Often and often I have mused quietly amid
scenes where gamblers of various sorts were disporting themselves--in
village inns where solemn yokels played shove-halfpenny with
statesmanlike gravity; in sunny Italian streets where lazy loungers
played their queer guessing game with beans; in noisy racing-clubs
where the tape clicks all day long; on crowded steamboats when
Tynesiders and Cockneys yelled and cursed and shouted their offers as
the slim skiffs stole over the water and the straining athletes bent
to their work; on Atlantic liners when hundreds of pounds depended on
the result of the day's run; on the breezy heath where half a million
gazers watched as the sleek Derby horses thundered round. As I have
gazed on these spectacles, I have been forced to let the mind wander
into regions far away from the chatter of the gamesters. Again and
again I have been compelled to think with a kind of melancholy over
the fact that man is not content until he is taken out of himself. Our
wondrous bodies, our miraculous power of looking before and after, our
infinite capacities for enjoyment, are not enough for us, and the poor
feeble human creature spends a great part of his life in trying to
forget that he is himself.
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