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The Gaming Table by Andrew Steinmetz

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Lady gamestresses

CHAPTER X. page 10

`The pernicious consequences of gambling to the nation at large,'
says another writer, `would have been intolerable enough had they
been confined to the stronger sex; but, unfortunately, the women
of the day were equally carried away by this criminal
infatuation. The disgusting influence of this sordid vice was so
disastrous to female minds, that they lost their fairest
distinction and privileges, together with the blushing honours of
modesty. Their high gaming was necessarily accompanied with
great losses. If all their resources, regular and irregular,
honest and fraudulent, were dissipated, still, _GAME-DEBTS MUST
BE PAID!_ The cunning winner was no stranger to the necessities
of the case. He hinted at _commutations_--which were not to be
refused.

"So tender these,--if debts crowd fast upon her,
She'll pawn her _VIRTUE_ to preserve her _HONOUR!_"

Thus, the last invaluable jewel of female possession was
unavoidably resigned. That was indeed the forest of all
evils, but an evil to which every deep gamestress was
inevitably exposed.'

Hogarth strikingly illustrated this phase of womanhood in
England, in his small picture painted for the Earl of Charlemont,
and entitled `_Picquet, or Virtue in Danger_.' It shows a young
lady, who, during a _tete-a-tete_, had just lost all her
money to a handsome officer of her own age. He is represented in
the act of returning her a handful of bank-bills, with the hope
of exchanging them for another acquisition and more delicate
plunder. On the chimney-piece are a watch-case and a figure of
Time, over it this motto--_Nunc_, `Now!' Hogarth has caught his
heroine during this moment of hesitation--this struggle with
herself--and has expressed her feelings with uncommon success.

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