Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 February 1891 — PLAGUES. [ARTICLE]

PLAGUES.

THE MANY EVILS THAT CURSE THE GREAT CITIESMereileaii, Un»pr«-Bln< Grwd I Wtdow 1 * Mite—Dr. Talmage’s Hermon. ■ Rev. Dr. Talmage preached at Brooklyn and New York Sunday and Sunday {night, Text: Exoduß lx. 13-14. j A decided sensation was produced In (New York and in Brooklyn Sunday by ,'Dr. Talmage’s announcement cf a ser'ies of sermons which he proposes to ‘preach on “The Ten Plagues of The e (Three Great Cities:” In this sermon, which is the first of the series, he pays !his attention to the prevalent curse of (gambling. He said: ‘ Last winter in the Museum at Cairo (Egypt, I saw the mummy or embalmed .body of Pharaoh, the oppressor of the ancient Israelites. Visible are the ryery teeth that he gnashed against the Israelitlsh brick makers, the sockets jof the merciless eyes with which he (looked upon the overburdened people of God, and the hair thnt floated in hhe breeze of the Red Sea, the very lips with which he commanded them to make bricks without straw. Thousands of years after, when the wrappings of the mummy were unrolled, old Pharaoh lifted up his arm as if in imploration, but his skinny ■bones cannot again clutch his lest and shattered scepter. It was to compel ;that tyrant to let the oppressed go free that the memorable ten plagues .were sent. Sailing the Nile and walking amid the ruins of Egyptian cities. II saw no .remains of those plagues that smote the water or the air. None of the frogs cioaked in the one, none of .the locusts sounded their rattle in the other, and the cattle bore no sign of the murrain, and through the starry* nights hovering about the pyramids too destroying angel swept his wing, tout there are ten plagues still stinging and befouling and cursing our cities, and like angels of wrath smiting not only the first born but the last born. Brooklyn, New York and Jersey City, though called three, are practipally one. The bridge already fastening two of them together will be followed by other bridges and by tunnels from both New Jersey and Long Island pho res, until what is true now will, as the years go by, become more emphatically true. The average condition of Sublic morals in this cluster of cities i as good if not better than in any Other part of the world. Pride of city Is natural to men, in all times, if they live or have lived in a metropolis noted for dignity or prowess. Caesar (boasted of his native Rome; Lycurgus Of Sparta; Virgil of Andes; Demosthenes of Athens; Archimedes of Syra■cuse, and Paul of Tarsus. I should (Suspect a man of base heartedness who carried about with him do feeling of complacency in regard to the place of his residence; who gloried not in its arts, or arms, or behavior; who looked with no exultation upon its evidences of prosperity, its artistic embellishments, and its scientific attainments. Gambling is the risking of sotnething more or less valuable in the hope of winning more than you hazard. The instruments of gambling may differ, but the principle is the same. The shuffling and dealing of cards, however full of temptation, is not gambling unless stakes are put up, while on the other hand gambling may be carried on without cards or dice* or billiards or a ten pin alley. The man who bets on horses, on elections, on battles—the man who deals in ••fancy” stocks, or conducts a business which hazards extra capital., or goes into transactions without foundation, but dependent upon what men call “luck,” is a gambler. Whatever you expect to get from your neighbor without offering an equivalent in money or time or skill, is either the product of theft or gambling. Lottery tickets and lottery policies come into the same category. J* airs for the founding of hospitals, schools and churches, conducted on the raffling system, come under the same denomination. Do not, therefore, associate gambling necessarily with any instrument, or game, or time or place, or think the principle depends upon whether you play for a glass of wine, or 100 shares of railroad stock.

It is estimated that every day in Christendom 180,000,000 pass from hand to hand through gambling practices, and every year in Christendom 1123,100,000,000 change hands in that way. There are in this cluster of cities about 800 confessed gambling establishments. There are about 3,500 professional gamblers. Out of the 800 gambling establishments how many of them do you suppose profess to be honest? Ten. These ten profess to be honest because they are merely the ante-chamber to the 790 that are acknowledged fraudulent. There are first class gambling establishments. You go up the marble stairs. You ring the belL The liveried servant introduces you. The walls are lavendertinted. The mantels are of Vermont marble. The pictures are “Jephtha’s Paugher,” and Dore’s “Dante’s and Virgil’s Frozen Region of Hell.” A most appropriate selection, this last, ' for the place. There is the roulette table, the finest, the costliest, most ex- 1 quislte piece of furniture in the United States. There is the banqueting room, I where, free of charge to the guests, you may find the plate, the viands, and wines, and cigars, sumptuous beyond parallel. Then you come to the second-class establish rneut. To it you are introduced by a card through a •‘roper-in.” Paving entered, you must either gamble or fight. Sanded cards, dice loaded with quicksilver, poor drinks, will soon help you to get rid of all your money to a tune in short meter with staccato passages. You wanted Ito see. You saw. The low villans of

the place watch you as you come In. Does not the panther, squat in the grass, know a calf when he sees it? Wrangle not for your rights in that place, or your body will be thrown bloody into the street, or dead into the East River. You go along a little further and find the policy establishment- In that place you bet on numbers. Betting on two numbers is called a “saddle,” betting on three numbers is called a ••gig,” betting on four numbers is called a “horse.” and there are thousands of our young men leaping into that “saddle,” and mounting that “gig,” • and, behind that “horse,” riding to perdition. There is always . one kind of sign On the door—“ Exchange;” a most appropiate title for the door, for there in that room, a man exchanges health, peace and heaven, for loss of health, loss of home, loss of family, loss o' immortal soul. Exchange sure enough and infinite enough. A young man, having suddenly heired a large property, sits at a hazard table, and takes up a dice box, the estate won by a father’s lifetime sweat, and shakes it. end tosses it away. Intemperance soon stigmatizes its victim, kicking him out, a slavering fool into the ditch or sending him with the drunkard's hiccough staggering up the street where his family lives. ) But gambling does not in that way expose its victims. The gambler may be eaten up by the gambler’s passion, yet you only discover it by the greed in his eyes, the hardness of his features, the nervous restlessness, the threadbare coat and his embarrassed business. «Yet he is on the road to hell, and no preacher’s voice or startling warning, or wife’s entreaty can make him stay for a moment his headlong career. The infernal spell is upon him; a giant is aroused within him; and though you bind him w.th cables, they would part like thread; and though you fasten him seven times round with chains, they would snap like rusted wire; and though you piled up in his path heaven high Bibles, tracts and sermons and on the top should set the cross of the Son of God, over them all the gambler would leap like a roe over the rocks, on his way to perdition. Again, this sin works ruin by killing industry. A man used to reaping scares, or hundreds, or thousands of dollars from the gambling table will not be content with slow work. He will say, “What is the use of trying to make these SSO in my store when 1 can get five times that in half an hour down at Billy’s?” You never knew a confirmed gambler who was industrious. The men given to this vice spend their time, not actively employed in the game, in idleness, or intoxication, or sleep, or in corrupting new victims. This sin has dulled the carpenter's saw and cut the band of the factory wheel, sunk the cargo, broken the teeth of the farmer's harrow and sent a strange lightning to shatter the battery of the philosopher. The very first idea in gaming is at war with all the industries of society

Thia crime is getting Its lever under many a mercantile house in our great c.ties. and before long down will come the great establishment, crushing reputation, home, comfort and immortal souls. How it diverts and sinks capital may be inferred from some authentic statement before us. The ten gaming houses that once were authorized in Paris passed through the bank» yearly 325,000,000 of francs. Where does all the money come from? The whole world is robbed! What is most sad, there are no consolations for the loss and suffering entailed by gaming. If men fall in lawful business, God pities and society commiserates, but where in the Bible or in the society is there any consolation for the gambler? From what tree of the forest oozes there a balm that can soothe the gamesters heart? In that bottle where God keeps the tears of his children, are there any tears of the gambler? Do the winds that come to kiss the faded cheek of sickness and to cool the heated brow of the laborer, whisper hope and cheer to the emancipated? When an honest man is in trouble, he has sympathy. “Poor fellow!” they say. But do the gamblers come to weep at the

agonies of the gambler? In Northumberland was one of the finest estates in England. Mr. Porter owned it. and in a year gambled it all away. Having lost the last acre of tbe estate he came down from the saloon and got into his carriage, went back, put up his horses and carriage and town house and played. Ho threw and lost. He started home, and in a side alley met a friend, from whom he borrowed ten guineas; went back to the saloon, and before a great while had won £20,000. He died at last a beggar in St. Giles. How many gamblers felt sorry for Mr. Porter? Who consoled him to the loss of his estate? What gambler subscribed to put a stone over the poor man's grave? Not one! Futhermore, this tin is the cource of uncounted dishonesties. The game of hazard itself is often a cheat. How many tricks and deceptions in the dealing of cards! The opponment’s band is often found out by fraud. Cards are marked so that they may be designated from the back. Expert gamesters have their accomplices, and one wink may decide the game. The dice may be loaded with platina, so that the “doublets” come up every i time. These dice are introduced by the gamblers unobserved by honest men who have come into the play, and this accounts for the fact that ninetyI nine out of a hundred, at the end are found to be poor, miserable, ragged wretches, that would not now be allowed to sit on the door-step of the house that they once owned. In a gambling house in San Francisco a young man having just come from the mines deposited a large sum upon the ace and won |22,000, But the tide turns. Intense anxiety comes upon the countnancee of all.

Slowly the cards went forth. Every eye is fixed. Not a sound is heart untill tiie aoe is revealed favorable to the bank. There are shouts of “Foul!’ “Foul!” but the keepers of the table produce their pistols and the uproar is silenced and the bank has w0n595,000. Do you call this a game of chance? There is no chance about it Merciless, unappeasable, fiercer and wilder it blinds, it hardens, { t rends, it blasts, it crush s. it damns. It has peopled our lunitic asylums. How many railroad agents and cashiers ana trustees of funds it has driven to disgrace, incarceration and suicide! Witness years ago a cashier of a railroad who stole $103,000 to carry on his gaming practices. Witness S4O, 000 Stolen from a Brooklyn bank within the memory of many of you, and the SIBO,OOO taken from a Wail street insurance company for the same purpose. These are only illustrations on a large scale of the robberies every day committed for the purpose of carrying out the designs of gamblers. Hundreds of thousands of dollars every year leak out without observation from the merchant’s till into the gambling hell. A man in London keeping one of these gambling houses boasted that he had ruined a nobleman a day; but if all the saloons of this land were to • speak out they might utter a more infamous boast, for they have destroyed a thousand noble men a year. Notice, also, the effect of this crime upon domestic happiness. It has sent its ruthless plowshare through hundreds of families, until the wife eat in 1 rags and the daughters were disgraced and the sons took up the same infam- | ous pract oes or took a shortcut to destruction across the murderer’s scaffold. Home has lost all charms for the gambler. How tame are the children’s caresses and a wife’s devotion to the gambler! How drearily the tire burns on the domestic hearth! There must be louder laughter and something to win or iuse; and excitement to drive the heart faster and fillip the blood and fire the imagination. Sb home, however bright, can keep back the gamester. The sweet call of love bounds back from bis iron soul, and endearments are consumed in the flame of his passion. The family Bible will go after all other treasures are lost, and if the crown in heaven were put into his hand he would cry: •Here goes one more ganje, my boys! On this one throw I stake my crown f heaven.”

Shall I sketch the history of the gamblerF Lured by bad company, he finds his way into a place where honest men ought never to go. He sts down to his first game, but only for pastime and the desL e of being thought sodable. The players deal out the cards. They Unconsciously play into Satan’s hands, who takes all the tricks and both the player’s soul’s for trumps—he being a sh..rper at any game. A slight stake is put up, just to add ins terest to the play. Game after game is played. Larger stakes and still larger. They begin to move nervously on their chairs. Their brows lower and eyes flash, until now they who win and they who lose, fired alike with passion, sit with set jaws and com. pressed lips and clenched and eyes like fire balls that seem starting from their sockets, to see the final turn before it comes; if losing, pale with dnvy and tremulous with unuttered oaths cast back red hot upon the heart—or, winning, with hysteric laugh, “Ha! ha! I have it! I have it!” A few years have passed and, he is only the wreck of a mah. Seating himself at the game ere he throws the first card, he stakes the last relic oi his wife and the marriage ring which seals the solemn vows retween them. The game is lost, and staggering back inexhaustion he dreams. The bright hours of the past mock his agony, and eyerof-fire-and tongue of dame circle about him with joined hands to dance and sing their hellish chorus, chanting, “Hail, brother!” kissing his clammy forehead until their loathsome locks, flow ng with serpents, crawl into his bo om and sink their sharp fangs and suck up his life's blood, and coiling around his heart pinch it with chills and shudders unutterable. Take warning! You are no stronger than tens of thousands who have by this practice been overthrown. No young man in our cities can escape being tempted. Beware of the first beginnings! This road is a down grade, and every instant increases its momentum. Launch not upon this treacherous sea. Split hu;ks strew the beach. Everlasting storms howl up and down, tosdng unwary crafts into the Hellgate. 1 speak of what I have seen with my own eyes. L have looked off into the abyss, and I have seen the foaming and the hissing, and the whirling of the horrid deep in which the mangled victims writhed, one upon another, and struggled, strangled, bl ;sph< m <i and died—the ueath-stare of ettr.ial despair upon their countenances as the waters gurgled over them. Toagambler’s death-bed there comes no hope. He will probably die alone. His for mer associates come not nigh .bis dwelling. When the hour comes his miserable soul will go out of a miserable life into a miserable eternity. As his poor remains pass the house where he was ruined old companions may look out a moment and say: “There goes the old carcass—dead at last,’' but they will not get up from the table. Let him down now into the grave. Plant no tree to oast its shade there, for the long, deep, eternal gloom that settles there is shadow enough. Plant no “forget-me-no-s” or eglanilnes around the spot, for flowers were not made to grow on i such a blasted heath. Visit it not in the Sunshine, for that would be mockery, but in the dismal night when no stare are out and | the spirits of darkness come down horsed on the wind, then visit the 1 grave of the gambler.