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In the most rigorous laws, a wife was condemned to support a gamester, a drunkard, or a libertine, unless he were guilty of homicide, poison, or sacrilege, in which cases the marriage, as it should seem, might have been dissolved by the hand of the executioner.
"I answered I had only a bill for L50, which I delivered him, and promised to bring him the rest next morning; and after giving him a little more advice, took my leave. "I was indeed better than my word; for I returned to him that very afternoon. When I entered the room, I found him sitting up in his bed at cards with a notorious gamester.
An enfevered and motley mob hustle one another around the long green table-covers: Turcos out for the day and staking their double halfpence, Moorish traders from the native town, Negroes, Maltese, colonists from the inland, who have come forty leagues in order to risk on a turning card the price of a plough or of a yoke of oxen; all a-quivering, pale, clenching their teeth, and with that singular, wavering, sidelong look of the gamester, become a squint from always staring at the same card in the lay-out.
I could not countenance the fashionable morality that is corrupting the manhood of the laity, or endure the toleration that is making the clergy thoroughly wicked; I could not without a pang see you cater to the world's appetites or be drawn into its gaieties and frivolities; and it was agony to me to fear that a girl of your pure if passionate nature might perhaps fall a victim to a gamester in life's follies an actor indulging a pastime a mere cheat.
"He carries the wet red clay that lies in front of my wigwam," and she pointed a curving finger at my boots. I could have embraced her. If I had no wit, she had it and to spare. I made up my mind, then and there, to trust her. It was a mad chance, but a good gamester likes a dangerous throw. "Come here, Singing Arrow," I commanded, and I would have led her down the beach out of earshot.
Archibald had that civil cowardice, which made him excessively afraid of the opinion of the world; and Major O'Shannon, a gamester, who was jealous of his influence over the rich dupe, Sir Philip, determined to entangle him in a quarrel.
Then I looked out upon the dingy courtyard below, in its deep damp shadow, and thought, 'How could an assassin have scaled that height in safety, and entered so noiselessly as not to awaken the slumbering gamester? Then there were the iron bars across my window. What a fool had I been to object to that security!
You might, with equal consistency, talk of truthful liars. To get your money, or any thing else, without rendering an equitable return, is the core of all dishonesty, whether in the gamester, the pickpocket, the man who cheats in trade, or the boy who robs orchards. And a conscience once debauched by dishonest aims, will not, as I said, long scruple at unfair means.
"Who, sir?" exclaimed Thrale, with surprise; "Mr. Garrick your friend, your companion blackball him!" "Why, sir," replied Johnson, "I love my little David dearly better than all or any of his flatterers do; but surely one ought to sit in a society like ours, "'Unelbowed by a gamester, pimp, or player."
It was as though, fully armed for his battle of life, he had suddenly been stripped of armour and every weapon, and left naked on the field. But he had the mind of the gamester, and the true gamester's self-control. He had taken chances so often that the tornado of ill-luck left him standing. "What proof have you?" he asked quietly. Soolsby's explicit answer left no ground for doubt.
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