Custer chronicle. [volume] (Custer City, Black Hills, D.T. [S.D.]) 1880-1890, 1882-04-15
SATURDAY, APRIL Is, 1889.

From the New York Herald, March DC

seventh street and Fifth venue, the
pastor, the Rev. James M. Pullman. ID.
d., delivered a lecture last night on "The
Gambling Spirit in Human. Nature"
He prefaced his remarks by. quoting
Hosea, viii, Z: "For they have sown
the wind, and they shall reap the whirl-
wind 1t hath no stalk the bud shall
yield no meal; il so be it yield, the
stranger shall swallow it up" La the city
of New York to-day, said the preacher
there are three vices that are working
ruin among all classes Of the community.
The i.rst Of these is drink. Four-ffths of
all the crime that is perpetrated ia our
midst is traceable to it's deadly influence.
The second is gambling. which is kept
alive by and thrives upon that spirit
that makes man seek to get something
for nothing. The third Of the vices is
RIGHTEOUSNESS, and men who defle
themselves in the pursuit Of their un-
hallowed pleasures are presnmptuous
enough to think that after they have
wrecked their constitutions and blasted
their lives in the indulgence of their
vices and passions, God will, out Of the
miserable fragments of their broken
nature that remains, r~e-create, as it were,
a new and perfect creature. 1t Is of the
second of these vices that / propose to
speak tonight. Gambling is a passion
belonging to a low order Of beings, or to
our lower nature. The excitement of
gaming is the mixed pleasure and pain
arising from the alteration Of hope and
fear, success and failure. There is a
similarity between the hunting and
gambling spirit, and we find both, as it
were, an integral part at least of mans
lower nature. In his semi-savage state
he has to hunt animals TO procure food
to eat and clothes to wear, and the early
Jesuit missionaries have left the fact on
record that in their first intercourse
with the barbarous Canadian Indians
they found that the first thing they did
after eating their fill of flesh of the
animals they had captured while hunt
ing was to sit down and gamble. 1t is q
sorry reflection for Christian people that
In Mohammedian countries the vices of
drinking and gambling are practically
unknown. In all lands the decline Of
social honor and private virtue is found
to accompany the growth of gambling.
Loaded dice have been unearthed in
Pompeii. and the old Romans knew full
well how to throw q sure six. There
are two kinds of gambling. Gambling
in stocks, gold and pools ana the play.
ing with cards, dice and other nipple
ments Of play. The first cause of com
mercial gambling is utter imbecility.
After that m an insane desire to
recover, by this system of making some
thing out of nothing, losses in business
or by misfortune. AS for some of the
large Wall street operators. l think that
gambler is too good a name to apply to
them. They are worse than Modocs
The Modoc is satisfied with your scalp
but they Of Wall street want you too
A newspaper recently said: "Some Of
the great operators, too, made the near.
est approach to satanic methods in their
~falsehood, treachery and indifference to
the fate of friends and foes which the
modern business world has yet wit
messed" These words are true, and I
believe that no such scenes have ever
been witnessel in the world Of finance
as have been enacted in Wall street
during the past few weeks. What is
the remedy for this ? you may ask. The
only remedy, believe, is the abatement
Of the inordinate respect you and /, my
brethren, daily show to mere wealth.
Cards and dice are the implements with
which men try to shirk Gods ordinance
of labor and ley a spell on fortune.
Click and r~umble-there they strike the
maddest passions Of the human heart.
There they go-reputation. happiness
and love the employers money, the
friends claims, the wife's dear relic-all
the sanctities Of the man thrown down
and lost! What preaching do we re-