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The Gaming Table by Andrew Steinmetz

 CHAPTER XII. page 55

`I could think of nothing but Faro's magic centre, and longed for
the next evening, when I determined to enter that path which has
led so many to infamy, beggary, and suicide. I began cautiously,
and for some time had reason to be satisfied with my success. It
enabled me to live expensively. I made golden calculations of my
future fortune as I improved in skill. My manuals were treatises
on gaming and chances, and no man understood this doctrine better
than I did. I, however, did not calculate the disparity of
resisting powers--my purse with _FIFTY_ guineas, and the Faro
bank with a hundred thousand. It was ruin only which opened my
eyes to this truism at last.

`Good meats, good cooking, and good wines, given gratis and
plenteously, at these houses, drew many to them at first, for the
sake of the society. Among them I one evening chanced to see a
clerical prig, who was incumbent of a parish adjoining that
in which my mother lived. I was intoxicated with wine and
pleasure, when I, on this occasion, entered a haunt of ruin and
enterprising avarice in Pall Mall. I played high and lost in
proportion.

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