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Volume I Volume II

The Gaming Table by Andrew Steinmetz

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THE UNIVERSAL PASSION OF GAMING OR, GAMING ALL THE WORLD OVER

CHAPTER I. page 11

`Sir Arthur Smithhouse is yet fresh in memory. He had a fair
estate, which in a few years he so lost at play, that he died in
great want and penury. Since that Mr Ba--, who was a clerk in
the Six-Clerks Office, and well cliented, fell to play, and won
by extraordinary fortune two thousand pieces in ready gold; was
not content with that, played on, lost all he had won, and almost
all his own estate; sold his place in the office, and at last
marched off to a foreign plantation, to begin a new world with
the sweat of his brow; for that is commonly the destiny of a
decayed gamester--either to go to some foreign plantation, or to
be preferred to the dignity of a _box-keeper_.

`It is not denied but most gamesters have, at one time or other,
a considerable run of winning, but such is the infatuation of
play, I could never hear of a man that gave over a winner--I
mean, to give over so as never to play again. I am sure it is
_rara avis_, for if you once "break bulk," as they phrase it,
you are in again for all. Sir Humphry Foster had lost the
greatest part of his estate, and then playing, as it is said,
_FOR A DEAD HORSE_, did, by happy fortune, recover it again; then
gave over, and wisely too.'[13]

[13] Harleian Misc. ii. 108.

The sequel will show the increase of gambling in our country
during the subsequent reigns, up to a recent period.

Thus, then, the passion of gaming is, and has ever been,
universal. It is said that two Frenchmen could not exist even in
a desert without _QUARRELLING;_ and it is quite certain that no
two human beings can be anywhere without ere long offering to
`bet' upon something. Indolence and want of employment--
`vacuity,' as Dr Johnson would call it--is the cause of the
passion. It arises from a want of habitual employment in some
material and regular line of conduct. Your very innocent card-
parties at home--merely to kill _TIME_ (what a murder!) explains
all the apparent mystery! Something must be substituted to call
forth the natural activity of the mind; and this is in no way
more effectually accomplished, in all indolent pursuits, than by
those _EMOTIONS AND AGITATIONS_ which gambling produces.

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