Personal Reminiscences In Book Making, And Some Short Stories Part 16

"Certainly not," returned his friend, with a slight touch of indignation. "You know that I _never_ play for high stakes, and with penny or sixpenny points you know it is impossible for me either to win or lose any sum that would be worth a moment's consideration. The game is all that I care for."

"If so, why do you lose interest in the game when there are no stakes?"

"Oh--well, it's hard to say; but the value of the stake cannot be that which adds interest, for it is so trifling."

"I'm not so sure of that, d.i.c.k. You have heard gambling talked of as a disease."

"Yes, but I don't believe it is."

"Do you believe that a miser is a morally diseased man?"

"Well, perhaps he is," returned Sharp; "but a gambler is not necessarily a miser."

"Yet the two have some symptoms of this moral disease in common. The miser is sometimes rich, nevertheless the covetous spirit is so strong in him that he gloats over a sixpence, has profound interest in gaining it, and mourns over it if lost. You, being well off with a rich and liberal father, yet declare that the interest of a game is much decreased if there are no stakes on it."

"The cases are not parallel."

"I did not say they were, but you must admit--indeed you have admitted-- that you have one symptom of this disease in common with the miser."

"What disease?"

"The love of money."

Richard Sharp burst into a laugh at this, a good-humoured laugh in which there was more of amus.e.m.e.nt than annoyance.

"Tom, Tom," he said, "how your notions about gambling seem to blind you to the true character of your friends! Did you ever see me gloating over gold, or h.o.a.rding sixpences, or going stealthily in the dead of night to secret places for the purpose of counting over my wealth? Have I not rather, on the contrary, got credit among my friends for being somewhat of a spendthrift? But go on, old fellow, what more have you to say against gambling--for you have not yet convinced me?"

"Hold on a bit. Let me pare off just a morsel of my monkey's nose-- there, that's about as near perfection as is possible in a monkey. What a pity that he has not life enough to see his beautiful face in a gla.s.s!

But perhaps it's as well, for he would never see himself as others see him. Men never do. No doubt monkeys are the same. Well now,"

continued Blunt, again laying down the stick, and becoming serious, "try if you can see the matter in this light. Two gamblers meet. Not blacklegs, observe, but respectable men, who nevertheless bet much, and play high, and keep 'books,' etcetera. One is rich, the other poor.

Each wishes ardently to gain money from his friend. This is a somewhat low, unmanly wish, to begin with; but let it pa.s.s. The poor one has a wife and family to keep, and debts to pay. Many thousands of men, ay, and women, are in the same condition, and work hard to pay their debts.

Our poor gambler, however, does not like work. He prefers to take his chance at gambling; it is easier, he thinks, and it is certainly, in a way, more exciting than work. Our rich gambler has no need to work, but he also likes excitement, and he loves money. Neither of these men would condescend for one moment to ask a gift of money from the other, yet each is so keen to obtain his friend's money that they agree to stake it on a chance, or on the issue of a contest. For one to _take_ the money from the other, who does not wish to part with it, would be unfair and wrong, of course; but their agreement gets rid of the difficulty. It has not altered the _conditions_, observe. Neither of them wishes to give up his money, but an arrangement has been come to, in virtue of which one consents to be a defrauder, and the other to be defrauded. Does the agreement make wrong right?"

"I think it does, because the gamblers have a right to make what agreement they please, as it is between themselves."

"Hold there, d.i.c.k. Suppose that the poor man loses. Is it then between themselves? Does not the rich gambler walk away with the money that was due to the poor one's butcher, baker, brewer, etcetera?"

"But the rich one did not know that. It is not his fault."

"That does not free the poor gambler from the dishonourable act of risking money which was not his own; and do you really think that if the rich one did know it he would return the money? I think not. The history of gambling does not point to many, if any, such cases of self-sacrifice. The truth is that selfishness in its meanest form is at the bottom of all gambling, though many gamblers may not quite see the fact. I want your money. I am too proud to ask it. I dare not demand it. I cannot cajole you out of it. I will not rob you. You are precisely in the same mind that I am. Come, let us resort to a trick, let us make an arrangement whereby one of us at least shall gain his sneaking, nefarious, unjust end, and we will, anyhow, have the excitement of leaving to chance which of us is to be the lucky man.

Chance and luck! d.i.c.k Sharp, there is no such condition as chance or luck. It is as surely fixed in the mind of G.o.d which gambler is to gain and which to lose as it is that the morrow shall follow to-day."

"My dear Blunt, I had no idea you were such a fatalist," said Sharp in surprise.

"I am not a fatalist in the sense you mean," returned his friend.

"Everything has been fixed from the beginning."

"Is not that fatalism of the most p.r.o.nounced nature, Tom?"

"You don't seem to see that, among other fixtures, it was fixed that free-will should be given to man, and with it the right as well as the power to fix many things for himself, also the responsibility. Without free-will we could have had no responsibility. The mere fact that G.o.d of course _knew_ what each man would will, did not alter the fixed arrangement that man has been left perfectly free to will as he pleases.

I do not say that man is free to _do_ as he pleases. Sometimes the doing is permitted; sometimes it is interfered with--never the willing.

That is always and for ever free. Gamblers use their free-wills, often to their own great damage and ruin; just as good men use their free-wills to their great advantage and happiness. In both cases they make free use of the free-wills that have been bestowed on them."

"Then I suppose that you consider gambling, even to the smallest extent, to be sin?"

"I do."

"Under which of the ten commandments does it fall?"

"'Thou shalt not covet.'"

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

TWO REMARKABLE DREAMS.

Some natures are better than others. There can be no question about that. Some dispositions are born moderately sweet, others are born slightly sour. If you doubt the fact, reader, go study Nature, or get you to an argumentative friend and dispute the point. We refuse flatly to enter into a discussion of the subject.

Look at that little boy sleeping there under the railway arch in the East End of London--not the boy with the black hair and the hook nose and the square under-jaw, but the one with the curly head, the extremely dirty face, and the dimpled chin, on the tip of whose snub nose the rising sun shines with a power that causes it to resemble a glowing carbuncle on a visage still lying in shadow.

That little boy's disposition is sweet. You can see it in every line, in every curve, in every dimple of his dirty little face. He has not been sweetened by training, he has had no training--at least none from man or woman with a view to his good. He has no settled principles of any kind, good or bad. All his actions are the result of impulse based on mere animal propensity, but, like every other human being, he has a conscience. At the time of his introduction to the reader his conscience is, like himself, asleep, and it has not as yet been much enlightened. His name is Stumpy, but he was never christened.

Critical minds will object here that a boy would not be permitted to sleep under a railway arch, and that London houses would effectually prevent the rising sun from entering such a place. To which we reply that the arch in question was a semi-suburban arch; that it was the last, (or the first), of a series of arches, an insignificant arch under which nothing ever ran except stray cats and rats, and that it spanned a morsel of waste ground which gave upon a shabby street running due east, up which, every fine morning, the rising sun gushed in a flood of glory.

Each fleeting moment increased the light on Stumpy's upturned nose, until it tipped the dimpled chin and cheeks and at last kissed his eyelids. This appeared to suggest pleasant dreams, for the boy smiled like a dirty-faced angel. He even gave vent to an imbecile laugh, and then awoke.

Stumpy's eyes were huge and blue. The opening of them was like the revealing of unfathomable sky through clouds of roseate hue! They sparkled with a light all their own in addition to that of the sun, for there was in them a gleam of mischief as their owner poked his companion in the ribs and then tugged his hair.

"I say, you let me alone!" growled the companion, turning uneasily on his hard couch.

"I say, you get up," answered Stumpy, giving the companion a pinch on the tender part of his arm. "Come, look alive, Howlet. I sees a railway porter and a bobby."

Owlet, whose nose had suggested his name, had been regardless of the poke, the tug, and the pinch, but was alive to the hint. He at once came to the sitting posture on hearing the dreaded name of "bobby," and rubbed his eyes. On seeing that there was neither policeman nor guard near, he uttered an uncomplimentary remark and was about to lie down again, but was arrested by the animated expression of his comrade's face and the heaving of his shoulders.

"Why, what ever is the matter with you?" he demanded. "Are you goin' to bust yourself wi' larfin', by way of gettin' a happet.i.te for the breakfast that you hain't no prospect of?"

To this Stumpy replied by pulling from his trousers pocket four shining pennies, which he held out with an air of triumph.

"Oh!" exclaimed Owlet; and then being unable to find words sufficiently expressive, he rubbed the place where the front of his waistcoat would have been if he had possessed one.

"Yes," said Stumpy, regarding the coppers with a pensive air, "I've slep' with you all night in my 'and, an' my 'and in my pocket, an' my knees doubled up to my chin to make all snug, an' now I'm going to have a tuck in--a blow out--a buster--a--"

He paused abruptly, and looking with a gleeful air at his companion, said--

"But that wasn't what I was laughin' at."

"Well, I suppose it warn't. What was it, then?"