds, whether
sanctioned by Legislatures or antagOn-
ized by them; frauds though respecta-
BILE people have with them damaged
their property and blistered their inn
mOtal souls for eternity. People in
straitened circumstances and almost de-
IiriOus with anxiety, have sought in
them relief, losing their last dollar, or
their last fifty cents, or their last five
cents, for there are lotteries where the
drawings occur every five minutes. In
the most distressed years of misery $14-
100000 were expended annually in Italy
in lotteries. And while the rich suffer,
the greatest wrong is done to the poor.
Let the people to whom these words come
beware of circulars in large type, say
ing: agents prize tickets free of cost.
Every ticket draws prize! No blanks!
A fortune within your reach without
cost or risk. Any person can easily sell
$40 worth of tickets in the inclOsed
monthly all-pTize scheme among per-
sonal friends, and secure one of the
agents prize tickets free of cost! Capt.
tai prize $1,000. There are ten thousand
prizes and only ten thousand tickets in
allr' There are hundreds of citizens on
the way to ruin through the lottery sys-
tenn. Some of the finest establishments
in town are by this process being demOl-
ished, and the whole land feels the ex-
haustiOn of this accumulating evil. The
wheel of fortune is the juggeTnaut that
is crushing out the life of this nation.
The records of the InsOlYent Court of
one city show that in five years 100000
were lost in dealing in lottery tickets
All the officers of the celebrated bank of
the United States who failed, were
found to have expended the money EN-
bezzled for lottery tickets. man drew
in lottery $4,000, sold his ticket for
$42, 800, and yet did not have enough to
pay the charges against him for lottery
tickets. He owed the brokers $4,000.
An editor writes: "a man who a few
years ago was blessed with about $40
600 lottery money! yesterday applied to
Us for nine pence to pay for a nights
lodging" A hard working machinist
draws $1,000; thencefOrth he is disguised
with work; opens rum grocery, is ut
terly debauched, and people go in his
store to find him dead close by his rum
oask. 1t would take pen plucked from
the wing of the destroying angel, and
dipped in blood, to describe this lOtt terry
bhsiness. A man c0pmitted suicide in
New York, and u, y his person was
found card of add kss, giving n gro
shop as his bOarlin house, three hia: x
lottery tickets, and leaf from SeneC
murder. One lottery in London was fol-
lowed by the suicide of fifty persons who
held unlucky numbers.
There are men with lottery tickets in
their pockets which, if they have not
sense enough to tear up or throw into
the fire, will be their admission ticket
at the door of the damned. As the bra
zen gates swing open they will show
their tickets and pass in and pass down.
Au hn nf
slowly round they will find that the
doom of those who have despised God
and imperiled their souls will be their
awful prize. God forbid that you, my
heaTer, should ever take to yourself the
lamentatiOn of the Boston clerk, who
in eight months had embezzled $18,-
900 from his employer and expended it
all in lottery tickets: 81 have for the
last seven months gone fast down the
broad road. There was time, and that
but a few months since, when | was
happy because l was free from debt and
care. The moment of the first step in
my downfall was about the middle of
June, when | took a share in a COM
pany, bought lottery tickets whereby / |
was successful in obtaining a share of |
one-half of the capital prize, since |
which l have gone for myself. have |
lived and dragged out miserable eX- |
sistence for two or three months past |
Oh that the seven or eight months past |
of my existence could be blOtted out |
But l must go, and ere this paper is |
read my Spirit has gone to my Maker |
to give an account of my misdeeds here |
and to hear the eternal sentence for |
self-destruction and abused confidence. |
Relatives and friends | have from |
whom | do not wish to part under such |
circumstances; but necessity cOmpels. |
Oh, wretch Lottery tickets have been
thy Tuinp' There are multitudes of
people who disapprOve of ordinary lot
teries, yet have been thoroughly de-
ceived by iniquity under more attrac-
tive nomenclature. The lottery in
which our most highly respectable and
Christian people invest is some cart
Association" or some benevolent "Gift
Enterprise" in which they fOndly be-
lieve there can be no harm in drawing
such a work Of art as BieTstadt's YOse-
mite Valley or Crapsey's American
Autumn. At no time have lottery
tickets been sOwn so broadcast as to-
day, notwithstanding the law fOrbids
the old style lottery. Some years
ago our newspapers famed with the adj
Vertisements of the Crosby Opera House
scheme. A citizen of Chicago, finding
upon his hands an Improbable build