monster without a tender mercy, devouring its own offspring without one feeling but appetite. A gamester, as such, is the cool, calculating, essential spirit of concentrated avaricious selfishness. His intellect is a living thing, quickened with double life for villany; his heart is steel of fourfold temper. When a man begins to gamble he is as a noble tree full of sap, green with leaves, a shade to beasts, and a covert to birds. When one becomes a thorough gambler, he is like that tree lightning-smitten, rotten in root, dry in branch, and sapless; seasoned hard and tough; nothing lives beneath it, nothing on its branches, unless a hawk or a vulture perches for a moment to whet its beak, and fly screaming away for its prey.

To every young man who indulges in the least form of gambling, I raise a warning voice! Under the specious name of AMUSEMENT, you are laying the foundation of gambling. Playing is the seed which comes up gambling. It is the light wind which brings up the storm. It is the white frost which preludes the winter. You are mistaken, however, in supposing that it is harmless in its earliest beginnings. Its terrible blight belongs, doubtless, to a later stage; but its consumption of time, its destruction of industry, its distaste for the calmer pleasures of life, belong to the very beginning. You will begin to play with every generous feeling. Amusement will be the plea. At the beginning the game will excite enthusiasm, pride of skill, the love of mastery, and the love of money. The love of money, at first almost imperceptible, at last will rule out all the rest,—like Aaron's rod,—a serpent, swallowing every other serpent. Generosity, enthusiasm, pride and skill, love of mastery, will be absorbed in one mighty feeling,—the savage lust of lucre.

There is a downward climax in this sin. The opening and ending are fatally connected, and drawn toward each other with almost irresistible attraction. If gambling is a vortex, playing is the outer ring of the Maelstrom. The thousand pound stake, the whole estate put up on a game—what are these but the instruments of kindling that tremendous excitement which a diseased heart craves? What is the amusement for which you play but the excitement of the game? And for what but this does the jaded gambler play? You differ from him only in the degree of the same feeling. Do not solace yourself that you shall escape because others have; for they stopped, and you go on. Are you as safe as they, when you are in the gulf-stream of perdition, and they on the shore? But have you ever asked, how many have escaped? Not one in a thousand is left unblighted! You have nine hundred and ninety-nine chances against you, and one for you; and will you go on? If a disease should stalk through the town, devouring whole families, and sparing not one in five hundred, would you lie down under it quietly because you have one chance in five hundred? Had a scorpion stung you, would it alleviate your pangs to reflect that you had only one chance in one hundred? Had you swallowed corrosive poison, would it ease your convulsions to think there was only one chance in fifty for you? I do not call every man who plays a gambler, but a gambler in embryo. Let me trace your course from the amusement of innocent playing to its almost inevitable end.

Scene first. A genteel coffee-house,—whose humane screen conceals a line of grenadier bottles, and hides respectable blushes from impertinent eyes. There is a quiet little room opening out of the bar; and here sit four jovial youths. The cards are out, the wines are in. The fourth is a reluctant hand; he does not love the drink, nor approve the game. He anticipates and fears the result of both. Why is he here? He is a whole-souled fellow, and is afraid to seem ashamed of any fashionable gaiety. He will sip his wine upon the importunity of a friend newly come to town, and is too polite to spoil that friend's pleasure by refusing a part in the game. They sit, shuffle, deal; the night wears on, the clock telling no tale of passing hours—the prudent liquor-fiend has made it safely dumb. The night is getting old; its dank air grows fresher; the east is grey; the gaming and drinking and hilarious laughter are over, and the youths wending homeward. What says conscience? No matter what it says; they did not hear, and we will not. Whatever was said, it was very shortly answered thus: "This has not been gambling; all were gentlemen; there was no cheating; simply a convivial evening; no stakes except the bills incident to the entertainment. If anybody blames a young man for a little innocent exhilaration on a special occasion, he is a superstitious bigot; let him croak!" Such a garnished game is made the text to justify the whole round of gambling, Let us, then, look at

Scene the second. In a room so silent that there is no sound except the shrill cock crowing the morning, where the forgotten candles burn dimly over the long and lengthened wick, sit four men. Carved marble could not be more motionless, save their hands. Pale, watchful, though weary, their eyes pierce the cards, or furtively read each other's faces. Hours have passed over them thus. At length they rise without words; some, with a satisfaction which only makes their faces brightly haggard, scrape off the piles of money; others, dark, sullen, silent, fierce, move away from their lost money. The darkest and fiercest of the four is that young friend who first sat down to make out a game! He will never sit so innocently again. What says he to his conscience now? "I have a right to gamble; I have a right to be damned too, if I choose; whose business is it?"

Scene the third. Years have passed on. He has seen youth ruined, at first with expostulation, then with only silent regret, then consenting to take part of the spoils; and finally, he has himself decoyed, duped, and stripped them without mercy. Go with me into that dilapidated house, not far from the landing, at New Orleans. Look into that dirty room. Around a broken table, sitting upon boxes, kegs, or rickety chairs, see a filthy crew dealing cards smouched with tobacco, grease and liquor. One has a pirate-face burnished and burnt with brandy; a shock of grizzly, matted hair, half covering his villain eyes, which glare out like a wild beast's from a thicket. Close by him wheezes a white-faced, dropsical wretch, vermin-covered, and stenchful. A scoundrel-Spaniard, and a burly negro, (the jolliest of the four,) complete the group. They have spectators—drunken sailors, and ogling, thieving, drinking women, who should have died long ago, when all that was womanly died. Here hour draws on hour, sometimes with brutal laughter, sometimes with threat, and oath, and uproar. The last few stolen dollars lost, and temper too, each charges each with cheating, and high words ensue, and blows; and the whole gang burst out the door, beating, biting, scratching, and rolling over and over in the dirt and dust. The worst, the fiercest, the drunkest, of the four, is our friend who began by making up the game!

Scene the fourth. Upon this bright day, stand with me, if you would be sick of humanity, and look over that multitude of men kindly gathered to see a murderer hung! At last, a guarded cart drags on a thrice-guarded wretch. At the gallows' ladder his courage fails. His coward-feet refuse to ascend; dragged up, he is supported by bustling officials; his brain reels, his eye swims, while the meek minister utters a final prayer by his leaden ear. The prayer is said, the noose is fixed, the signal is given; a shudder runs through the crowd as he swings free. After a