QUESTIONS.To what imperious custom did Hamilton yield? What is dueling? Why does the writer forgive Hamilton? What is the duty of the minister in reference to dueling? Of the public prosecutor ? Of the judge? Of the governor? Of the public? Why is dueling wrong? What does the Bible teach with regard to our treatment of those who injure us? Explain the inflections in the 1st, 5th, and 6th paragraphs. In the last sentence of the 3d paragraph (I-committed), how many simple sentences are included? Which is the subject, and which the attribute of each? Which is the verb in the last? What word forms the connection between the first and second of the simple sentences? What between the second and third? Which are the conjunctions in the last paragraph? Which are the interjections? See Pinneo's Analytical Grammar. LESSON LXX. REMARK.-Be careful to observe the commas and other points, making an appropriate pause at each one of them. 1. Im-per-cept'-i-ble, a. not to be per ceived. [ning, 4. Fas-cin-a'-tion, n. a powerful influ- 7. Can'-ons, n. rules. 6. Cal'-lous, a. insensible, unfeeling. Ban'-di-ed, p. tossed about. 9. Bac-cha-na'-lian, a. reveling in in- 10. Phys'-ic-al, a. material, external. EFFECTS OF GAMBLING. 1. THE love of gambling steals, perhaps, more often than any other sin, with an imperceptible influence on its victim. Its first pretext is inconsiderable, and falsely termed innocent play, with no more than the gentle excitement necessary to amusement. This plea, once indulged, is but too often "as the letting out of water." The interest imperceptibly grows. Pride of superior skill, opportunity, avarice, and all the overwhelming passions of depraved nature, ally themselves with the incipient and growing fondness. Dam and dike are swept away. The victim struggles in vain, and is borne down by the uncontrolled current. 2. Thousands have given scope to the latent guilty avarice, unconscious of the guest they harbored in their bosoms. Thousands have exulted over the avails of gambling, without comprehending the baseness of using the money of another, won without honest industry, obtained without an equivalent: and perhaps from the simplicity, rashness, and inexperience of youth. Multitudes have commenced gambling, thinking only to win a small sum, and prove their superior skill and dexterity, and there pause. + 3. But it is the teaching of all time, it is the experience of human nature, that effectual resistance to powerful propensities, if made at all, is usually made before the commission of the first sin. My dear reader! let me implore you, by the mercies of God and the worth of your soul, to contemplate this enormous evil only from a distance. Stand firmly against the first temptation, under whatsoever specious forms it may assail you. "Touch "Handle not." "Enter not into temptation." not." + 4. It is the melancholy and well known character of this sin, that, where once an appetite for it has gained possession of the breast, the common motives, the gentle excitements, and the ordinary inducements to business or amusement, are no longer felt. It incorporates itself with the whole body of thought, and fills with its fascination all the desires of the heart. Nothing can henceforward arouse the spell-bound victim to a pleasurable consciousness of existence, but the destructive stimulus of gambling. 5. Another appalling view of gambling is, that it is the prolific stem, the fruitful parent, of all other vices. Blasphemy, falsehood, cheating, drunkenness, quarreling, and murder, are all naturally connected with gambling; and what has been said, with so much power and truth, of another sin, may, with equal emphasis and truth, be asserted of this: "Allow yourself to become a confirmed gambler; and detestable as this practice is, it will soon be only one among many gross sins of which you will be guilty." Giving yourself up to the indulgence of another sinful course, might prove your ruin; but then you might perish only under the guilt of the indulgence of a single gross sin. 6. But, should you become a gambler, you will, in all probability, descend to destruction with the added infamy of having been the slave of all kinds of iniquity, and "led captive by Satan at his will." Gambling seizes hold of all the passions, allies itself with all the appetites, and compels every propensity to pay tribute. The subject, however plausible in his external deportment, becomes avaricious, greedy, insatiable. Meditations upon the card table occupy all his day and night dreams. Had he the power, he would annihilate all the hours of this our short life, that necessa rily intervene between the periods of his favorite pursuit. 7. Cheating is a sure and inseparable attendant upon a continued course of gambling. We well know with what horror the canons of the card table repel this charge. It pains us to assert our deep and deliberate conviction of its truth. There must be prostration of moral principle, and silence of conscience, even to begin with it. Surely a man who regards the natural sense of right, laying the obligations of Chrisitanity out of the question, can not sit down with the purpose to win the money of another in this way. may 8. He must be aware, in doing it, that avarice and dishonest thoughts, it may be almost unconsciously to himself, mingle with his motives. Having once closed his eyes upon the unworthiness of his motives, and deceived himself, he begins to study how he deceive others. Every moralist has remarked upon the delicacy of conscience; and that, from the first violation, it becomes more and more callous, until finally it sleeps a sleep as of death, and ceases to remonstrate. The gambler is less and less scrupulous about the modes of winning, so that he can win. No person will be long near the gambling table of high stakes, be the standing of the players what it may, without hearing the charge of CHEATING bandied back and forward; or reading the indignant expression of it in their countenances. One half of our fatal duels have their immediate or remote origin in insinuations of this sort. 9. The alternations of loss and gain; the preternatural excitement of the mind, and consequent depression when that excitement has passed away; the bacchanalian merriment of guilty associates; the loss of natural rest; in short, the very atmosphere of the gambling table, foster the temperament of hard drinking. A keen sense of interest may, indeed, and often does, restrain the gambler, while actually engaged in his employment, that he may possess the requisite coolness to watch his antagonist, and avail himself of every passing advantage. 10. But the moment the high excitement of play is intermitted, the moment the passions vibrate back to the state of repose, what shall sustain the sinking spirits; what shall renerve the relaxed physical nature; what shall fortify the mind against the tortures of conscience, and the thoughts of "a judgment to come," but intoxication? It is the experience of all time, that a person is seldom a gambler for any considerable period, without being also a drunkard. + 11. Blasphemy follows, as a thing of course: and is, indeed, the well-known and universal dialect of the gambler. How often has my heart sunk within me, as I have passed the dark and dire receptacles of the gambler, and seen the red and bloated faces, and +inhaled the mingled smells of tobacco and potent drink; and heard the loud, strange, and horrid curses of the players; realizing the while, that these beings so occupied were candidates for eternity, and now on the course which, if not speedily forsaken, would fix them forever in hell. 12. We have already said, that gambling naturally leads to quarreling and murder. How often have we retired to our berth in the steamboat, and heard charges of dishonesty, accents of reviling and recrimination, and hints that these charges must be met and settled at another time and place, ring in our ears, as we have been attempting to commune with God and settle in a right frame to repose! Many corses of young men, who met a violent death from this cause, have we seen carried to their long home! Every gambler, in the region where we write, is always armed to the teeth, and goes to his horrid pursuit, as the gladiator formerly presented himself on the arena of combat. 13. The picture receives deeper shades, if we take into the grouping the wife, or the daughter, or the mother, who lies sleepless, and ruminating through the long night, trembling lest her midnight retirement shall be invaded by those who bring back the husband and the father wounded, or slain, in one of those sudden +frays which the card table, its accompaniments, and the passions it excites, so frequently generate. Suppose these forebodings should not be realized, and that he should steal home alive in the morning, with beggary and drunkenness, guilt and despair, written on his haggard countenance, and accents of sullenness and ill temper falling from his tongue, how insupportably gloomy must be the prospects of the future to that family! 14. These are but feeble and general sketches of the misery and ruin to individuals and to society from the indulgence of this vice,. during the present life. If the wishes of unbelief were true, and there were no life after this, what perverse and miserable calcu lations would be those of the gambler, taking into view only the present world! But, in any view of the character and consequences of gambling, who shall dare close his eyes upon its future bearing on the interest and the eternal welfare of his soul! Who shall dare lay out of the calculation the retributions of eternity? 15. Each of the sins that enters into this deadly compound of them all, must incur the threatened displeasure and punishment of the Almighty. If there be degrees in the misery and despair of the tenants of that region, "where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched," how must the persevering and impenitent gambler sink, as if "a millstone were hung about his neck, and he cast into the sea!" Say thou, my youthful reader, I implore thee, looking up to the Lord for a firm and unalterable purpose, "I will hold fast my integrity and not let it go!" TIMOTHY FLINT. QUESTIONS.-What is said of the influence of the love of gambling over an individual? What is the only safe course to pursue? What is the well-known character of this sin? What is another appalling view of gambling? What vice is first mentioned as the sure attendant of gambling? What is the evidence supporting this assertion? What vice next follows? How is it brought on? What follows next to hard drinking? What is said about quarreling and murder? What is said of the wife, the mother, and the daughter? What is the future bearing of this vice? REMARK. LESSON LXXI. Remember that the chief beauty and excellence of reading consists in a clear and smooth articulation of the words and letters. PRONOUNCE Correctly the following words in this lesson; Sac-rific'd, (pro. sac-ri-fiz'd,), not sa-cri-fisd: be-nov-o-lence, not be-nev-erlunce: of-fer'd, not of-fud: bit-ter-ness, not bit-ter-niss: yel-low, not yel-ler: fol-low'd, not fol-lerd: il-lus-tri-ous, not il-lus-trous: a-bundance, not ub-und-unce. 3. Al-lure -ment, n. something attrac-| 32. Vig'-il-ance, n. watchfulness. tive. 7. Plight, n. state, condition. [specter. 21. Phan'-tom, n. a fancied vision, a 23. A-wry', a. (pro. a-ri') turned to one side, squinting. 26. In-an'-i-mate, a. without life. 38. De-crep'-it, a. wasted with age. 49. THE MISER. 1 GOLD many hunted, sweat and bled for gold; |