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Updated: May 3, 2025
There were four of them, and whatever might be their real names, Tom found out that they were known amongst themselves, and by the world of the tavern, by the following cognomens: "Slippery Seal," "Bully Bullen," "Thirsty Thring," and "Dicing Dick." Tom was not sure that he liked or approved these new comrades, but at least their conversation interested and excited him.
A precisian in religious notions, and constant in attendance at church and lecture, he put no sort of restraint upon himself, but mixed up fox-hunting, otter-hunting, shooting at the mark, and perhaps shooting with the long-bow, foot-racing, horse-racing, and, in fact, every other kind of country diversion, not forgetting tippling, cards, and dicing, with daily devotion, discourses, and psalm-singing in the oddest way imaginable.
Dicing in public, except at the chartered Saturnalian festival, was illegal a fact which did not, of course, prevent it from being practised -but it was permitted in private gatherings like this, provided that ostensibly no money was staked. The dice are rattled in a tower-like box and are thrown upon a special board or tray.
"Dicing with Death" there was not an hour, not a moment in the day, when he was not literally dicing with death; when, with the underworld and the police allied against him, a single false move would lose him the throw that left death the winner! The risk of the dual life enforced upon him grew daily greater, and in the end there must be the reckoning.
"Again, once when I was in Venice on the birthday of the Virgin, I lost some money at dicing, and on the day following all that was left me went the same way. This happened in the house of the man with whom I was gambling, and in the course of play I noticed that the cards were marked, whereupon I struck him in the face with my dagger, wounding him slightly.
And so I stood between your lordship and that temptation, which might have been worse than the ordinary, or the playhouse either; since you wot well what Solomon, King of the Jews, sayeth of the strange woman for, said I to mysell, we have taken to dicing already, and if we take to drabbing next, the Lord kens what we may land in!"
The hatches were battened down upon the cargo of misery, and the ship with its brutal captain and its handful of gold-laced, dicing, swearing passengers vanished.... He saw a sandy, grass-grown street, and a row of mean houses, and a low, brick building with barred windows. There was a crowd before this building, and a man standing upon the platform of a pillory was selling human flesh and blood.
Then Carew, looking at him there, would quickly turn his face away and tell another tale. But oftener the master-player stayed all night at the Falcon Inn with Dick Jones, Tom Hearne, Humphrey Jeffs, and other reckless roysterers, dicing and flipping shillings at shovel-board until his finger-nails were sore.
Whiting, however, did not manage the flock well, for the following February we find Pearce, the new manager, writing: "I am sorry to have to inform you that the stock of sheep at Both Union and Dogue Run farms are Some of them Dicing Every Week & a great many of Them will be lost, let what will be done Since I came I have had shelters made for them & Troughs to feed them In & to give them salt & have attended to them myself & was In hopes to have saved those that I found to be weak, but they were too far gone and Several of the young Cattle at Dogue Run was past all Recovery when I come & some have died already & several more I am afraid must die before spring, they are so very poor and weak."
"My son has a silly fancy for the old place, but it is lost lost sold; and if we could have it at a word, it would grieve me to see him cast in his lot among a set of drunken, dicing, hard-riding squires a godless set. It will never be if I can help it. My son has left the creed of his father and of mine, and I am glad that his worldly pride cannot be further tempted. Dost thou hear, Hugh?"
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