St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1890-09-22
STORIES OF GAMBLING
Henry Watterson Writes to
His Newspaper About a
Common Vice.
The Kentucky Editor Does
Not Believe Many of the
Big Yarns.
Tales of High Stakes and Big
Losses Are Generally
Mythical.
Reform Is Rather Easy, but
Reputation Sticks Like a
Brother.

Soile vi Tile TeHectlOnS Wnlcn The grave
of Chunky Towles inspired il the
Drain of the distinguished Kentucky ed
itor: Of all methods OF livelihood OF
dissipation or amusement, perhaps
there is none about which so much I'M
truth passes current as about gambling.
Every now and then the newspapers
take to run of gaming stories, and it
is the exception when one of these has
the least element of fact to sustain it.
10 the mind of certain crude reporto-
rial youth, in whose eyes the race course
is paradise and every turfman hero.
all games of chance possess
peculiar fascination, and, if he can
fasten to game of hearsay some indi-
vidual particular or personal anecdote,
he fancieS that his fortune is made. and
neither thinks nor cares to discriminate
IN the matter of accuracy or prOpriety.
That there are degrees in card playing,
or varying sensibilities among those
who with differing aims play at cards,
or any virtue in sticking 10 the truth,
does not occur to him; and as in this,
like other fairy tales, it is as easy to
speak of millions as of pennies, the
amounts at issue are only limited by
the imagination of the recountant.
Thus: 1.-The colonel went HIM thou
sand dollars, and the judge raised him
five thousand better, and the colonel
called, and the judge only mad pair of
such passage at all, the figures might be
reduced to mills-stiIl largely to exceed
the amounts actually at stake.
Again, the writer's of these gaming
stories seldom have any knowledge of
the subject. and, writing at second
hand, fall into the most egregious errors;
and their readers. being for the most
part equally ignorant, form the most
fantastic notions of gambling and of the
gambler, both professional and amateur.
Hard to Live Down.
The reputation for gambling long
survives the abandonment of the habit
of gambling. 1t is not generally known,
though it is fact, that the most famous
of the nOn-professional gamblers of his
tory. Charles James Fox, did not play
for money after his forty-third year, de-
voting the most of his life to the most
useful, eminent and brilliant public sery-
ice. but never Graduating his early rep
utatiOn. Indeed 1t can be set down
as a rule that nothing does its
work so quickly and so surely as high
play. He who persists in it, no matter
bottom of it; for the essential principle
OF gambling is that it shall reach at
least the measure Of the players capac-
ity to lose. In most cases it exceeds
this, and in all where it is continued it
Outlasts the capacity to pay, involving
debt and ruin. Where these are not the
finalitieS among amateurs and men
claiming to be gentlemen the abate-
ment is to be found in an ever-increas-
ing conservatism, narrowing down to
merely nominal stakes or counters, and
this is the history of every game that
does not end in more OF less of hardship
and disgrace.
Of professional gambling it can be
said that no av0cation involves so much
of deSpOtism, fckleness and sQualor:>
Rare, indeed, are the instances where
the professional gambler would not be
glad to lead different life. He will
tell you, and truly, that he was not born
gambler; that he did not take to
gambling for its own sake: that he
drifted into it, as it were, sometimes by
miSchance in business, through the en-
crOachmentS of half-unconScious dis
sipatiOn. and sometimes from sheer in
dolence and love of easy and idle pleas
ure. A murrain ont! The capacity
for real and steady work diminished or
gone: the means of recuperation
squandered, confidence forfeited and
reputation furnished. what was
left? Nothing but the card table, no
longer magic circle of diversion and
abandonment, but the grimy, back
breaking actuality of a defeated life, III
definite, endless, without any begin
nlngs. or objective points. or ambitions
that are not vulgar, venal and corrupt,
or victories that are not brutal and base.
Nc
Yet, OF all the vices, none is so easy
of amendment. as none shows so MANY
illustrations of reform. In the great
cities most men have taken a turn at
some form of gambling; few who have
not either thrown it off or broughtit I'M
der regulation and control. Gaming is
largely habit, and habit of associa-
ton. 1t does not, like so many other
vices, communicate any poison to the
blood, though too often leading to those
that do. In its origin 1t is not without
a certain manhood and humor, and
hence in all ages and among ali classes
1t has had an existence. But at the
very best it is open to the gravest OBJ
jections.
1t is too absorbing, OBTAINING players
beyond their time, and often from the
most honorable motives. 1t is too con-
filming, lacking the pure air and light of
day, and permeated by the fetid atmos-
phere OF midnight and tobacco, where
it does not descend into the health-de-
strOying fumes of drink. It completely
deadens the mOney-Sense, and, in fact,
the sense of all values; and, where car
ried to the least excess. is moral crime
IN eXacting something for nothing. [
will not add that it is provocative of
great talent for domestic lying, and an
incalculable amount of it, becauseit may
be doubted whether the loving wife
who listens with moist eyes to the
sad story of the sick friend is
she pretends to be. Assuredly
not in Kentucky, where be sure the
women of two or three generations have
not lived wholly in vain, and where, in
every case, it would be we'll for the
recusant husband to pay no heed to the
counsel of the Kentucky journalist. of
whom tradition relates that on certain
occasion he observed to the friend with
whom he was about to separate at the
street corner which divided their re-
spectiye homes: 81 have always made it
a rule, Isaac, to go to my wife and tell
her the truth; 1t is much the best way,
believe me; and so, as soon get in, /
mean to put bold face on it and
frankly say that the press broke
downw
Some Anecdotes.
Fictions like these, however ingen-
ious and maintained, have no power to
mislead such ladies as the astute Blue
grass matron. who, after allowing her
husband to disrobe in fancied security,
and to sit rocking the cradle on the edge
OF the bed until nearly frozen by this
cunning attempt at deception, at last
exclaimed: ''Oh, come on to bed; the
baby amt in that cradler'
When old Jedediah Suggs, the father of
the illustriOus Simon, having discovered
that young hopeful playing cards, un-
dertook to impress the boy with the idea
that gambling is a waste of time and
money, the embryo captain of the Talla-
poosa volunteers asked, with more peril
nency than depth of thought: 'sWell,
whar does the money go, daddy, that
everybody loses?" In spite Of the ina