inion, and servilely followed the crowd, lest at some future
time they might lose their election.

Mr. Freeman said that he considered himself as an anti-gambler--but
injustice had been done to gamblers, and he had defended them as far as
he consistently could--and if an audience would meet him on Tuesday
night, he would give them an anti-gambling lecture. He differed with Mr.
Green.

Mr. Green wished to know why Mr. Freeman should dislike the law so much,
if he considered gambling a bad vice--he (Mr. Green) really did not
understand such a position. Such was the effect of gambling upon the
mind, that he was sure that when Mr. Freeman first lost his money,
(three thousand dollars,) and first became a gambler, he would not have
spoken as he had that night. A young man, in gambling, was driven on by
degrees, by the excitement of cards, of fine wines, society, &c.
Gamblers ridiculed all ideas of reform, and said to the young man, you
know all about us--we are called gamblers--and the young man thinks he
knows all about them, as he finds them fascinating--but he knows nothing
about them. When the young man is ruined, what do the gamblers do for
him? Nothing. Such a young man in Baltimore was thus ruined, and became
a sot--and at length had no place to sleep, unless the gamblers allowed
him. One night, he was awakened by the gambler shaking him, and calling
him a loafer. The poor man said, "I do not deserve this at your hands.
This was the first house I gambled in." The gambler threw him down
stairs, and his head struck the curb-stone, and Mr. Green lent him his
handkerchief to bind up the wound, and prevented further mischief being
done to him. The next day he was found under one of the wharves--_dead!_
And such was the treatment inflicted on him by the gamblers. Mr. Green
then defended the new law.

Mr. Freeman said that he opposed the law because he thought it
discreditable to Pennsylvania--that there should be a law to the effect
that, "If I play cards, a man may say to me--there, you have done an act
that, if legally visited, would send you to the Penitentiary." Mr.
Freeman illustrated his views by a reference to the explosion of
steamboats. Mr. Freeman said that there was never but one gambler put
into prison south of Mason & Dixon's line. Mr. Freeman hinted that Mr.
Green at Harrisburg had shown gambling tricks upon cards, with packs
that were known to him--prepared cards, in fact. He thus astonished the
natives. A