Thursday 17 January 2013

1916-03-25



A GAMBLER’S SERMON
        Gamblers are not all bad fellows at heart, and the majority of them will divide their last dollar with any poor unfortunate who is down and out; but if you want to be on the safe side, never sit down with one in a game of poker or faro. It’s business with the gambler then, and he will take advantage of his closest friend, even to his last cent. The chips that pass in the night are not a safe investment for the novice, as many a young fellow in Hamilton has found out to his cost. The playing of cards, even for pleasure, is fascinating, but how much more so when there is something at stake! Do you think that the ladies would waste afternoon after afternoon in playing bridge whist were it not in the hope of winning the prize, be it money or a bit of painted china? Do you think that intellectual and brainy businessmen would spend night after night at their fashionable club playing bridge or draw poker were it not for the fascination of winning, but from the pure spirit of gambling? The facts are we are a race of gamblers, beginning in childhood by playing marbles “for keeps,” then swapping jack-knives, and on by gradual degrees till we become professionals in a haymow game of seven-up. One half the world is forever striving to get the better of the other half, as an evidence of which we need only cite the present game of war to which the Kaiser has invited his kingly neighbors in the hopes that he might get a bit more territory to add to his possessions. It is all a gamble, and as soon as the allied nations get a hand of four aces they will call the Kaiser.

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          So it is through life. It is all a great gamble, even to the food we eat. The average consumer cannot understand why the cold storage houses are filled to bursting with fatness in order to create a scarcity in the provision market when there is more than enough food to supply every want. It is all done that the gamblers in food products may be able to add a few more dollars to their profits. Industrial stocks are so soaked in water that the innocents who invest in them are finally drowned out; it is only the player who holds four aces who wins out. This reminds this old Muser of his younger days when we left this blessed city to seek work in Uncle Sam’s dominions as a printer, dear me, that is nearly sixty-five years ago! Cash being a scarce article in those days we tarried at the first city we came to, and that was Buffalo. Fortune smiled and we got a situation in the Courier office. Jack Thomas was the foreman, and a cleverer fellow never presided over a printing press. Before Jack got experienced in the ways of city life, for he learned his trade in a country office, he was a good boy and a regular attendant at Sunday school, but when he got into the city, things changed. Jack finally drifted from Buffalo down to the Southern States and there he quit the printing, and like Mark Twain, became a river pilot. In those old river days nearly everybody that travelled by steamboat learned to gamble, and Jack being a bright fellow soon became a past master in the art. After a few years of river life, Jack came back to Buffalo and got work in the Courier office and in time was promoted to the foremanship. But we are not writing a biography of the life of Jack Thomas to it as a part of our story on gambling. All the hands in the Courier office were young fellows, as married men in those days preferred to “hold cases” on the afternoon papers. They admired Jack, and enjoyed his stories of the days when he was a Mississippi river pilot. Saturday was an off day in the Courier office, the only work being the filling of cases and getting ready for Sunday night. The Red Jacket saloon was the favorite resort for Saturday afternoon, as the barkeep set a dainty lunch, after which Jack Thomas used to a few lessons in poker to the unsophisticated ones, with the result that Jack had all the money at the end of the game. Jack wasn’t a bad fellow at heart, but the gambling spirit had so become a part of his nature that he would cheat his closest friend in a poker game.
          About sixty years ago, a handsome-looking fellow, with wavy black hair and heavy, drooping moustache, came to Hamilton from one of the country towns close by, and worked as a tinsmith for the D. Moore Co. He had a fine baritone voice, and being an excellent singer, he soon won his way into the society of young people. His manners were irreproachable, and to all appearances his habits were good. Every Sunday he had a seat in some choir, for every choirmaster was glad to have his help in the heavy anthems. By and by it began to leak out that the handsome tinsmith was a close student of the “Book of Four Kings,” and that he had quite a large class at his Saturday night and Sunday séances. In time the choirmasters gave him to understand that they could dispense with his glorious voice, and he finally faded out of sight.

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          Hamilton used to have quite a reputation in the gambling line, but we presume all that is past now. In the early days a bright young fellow from up Simcoe way came to the city to take the job of reporter on the Spectator, shortly after it started as a daily. Robert Smiley, the editor and owner of the paper, was a regular driver and anyone that worked for him had to be on the job early and late. Newspaper reporting was not much in vogue in Canada in the early ‘50s, andit was expected of the reporter that he should attend to the collecting as well as soliciting for advertising; and for all this talent the reporter was paid the munificent salary of eight dollars a week. The young fellow had good talent and could dress up an item of news to make it attractive and readable, but as items were scarce, very often less than half a column would be his limit for a day’s work, and he would spend evenings with a few choice convivial souls at the fascinating game of poker, at which he was quite an expert. Mr. Smiley called him down for the small showing he made in the paper, when the reporter invited him to take a trip to Hades, saying that he had a better job in view that would pay him eight dollars many times over for his week’s work. He opened a club room in the Anglo-American hotel, and business with him was prospering finely when Chief Carruthers was compelled to put a stop to him. Nearly every hotel had its club room in those days.

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          Here is the experience of an old printer who had served in the same company with the Muser in the American civil war. We had worked side by side at the case, and a warm attachment had sprung up between us. Before the war, he had never gambled, nor did he even know how to play cards. However, to kill the monotony of camp life, he soon learned to play for pastime and became an expert poker player. After the war, setting type was too tame a business for him, for he could make more money at the poker table than setting type on a morning paper. To all appearances he was a gentleman in his habits. His clothes were good, of the latest pattern and most fashionable cut. His watch chain was the heaviest of the heavy, and as fine as gold of Orphir. It surpassed in richness the gold chain that the king hung around the neck of the young prophet Daniel. His boots were highly polished, and shone like the exterior of a black walnut coffin. His diamond pin twinkled like the evening star in a soft summer sky. His shirt bosom was as white as an infant’s soul, but his eyes were sad, and his voice was as sorrowful and sorrowing as the wailing of the winds in the drooping branches of the weeping willow. He taped his boot with his gold-headed cane, slipped down in his chair to gibe the base of his spinal column a rest, pulled his hat down over his eyes, and languidly said “-“ which plainly indicated that our friend had struck a loser, had coppered in the wrong place. It is many years sine we met, but the story he told of his life was so sadly interesting that we have never forgotten it. We cannot tell it as he did, but will try to give the outlines in the hope that it may influence some novice in gambling to “stop and think before he farther goes.”
          “Faro,” he said, “is a fascinating game! In all the games for gambling, it has no equal. A man’s a fool to play it, but it catches the oldest of ‘em. Like poker or bridge whist, it will draw you on to final ruin. The chances,on the closest calculations are three to one on each play against the player; occasionally we strike a winner, but we only win to lose. The most prosperous of us die in the gutter – unknown, forgotten and deserted. Luck only smiles on us for a brief season, and when fickle fortune deserts us, she never roosts over our doors again! Few of us are wise enough to save in luck in order to win on a rainy day. But while we live, we live; and after all that is all there is to life. The hereafter is a chance, and the cards are so well put up that nobody has ever called the trump. We are not utterly heartless. It makes my heart ache to see how many young men are drawn into the vortex and down to ruin. They begin by betting on a game of baseball; they lose on a horse race; get caught in a friendly game of draw or bridge whist; and in an evil hour, try to get even on faro.
          “They often win on the first venture, but it is a terrible success. They always play one thousand per cent, or the first winning, and often they play life and blood on the investment. The first winning opens the fascinating road to hell; builds a barrier behind them which few ever climb over to reformation. A little sentimental, ain’t i? I’m blue today. Gambling and its attendant excitements burn all the stamina out of a man, but, thank God! It cannot, does not, blot out his sympathies. I wish I had never touched a card, but I am a born gambler. It’s in me; it always was; and I’m in for it till the deal is out. I wish I had stuck to the old ‘stick and rule,’ and then I might have married and settled down to a happy life, with my own home, and a dear wife and children. I hate to see young men of promise at a gaming table. They have mothers and sisters, and probably a wife and children, who love them; they deny they set foot inside a gambling room; their fate is sealed. I have a case in mind now. A fine fellow, who was an agent for a new York printing machinery house and commended a salary of $5,000 a year. In traveling he got lonely; he gambled for amusement and to kill time when his business was over. He fooled with the tiger, put his hand through the bars, petted the beast, and suddenly found himself torn to pieces. Today he is an outcast – drunken, broken and deserted and I would advise every young man who has a business to never cross the threshold of gambling house. I have made big winnings and I have made big losings. I lost $6,000 in Chicago trying to make $10,000. I was broke and down for a long while. I am up again. If I had a business, you would never catch me gambling again. I am getting too old for typesetting, and I could never learn to run a linotype. Guess I’ll go and buy a couple of stacks of reds and see how luck runs today. Goodbye, old comrade.”

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