with a strong will, that otherwise, and
rightly directed. should make them
emperors. 'Tis but the fondness of boys for
a game, you may say; no boys would play
at leap-frog, at hopscotch, or cricket, or
prisoners-bars, or at the more popular diversion,
fighting, with this inflexible perseverance,
in despite and defiance of ragged trousers,
chilblains, cold, empty bellies, the imminent
police, and possible incarceration for
unlawfully gambling, and the certainty of being
brutally beaten when they go home—a
certainty at least to those who have any homes
to go to. The spectators, as young, as ragged,
as passionately excited by the chances of the
game as the players themselves, stand or
crouch in a ring around. Those who have
coppers bet: those who have none scratch
themselves convulsively, but watch the
fluctuations of the game with the same rapt
eagerness. They gasp with excitement: they
have scarcely breath to swear with. And the
players would play and the spectators stare
till Doomsday, were it not for an inexorable,
implacable spoil-sport, in the shape of a policeman,
who charges down on the band of
gamesters fiercer than any Turcoman, and puts
them to flight with a "Now, then!" horrid
to hear, and a dreadfully echoing—" Come
out of that:" collaring many, hitting some,
and scattering all; though the rout is but a
partial one; for the broken ring collects again
in smaller segments soon, behind angles of
walls and under the lees of barges and brick-
stacks, where the game begins afresh, and
players and spectators are again excited and
absorbed.

More: Go to the low coffee-shops and
public-houses in Whitechapel, Spitalfields,
Shoreditch, and that delightful region whose
streets nestle in the shadow of the collegiate
church of St. Peter's, Westminster, and which
cling on to the skirts of broad, light Victoria
Street, like barnacles to a ship's keel. Look
at the Jew boys and men gambling—now for
bank notes and jewels, now for cups of coffee
and halfpenny tarts. Ask the thieves how
they spend their nefarious earnings. If they
answer you civilly (which is doubtful) and
veraciously (which is more doubtful still) they
will tell you that they game till they have
lost all their money, and then go and steal
more.

More: Leave these low haunts: put on
a clean collar and enter respectable society.
Ask the noble lord if he is not rather tired
of, not to say disgusted with, the noble lord
opposite, who has only been in the house a
twelvemonth, and has only made half a dozen
speeches, and then ask him if he has ever
tired of his nightly game at whist, which he
has played almost every night (Sundays
excepted) for the last sixty years, and whether
he will not shuffle the cards this evening with
the same degree of pleasure as he was wont
to do when he played with Mr. Fox and Lord
Hertford in the year ninety-five. What can
there be in a few pieces of spotted pasteboard,
and aboard full of holes, to make old ladies
love cribbage long after they are purblind—
to make grave reverend men play at whist
long after their strength is but labour and
sorrow? And for halfpenny points, too. It
cannot be avarice. I knew a venerable old
lady in Cumberland, whom meeting one day
remarkably red about the eyes, I took the
liberty respectfully to question. I suggested
cold.

"Eh!" she answered, "I'se gat na cauld:
Pinkie Saunders and Fly-me-Jack kem fra'
Kendal on Tuesday, that loo's a game a' whisk
dearly, an' I'se bin carding the morn and the
e'en, the e'en an' the morn, twa days."

"And what, madam," I asked, "might you
have won?"

"Eh!" she replied, with infinite simplicity,
"it mun be a shilling."

No: it cannot always be avarice. The
thirst for gain is of course one of the primary
inducements to gaming; but the cause of
causes of this inextinguishable desire for and
addiction to play must be the fixed idea of
conquering; the fierce desire of doing to
your neighbour that which you would not
like your neighbour to do unto you.

On a long sea voyage, every amusement—
every subtle device for wiling away the time
that seems so leaden-winged, and yet is withal
so swift and defiant of pursuit and capture—
every ingenious nostrum for curing ennui will
pall upon the passengers—save one: gambling.
Tarry, while on the shipman's card I point
you out the bearings, or, with the compasses
upon the chart find out the exact position of
the teak-built East Indiaman " Huccabadar,"
Captain Chillumjee, homeward bound from
Bombay. My word! how woefully sick the
passengers have all become of the ship,
themselves, and each other. Everything, almost,
has been tried, worn out, and thrown aside.
Mofuzzle, covenanted servant of the H.E.I.C.,
and collector of Brandipawnibad, coming
home on leave, has grown tired of expatiating
on the state of his liver, of exhibiting the
shawls he is carrying to his female relatives
in England, his collection of hookahs, the
calomel in his medicine chest, and of disputing
with Pawkey, the snuffy Scotch surgeon, as to
the functions of the pancreas. Lieutenants
Griffin and Tiffin, Bombay Native Infantry,
have told all their stories about tiger-hunting,
pig-sticking, riding unbroken horses at the
Cape; travelling dawk; the Capsicum wallah
steeple chases, rows at mess, the drunkenness
of the Colonel, the vulgarity of the Major's
wife, the scragginess of Captain Aitchbones
unmarried daughters' shoulders, the superiority
of Juffy's bungalow over Tuffy's, the
performances of Grifiin's rat-catching terrier,
Choker; and the accomplishments of Tiffin's
long-legged mare, Neilgherry. These young
men have smoked out their biggest cigars,
have worn their fanciest shirts, shooting-
jackets, and trousers, and are bored to death.