A great deal of good useful compassion is
wasted on the victims who are fleeced in the gambling places. Victims!
What do they go to the rooms for? Is it not to amuse themselves and to
pass away time amid false exhilaration? Is it not to gain money
without working for it? The dupe has in him all the raw material of a
scoundrel; and even when he blows his stupid brains out I cannot pity
him so much as I pity the dogged labourer who toils on and starves
until his time comes for going to the workhouse. I am rather more
inclined to study the general manifestations of the gambling spirit. I
have in my mind's eye vivid images of the faces, the figures, the
gestures of hundreds of gamblers, and I might make an appalling
picture-gallery if I chose; but such a nightmare in prose would not do
much good to any one, and I prefer to proceed in a less exciting but
more profitable manner. We please ourselves by calling to mind the
days when "society" gambled openly and constantly; and we like to
fancy that we are all very good and spotless now-a-days and free from
the desire for unnatural excitement. Well, I grant that most European
societies in the last century were sufficiently hideous in many
respects.
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