The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1898-04-15


without foundation, but dependent
upon what men call luck" is a gamb-
Ter.
Whatever you expect to get from
your %neighbor without offering an
equivalent in money or time or skill
is either the product of theft or
gaming. Lottery tickets and lot
terry policies come into the
same category. BaZars for the found
ing Of hospitals, schools and churches,
conducted on the rafting system, come
under the same denomination. Do not
therefore, associate gambling nessarily
with any instrument or game or place
or think the principle depends upon
whether you play for a glass of wine
or 100 shares of railroad stock. Wheth-
er you p%atronize auction pools, French
mutuals or bOok-making, whether you
employ faro or billiards, rondo and
keno, cards or bagatelle, the very idea
of the time is dishonest, for it processes
to bestow upon you a good for. which
you give no equivalent.
THE CURSE OF CENTURIES.
This crime is no new born spirit, but
a haggard transgression that comes
staggering down under a mantle of
curses through many centuries. All
nations, barbarous and civilized, have
been addicted to it.
But now the laws of the whole civil
lized world denounce the system. En-
actments have been passed, but only
partially enforced at all. The men in
terested in gaming houses and in
jockey clubs WELD such influence by
their numbers and affiuence that the
judge, the jury and the police officer
must be bold indeed who would array
themselves against these Infamous es-
Establishments. The house of commons
of England actually a%djourns on Derby
day that members may attend the
| races, and in the best circles of So
ciety in this country today are many
hundreds of prOfessedly respectable
men who are acknowledged gamblers.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars in
this land are every day being won and
lost through sheer gambling. Says a
| traveller through the west, II have
| travelled 1000 miles at a time upon the
western waters and seen gambling at
| every waking moment from the COM
" I1C IOl VI SAAC
Journey" The southwest of this coun-
try reeks with this sin. In some of
those every third or fourth house in
many of the streets is a gaming place,
| and it nay be truthfully averred that
each of Jul cities is cursed with this
evil.
Men wishing to gamble will find
| places just suited to their capacity not
only in the underground oyster cellar
or at the table back of the curtain,
covered with greasy cards, or in the
steamboat smoking cabin, where the
bloated wretch with rings in his ears
deals out his pack and winks in the
unsuspecting traveller, providing free
drinks all around, but in gilded par
lors and amid gorgeous surroundings.
This sin works ruin first by providing
an unhealthful stimulant. Excitement
is pleasurable. Under every sky and
in every age men have sought it. We
must have at times have excitement.
A thousand voices in u nature de-
mand it. 1t is right. 1t is healthful.
1t is inspiriting. 1t is a desire God
given. But anything that first gratifies
this appetite and hurls it back in a ter
rifle reaction is deplOrable and wicked.
Look out for the agitation that, like a
rough musician, in bringing out the
tune plays SO hard he breaks down
the instrument. God never made a
man strong enough to endure the wear
and tear of gambling excitements.
THE ROAD TO RUIN.
A young man having suddenly in
herited a large property sits at the
hazard tables and takes up in a dice
box the estate o. by a fathers life
times sweat and shakes it and losses it
away. Intemperance o o ~stigmatizes
it's victim, kickering him out, a slav-
ering fool, into the ditch or sending
him, with the drunkard's ~hiccOugh,
staggering up the street where his
family lives. But gambling does not in
that way expose it's victims. The
gambler may be eaten up by the
gamblers passion, yet O only dis
cover it by the greed in his eyes, the
hardness of his features, the nervous
restlesSness, the threadbare coat and
his embarrassed business. Yet he is
on the rOad to ruin, and no preachers
voice or startling warning or wife's ca
treaty can make him stay for a mo-
ment his headlong career.
The Internal spell is on him, a giant
is aroused within, and though o bind
him with cables they would part like
thread, and though you fasten him
seven times around with chains they
would snap like rusted wire, and
though you piled up in his path
heaven high Bible, tracts and sermons
and on the top should set the cross of
the Son of God, over them all the
gambler would leap like a roe over the
rocks on his way to perdition. "Acel-
dana, the field of blood.
Again this sin works ruin by killing
industry. A man used to reaping
scores of hundred of dollars from the
gaming table will not be content with
slow work. He will say, What is the
use of trying to make this $50 in my
store when l can make five times that
in half an hour by the dice? You
never knew a confirmed gambler who
was Industrious. The men given to