Wheeling register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1878-1935, 1886-11-08
WHEEIING MONDAY MORNING, NOVEMBER s, 1886.

grave? Not oneI
Furthermore, this sin il
THE SOURCE OF UNcoUNTED DISHONESTY.
The game of hazard itself is often cheat.
How many tricks and deceptions in the
dealing of the cards! The opponents
hand is oftimes found out by fraud. Cards
are marked so that they may be designated
from the back. Expert gamesters have
their aceomphces, and one wink may de-
eide the game. The dice have been found
loaded with pfatina so that doublets
come up every time. These dice
are introduced by the gamblers unob-
served by the honest men who have come
into the play, and this accounts for the
fact that ninety-nine out of a hundred
who gamble, however wealthy when they
began, at the end are found to De poor,
miserable, haggard wretches, that would
not now be allowed to sit on the doorstep
of the house that they once owned. In a
gaming house in San Francisco, young
man having just come from the miner de-
posted large sum upon the ace and won
twenty-five thousand dollars. But the
tide turns. Slowly the cards went forth.
Every eye is fixed. Not a sound is heard,
until the ace is revealed favorable to the
bank. There are shouts of ''foul foulr'
but the keepers of the table produce their
pistols, and the uproar is silenced, and
the bank has won ninety-ive thousand
dollars. Do you call this a game of
chance? There is no chance about it.
But these dishonesties in the Carrying
On Of the game are nothing when COM
pared with the frauds that are committed
in order to get money to 90 on with the
nefarious work. Gambling, with its greedy
hand, has snatched away the widows
mite, and the possessions of the orphans;
has sold the daughters virtue to get the
means to continue the game; has written
the counterfeit signature; emptied the
bankers money vault, and welded the
assassins dagger. There is no depth of
meanness to which it will not stoop.
There is no cruelty at which it is appall-
ed. There is no warning of God that 1t
will not dare. Merciless, unappeasable,
fiercer and wilder it blinds, it hardens, it
rends it blasts, it crushes, it damns. 1t
has peopled our prisons and lunatic
asylums.
For how many railroad
AGENTS, AND CASHIERS, AND TRUSTEES
of funds it has disgrace, incarceration, and
suicide Witness years ago Cashier OF
the Central Railroad and Banking Com
pany of Georgia, who stole one hundred
and three thousand dollars to carry on his
gaming practices. Witness the forty
thousand dollars stolen from a Brooklyn
bank within the memory of many of you,
and the one hundred and eighty thousand
dollars taken from Wall street insurance
company for the same purpose. These are
only illustrations on large scale of the
robberies committed for the purpose of
carrying out the designs of gamblers.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars every
year leak out without observation from
the merchants till into the gambling hell.
A man in London keeping one of these
gambling houses boasted that he had ruin
ed nobleman day; butifall the saloons
of this land were to speak out they might
utter more infamous boast, for they have
destroyed thousand noblemen year.
n ytice also the effect of this crime upon
domestic happiness 1t has sent its ruth
less ploughshare through hundreds Of fam
lilies, until the wife sat in rags, and the
daughters were disgraced, and the sons
grew up the same infamous practices, or
took short cut to destruction across the
murderer's scaffold.
Home has lost all charms for the gam
bier How tame are the children'S cares
ses and wite's devotion to the gambler.
How drearily the fire burns on the dOmes-
tic hearth! There must be louder laugh
ter, and something to win, and something
to lose: an excitement to drive the heart
faster, fill up the blood and fire the imagi-
nation. No home, however bright, can
keep back the gamester. The sweet call
of love bounds back from his iron soul
and
ALL ENDEARMENTS ARE CONSUMED
in the fire of his passion. The family
Bible will 90 after all other treasures are
lost, and if his crown in heaven were put
into his hand he would cry: ''Here goes;
one more game, my boys. On this one
throw | stake my crown in heaven"
A young man in London, on coming of
age received q fortune OF one hundred and
twenty thousand dollars, and through
gambling, in three years was thrown on
his mother for support.
An only son went to New Orleans. He
was rich, intellectual, and elegant in man
ners His parents gave him, on his de-
parture from home, their last blessing.
The sharpers got hold of him. They flat
tered him. They lured him to the gam
ing table and let him win almost every
time for good while. and patted him on
the back and said: "First-rate player"
But fully in their grasp they leeced him,
and his thirty thousand dollars were lost.
Last of all, he put up his watch and lost
that. Then he began to think of his home
and of his old father and mother, and
wrote thus:
"My beloved parents: You will doubt
less feel a momentary joy at the reception
of this letter from the child of your bosom,
on whom you have lavished all the favors
of your declining years. But should a
feeling of joy for moment spring up in
your hearts, when you should have re-
ceived this from me, cherish it not. l
have fallen deep, never to rise. Those
gray hairs that should have honored and
protected. / shall bring down in sorrow to
the grave. l will not curse my destroyer,
but, oh, may God avenge the wrongs and
impositions practiced upon the unwary,
in a way that shall best please Him! This,
my dear parents, is the last letter you
you will ever receive from me. ! humbly
pray your forgiveness. 1t is my dying
prayer. Long before you will have re-
ceived this from me, the cold grave will
have closed upon me forever. Life to me
is insupportable. cannot, nay, / will
not, suffer the shame Of having ruined
you. Forget and forgive is the dying
prayer of your unfortunate son."
The old father came to the post-office,
got the letter and fell to the floor. They
thought he was dead at first, but they
brushed back the white hair from his brow
and famed him. He had only tainted. l
wish he had been dead, for what is life
worth to father after his son is destroyed?
''Aceldema, The field of blood"
WHEN THINGS GO WRONG AT A GAMING
TABLE,
they shout: Foul! Foul! Indefinitely
foul?n
Gift stores are abundant throughout
the country. With book, or knife, or
sewing machine, or coat, or carriage, there
goes prize. At these stores people get
something thrown in with their purchase