any who fall into his toils. For it makes no difference whether the victim be a stranger or a familiar acquaintance, a man of age and experience or a stripling, an alien from his blood or his own mother's son.

Gamesters by profession, are a migratory tribe, as strongly marked with peculiaritics as the gypsies. They have a jargon that is all their own; a jargon which, interlarded with oaths and blasphemies, is in common use at their board. Also, they have a kind of police belonging exclusively to themselves. Other men form themselves into distinct bodies, for valuable and noble purposes; some for the improvement of the individual members; some for the furtherance of the arts and sciences; and some for the promotion of the holy cause of religion and morality, and particularly of charity and all these have by-laws and regulations corresponding to the worthiness of the ends in view. So, also, gamesters have a code of laws-the laws of the table-perfectly corresponding, in the main, to the base ends they aim at. But it may be said, and indeed it has been said that the laws of the gaming room prohibit foul play, under the penalty of expulsion; that a considerable portion of gamesters are men of rank, and of a delicate sense of honor-men who would sooner lose their heart's blood than trespass upon the rules

:

of the game. Be it so. The question then arises, What is foul

play? Its meaning, I believe, is pretty much confined to direct fraud, or downright cheating in the management of the cards. This touches the honor, and the moral sense, forsooth, of gamesters; so that the delinquent, if his fraud be manifest, falls under the general reprobation, and is no longer considered fit for the company of gentlemen. On the other hand, what is fair play?

Assuredly it has a marvellous latitude of meaning. For according to the casuistry of even the most upright and honorable gamesters, "Every advantage may be legitimately taken of the young, the unwary, and the inebriated, which superior coolness, skill, address, and activity can supply." Yes, the gamester may inveigle the unwary youth to the table, and artfully lead him on, step by step, till he has stripped him of his whole patrimony; or he may secretly help to intoxicate a fellow player, and, taking advantage of his inebriation, instantly plunge him into a condition of wretchedness and ruin-he may do all this, and much more, and yet be considered as a fair gamester, a gentleman of honor !

The dreadful consequences of gaming are too numerous to be told in a short essay, and some of them are too obvious to need it. I touch not upon the most awful part of the subject-the hopeless death of the unrepenting gamester, and the peculiar terribleness of his audit. Nor will the narrow limits I have prescribed to myself, permit me to detail the deplorable consequences that this practice brings after it upon society at large. I will only mention, therefore, some instances of the harm which gamesters inevitably bring upon themselves in the present life: meaning this for the special benefit of those, who are but on the threshold of the practice.

"Every amiable propensity in the heart of man, every endearing tie, every sacred pledge, every honorable feeling, are set aside and forgotten when gaming takes possession of the human mind.' This is not said at random; it is the voice of truth and experience, and has been exemplified in innumerable instances. And yet the danger is neither seen nor apprehended by the young beginner. Many a youth of fair promise enters upon the career

It fixes, and as it

of gaming more out of thoughtlessness than viciousness. Not aware of the fraud with which the system is implicated, nor of the train of bad propensities that necessarily enter into the composition of a gamester, he steps into the fatal path without intention of pursuing it far, and without fear of being lost in its labyrinths. But presently the leprosy seizes him, and the plague of it overspreads his whole mind and heart. His love of gaming increases alike, whether he gains or loses. were fascinates his whole attention; so that every thing else is neglected. The company he keeps, the language he hears, the scenes of depredation he daily witnesses, poison within him the source of moral feeling. The jealousy, the rage, the revenge, incidental to the employ in which he is engaged, generate a ferocity of temper. He is lost to all that is good, and prepared for every evil. He who, by habits of industry, might have been of competent wealth; he who might have been the source of joy and felicity to an amiable wife, and the father of children that would have blessed his memory; he who might have been an ornament to society, and an honor to the family of man, is at last a vagabond-as destitute of property as of principle-the grief and shame of his kindred-despised of the world, and a burden to himself.

NUMBER LXIX.

OF THE ALMOST INSUPERABLE POWER OF HABIT.

THE Brazilians had been so long and so generally inured to the abominable practice of eating human flesh, that the Christian missionaries found it less difficult to reform them of any other of their evil practices than of this. The chief joy of these savages was in their cannibal feasts; the women and the children, as well as the men, partaking of them with delight; insomuch that nothing was harder of cure than this unnatural appetite.

Mr. Southey, in his history of Brazil, relates a story of the following tenor. No very long time after the Portuguese had obtained possession of Brazil, a Jesuit undertook to Christianize a Brazilian woman of great age. He catechized her, he instructed her, as he conceived, in the nature of Christianity. Finding her at the point of death, he began to inquire whether there was any kind of food which she could take.--" Grandam," said he (that being the word of courtesy by which it was usual to address old women), “if I were to get you a little sugar now, or a mouth

ful of some of our nice things which we get from beyond the sea, do you think you could eat it?""Ah, my grandson," replied the old woman, "my stomach goes against every thing. There is but one thing which I think I could touch. If I had the little hand of a little tapua boy, I think Icould pick the little bones; —but woe is me, there is no one to go out and shoot one for me!”

As this extraordinary morsel of history corroborates an observation not unfrequently made, that with some of the pagans, among whom Christian missionaries have labored, cannibalism had been found the most incurable of any of their vices; at the same time, it strikingly exemplifies generally the almost incurable nature of inveterate, vicious habits. It is a counterpart to that portion. of inspiration, which represents it as extremely difficult, and next to impossible, for one that is accustomed to do evil to learn to do well.

It is a proverbial saying, that habit is second nature; meaning, I conceive, that whatever of taste, appetite, inclination, or affection, we acquire by habit, becomes as natural to us as if it were. born with us. This is a thing obvious to general experience and observation. But there is one other thing near akin to it, which though not quite so obvious, is perhaps equally true. It is this: the second nature, that has grown out of evil habits, cleaves to us, in some degree, as long as we live, and that, notwithstanding principles of real piety at heart.

It is freely admitted that the grandam, whose strange story has just been rehearsed, was merely a nominal Christian, and but very imperfectly instructed in even the doctrinal knowledge of our holy religion. But suppose the reverse of this; suppose she had become a Christian indeed. What then? No doubt she