e is no
connection whatever between the rolling of a ball and the taking away of
a man's money, any more than there is between the turning of a dice and
the taking of a man's money. Both are dishonourable subterfuges. They
are mere blinds put up to cover the great and mean fact, which is, that
I want to get possession of my neighbour's cash."

"But, Captain," retorted Lewis, with a smile--for he had now entered
into the spirit of the argument--"you ignore the fact that while I try
to win from my friend, I am quite willing that my friend should try to
win from me."

"Ignore it? no!" cried Captain Wopper. "Putt it in this way. Isn't it
wrong for me to have a longing desire and itching fingers to lay hold of
_your_ cash?"

"Well, put in that simple form," said Lewis, with a laugh, "it certainly
is."

"And isn't it equally wrong for you to have a hungering and thirsting
after _my_ cash?"

"Of course that follows," assented Lewis.

"Well, then," pursued the Captain, "can any agreement between you and
me, as to the guessing of black or white or the turning of dice or
anything else, make a right out of two wrongs?"

"Still," said Lewis, a little puzzled, "there is fallacy somewhere in
your argument. I cannot see that gambling is wrong."

"Mark me, my lad," returned the Captain, impressively, "it is no
sufficient reason for the doing of a thing that you _cannot see_ it to
be wrong. You are not entitled to do anything unless you _see_ it to be
right. But there are other questions connected with gambling which
renders it doubly mean--the question, for instance, whether a man is
entitled to risk the loss of money which he calls his own, but which
belongs to his wife and children as much as to himself. The mean
positions, too, in which a gambler places himself, are numerous. One of
these is, when a rich man wins the hard-earned and much-needed gains of
a poor one."

"But one is not supposed to know anything about the affairs of those
from whom one wins," objected Lewis.

"All the more reason," replied Captain Wopper, "why a man should never
gamble, lest, unwittingly, he should become the cause of great
suffering--it might be, of death."

Still Lewis "could not see" the wrong of gambling, and the discussion
was cut short by the sudden stopping of the cab at a door in the Strand,
over which hung a lamp, on which the Captain observed the word
"Billiards."

"Well, ta-ta, old fellow," said Lewis, gaily, as he p