Connecticut western news., 1891-02-25

so that "doubletS" come up every time. These dice are introduced by the gam blers, unobserved by honest men who come into the play; and this accounts for the fact that ninetynine out of a hundred who gamble, however wealthy they began, at the end are found to be poor, miserable, ragged wretches, that would not now be allowed to sit on the doorstep of the house that they orce owned.
 In a gaming house in San Francisco young man having just come from the mines deposited a large sum upon the ace and won twenty-two thousand dollars. But the tide turns. Intense anxiety comes upon the countenances of all Slowly the cards went forth. Every eye is fixed. Not sound is heard until the ace is revealed, favor able to the bank There are shouts of "Foulr' "Foul!" but the keepers of the table produce their pistols and the uproar is silenced, and the bank has won ninety-five thousand dollars. Do you call this a game of chance? There is no chance about it.
 FRAUDS IN ORDER TO GET MONEY.
 But these dishonesties in the carry ing on of the game are nothing when compared with the frauds which are committed in order to get money to go on with the nefarious work. Gambling with its greedy hand has snatched away the widows mite and the portion of tn, 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 yielded the assassin's dagger. There is no depth of meanness to which it will not stoop. There is no cruelty at which it is appalled,. There is no warning of God that it will not dare. Merciless, unappeasable, fiercer and wilder it blinds, it hardens, it rends, it blasts, it crushes it damns. It has peopled our prisons and lunatic asylums. How many railroad agents and cashiers and trustees of funds it has driven to dis grace, incarceration and suicide!
 Witness years ago . cashier of Q rail road who stole one hundred and three thousand dollars to carry on his garl- ing practices. Witness forty thousand dollars stolen from a Brooklyn bank within the memory of many of you, and the one hundred and eighty thou. sand dollars taken from a Wall street insurance company for the same pur- pose! These are only illustrations on a large scale of robberies every day 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 ruined a nobleman a day; but if all the saloons of this land were to speak out they might utter more infamous boast, for they have destroyed a thou sand noble men year.
 Notice also the effect of this crime upon domestic happiness. It has sent itsruthless plowshare through hundreds of families, until the wife sat in rags and the daughters were disgraced and the sons grew up to the same infamous practices or took a short cut to destruc- ton across the murderers scatfold
 Home has lost all charms for the gam. bier! How tame are the children's ca resses and wife's devotion to the gam bier! How drearily the fire burns on the domestic hearth! There must bc louder laughter, and something to win and something to lose; an excitement to drive the heart faster and fillip the blood and fire the imagination. 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 flame of his passion. The family Bible will go after all other treasures are lost, and if his crown in heaven were put into his hand he would cry: Here goes ono more game, my boys! On this one throw stake my crown of heaven" A young man in London on coming of age received a fortune of one hun dred and twenty thousand dollars, and, through gambling, in three years was thrown on his mother for support. An only son went to a southern city; he was rich. intellectual and elegant in manners. His parents gave him on his departure from homo ,,leir last bless ing The sharpers got hold of him. They tlattered him. They lured him to the gaming table and let him win almost every time for a good while, and patted him on the back and said,
 First rate player. But, fully in their grasp, they tleeced 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 his old father and mother, and wrote thus:
 A LAST LETTER
 My Beloved Parents-You will doubtless 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 declin 1 ing years. But should a feeling of joy
 for a moment spring up in your hearts when you should have received this from me cherish it not I have fallen
 never to rise. Those gray hairs that I
 should have honored and protected l shall bring down with sorrow to the | grave. will not curse my destroyer, but oh! may God avenge the wrongs
 and inpositions practiced upon the un-
 wary in a way that shall best please
 Him. This, my dear parents, is the
 last letter you will ever receive iron,
 me. I humbly pray your forgiveness.
 It is my dying prayer Long before