en capable of inventing those dear, precious killers of time--cards,
the EVENING solace of so many a household in the most respectable and
'proper' walks of life. Indeed, they play night and day--until they have
lost all they are worth, and then they usually go--and hang themselves.

If we turn our course northward, and penetrate the regions of ice
perpetual, we find that the driven snow cannot effectually quench the
flames of gambling. They glow amid the regions of the frozen pole. The
Greenlanders gamble with a board, which has a finger-piece upon it,
turning round on an axle; and the person to whom the finger points on
the stopping of the board, which is whirled round, 'sweeps' all the
'stakes' that have been deposited.

If we descend thence into the Western hemisphere, we find that the
passion for gambling forms a distinguishing feature in the character
of all the rude natives of the American continent. Just as in the East,
these savages will lose their aims (on which subsistence depends), their
apparel, and at length their personal liberty, on games of chance. There
is one thing, however, which must be recorded to their credit--and
to our shame. When they have lost their 'all,' they do not follow the
example of our refined gamesters. They neither murmur nor repine. Not
a fretful word escapes them. They bear the frowns of fortune with a
philosophic composure.(7)

(7) Carver, _Travels_.

If we cross the Atlantic and land on the African shore, we find that the
'everlasting Negro' is a gambler--using shells as dice--and following
the practice of his 'betters' in every way. He stakes not only his
'fortune,' but also his children and liberty, which he cares very little
about, everywhere, until we incite him to do so--as, of course, we ought
to do, for every motive 'human and divine.'

There is no doubt, then, that this propensity is part and parcel of 'the
unsophisticated savage.' Let us turn to the eminently civilized races of
antiquity--the men whose example we have more or less followed in every
possible matter, sociality, politics, religion--they were all gamblers,
more or less. Take the grand prototypes of Britons, the Romans of old.
That gamesters they were! And how gambling recruited the ranks of the
desperadoes who gave them insurrectionary trouble! Catiline's 'army of
scoundrels,' for instance. 'Every man dishonoured by dissipation,' says
Sallust, 'who by his follies or losses at the gaming table had con