The weekly intelligencer. [volume] (Lexington, Mo.) 1891-1901, 1897-08-07

REV. TALMAeE' their work, the NAL
still stands upright, respected ant
honored. These vermin have no
strength enough to gnaw through
a mans character. But there ar
other transgressions that lif
themselves up to gigantic pro
portions, and seize hold of
man and bind him with throngs for
ever. There are some iniquities tina
have such great emphasis of evil tina;
he who commits them may be said K
sin as with a cart rope. 1 suppose you
know how they make a great rope
The stuff out of which it is fashioned
is nothing but tow which you pull
apart without any exertion of you
fingers. This is spun into threads
any of which you could easily snap
but a great many of these threads are
INSTRUMENTATION you have a rope
strong enough to bind an OK, or hold G
ship in tempest. 1 speak to you of the
sin of gambling. A cart rope in
strength is that sin, and yet 1 wish
more especially to draw you atten'
ton to the small threads of influences
out of which that mighty iniquity ID
twisted.
This crime is on the advance, SO that
it is well not only that fathers, and
brothers, inc sons, be interested in
such a discussion, but that wives, and
mothers, and sisters, and daughters
look out lest their present home be
sacrificed, or their intended home be
blasted. No man, no woman, can
stand aloft from sue a subject as this
and say: 1T has no practical bearing
upon my life;" for there may be in q
short time in your history an expert
ence in which you will find that the
discussion involves three worlds
earth, Heaven, hell. There are gam
bling establishments by the thousands.
There are about $500 professional
gamblers. Out of all the gambling es-
Establishments, how many of them do
you suppose profess to be honestP Ten.
Then ten protesting to be honest
because they are merely the ante
chamber to those that are acknowl-
edged fraudulent. There are first
class establishments. You step a little
way out of Broadway, New York.
You go up the marble stairs. You
ring the bell. The liveried servant in
PRODUCES you. The walls are lavender
tinted. The mantels are of Vermont
marble. The pictures are "J~ephthah's
Daughter" and Dore's ''Dante's and
Virgirs Frozen Region of He'll, " a most
appropriate selection, this last, for the
place. There is the roulette table, the
finest, costliest, most exquisite piece of
furniture in the United States. There
is the ~banqueting room, where,
free of charge to the guests, you
may find the plate, and viands,
and wines, and cigars, sumptu-
Gus beyond parallel. Then you come
to the second-class gambling establish
ment. To it you are introduced by a
card through some roper in" Hav-
ing entered, o must either gamble
or fight. Sanded cards, dice loaded
with quicksilver, poor drinks mixed
with more poor drinks, will 500 help
you to get rid of all your money to a
tune In short meter with staccato pas
sages. You wanted to see. You saw.
The low Williams of that place watch
as o come in. Does not the panther,
squat in the grass, know a calf when
he sees it? Wrangle not for your rights
in that place, or you body will be
thrown bloody into the street, or dead
into the river.
Now, you acknowledge that is a cart
rope of evil, but you want to know
what are the small threads out of
which it is made. There is, in many,
a disposition to hazard They feel a
delight in walking near a precipice
because of h n of danger. There
are people who go upon Jungfrau, not
for the largeness of the prospect, but
for the feeling that they have of think
ing: What would happen if 1 should
foil nqfpo 1hnra ra narcnnc Whn houn
their blood flliped and accelerated by
skating very near an airhole. There
are men who find a positive delight in
driving within two inches of the edge
of a bridge. 1t is this disposition to
hazard hat finds development in gam
ing practices.
Then there are others who go into
this sin through sheer desire for gain.
gamblers. They always keep cool.
They never drink enough to unbalance
their judgment. They do not see the
dice SO much as they see the dollar be-
yond the dice, and for that they watch
as the spider in the web, looking as If
dead until the fly passes. Thousands
of young men in the hope of gain go
into these practices. When a young
L1hn uldhCS up Ills ullnu W llNC OCHOno
his income, Satan has bought him
out and out, and it is only a question
of time when the goods are to be de-
livered. The thing is done. You may
plant in the way all the batteries of
truth and righteousness-that man is
bound to go on. When a man makes
81, 900 a year and spends 81, 200; when a
young man makes 81, 500 and spends
~ Hnn Ill a. I----~ - 1.-lr,A.. n,w
out: 'Hai hal we AVE himp and they
have. How to get the extra $500 or
the extra 81, 200 is the question. He
says: "Here is my friend who started
out the other day with but little
money, and in one night, SO great was
his luck, he rolled up hundreds and
thousands of dollars. If he got it, why
not /? 1t is such dull work, this adding
up of long lines of figures in the count
this pulling down of 100
yards of goods and selling a remnants;
this always awaiting upon somebody
else, when l could put 500 on the ace
and pick up 81, 000."
This sin works very insidiously.
Other sins sound the drum, and haunt
the flag, and gather their recruits with
wild huzza, but this marches its pro-
of pale victims in dead of night,
silence, and when they drop into
the grave there is not so much sound
the click of dice. Oh, how many
have gone down under it. Look at
those men who were once highly pros
pered. Now their forehead is licked
by a tongue of flame that will never
go out. In their souls are plunged the
beaks which will never be lifted.
open the door of that mans
heart and you see a coil of adders
their indescribable horror
you turn away and hide
your face and ask God to help
you to forget it. The most of this
evil is unadvertised. The community
does not hear Of 1t. Men defrauded in
establishments are not fools
enough to tell of it. Once in a while,
however, there is an exposure, as when
In Boston the police swooped upon a
gaming establishment and found in
1t the representatives of all classes of
from the first merchants of
State street to the low Ann street gam
bier; as when Bullock, the cashier of
the Central railroad of Georgia, was
found to have stolen S1O3, 900 for the
purpose of carrying on gaming prac-
tees; as when q young malin one of