It was nothing to
Fox if he sat for three days and three nights at a stretch over the
board of green cloth. His fortune went; he might lose at the rate of
ten thousand pounds in the twenty-four hours; but he had succeeded in
forgetting himself, and his loss of time and fortune counted as
nothing. The light, careless gipsy shares the disposition of the
matchless orator and the dull farmer. You may see a gipsy enter the
tossing-ring at a fair; he loses all his money, but he goes on staking
everything he possesses, and, if the luck remains adverse, he will
continue tossing until his pony, his cart, his lurcher-dog, his very
clothes are all gone. The Chinaman will play for his life; the Red
Indian recklessly piles all he owns in the world upon the rough heap
of goods which his tribe wager on the result of a pony race. Look
high, look low, and we see that the gamblers actually form the
majority of the world's inhabitants; and we must go among the men of
abstractions--the men who can achieve oblivion by dint of their own
thinking power--before we find any class untouched by the strange
taint. Observe that venerable looking man who slowly paces about in
one of the luxurious dwelling-places which are sacred to leisure; you
may see his type at Bath, Buxton, Leamington, Scarborough, Brighton,
Torquay, all places, indeed, whither flock the men whose life-work is
done.
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