446. The Field of Blood
The Field of Blood
Act_1:19 : ’93Aceldama, that is to say, The field of blood.’94
The money that Judas gave for surrendering Christ was used to purchase a graveyard. As the money was blood-money, the ground bought by it was called in the Syriac tongue, Aceldama, meaning ’93The field of blood.’94 Well, there is one word I want to write today over every race-course where wagers are staked, and every pool-room, and every gambling saloon, and every table, public or private, where men and women bet for sums of money, large or small, and that is a word incarnadined with the life of innumerable victims’97Aceldama. The gambling spirit, which is at all times a stupendous evil, ever and anon sweeps over the country like an epidemic, prostrating uncounted thousands. There has never been a worse attack than that from which all the villages, towns and cities are now suffering. The farces recently enacted in the criminal court-room by which it was proved that in our executive officers there is not enough moral force to put into the penitentiary the gambling jockeys who belong there, is only a specimen of the power gained by this abomination, which is brazen, sanguinary, transcontinental and hemispheric.
While among my hearers are those who have passed on into the afternoon of life, and the shadows are lengthening, and the sky crimsons with the glow of the setting sun, a large number of them are in early life, and the morning is coming down out of the clear sky upon them, and the bright air is redolent with spring blossoms, and the stream of life, gleaming and glancing, rushes on between flowery banks, making music as it goes. Some of you are engaged in mercantile concerns, as clerks and bookkeepers, and your whole life is to be passed in the exciting world of traffic. The sound of busy life stirs you as the drum stirs the fiery war-horse. Others are in the mechanical arts, to hammer and chisel your way through life, and success awaits you. Some are preparing for professional life, and grand opportunities are before you; nay, some of you already have buckled on the armor. But, whatever your age or calling, the subject of gambling about which I speak today, is pertinent.
Some years ago, when an association for the suppression of gambling was organized, an agent of the association came to a prominent citizen and asked him to patronize the society. He said: ’93No, I can have no interest in such an organization. I am in nowise affected by that evil.’94 At that very time his son, who was his partner in business, was one of the heaviest players in ’93Herne’92s’94 famous gambling establishment. Another refused his patronage on the same ground, not knowing that his first bookkeeper, though receiving a salary of only four thousand dollars, was losing from fifty to one hundred dollars per night. The president of a railroad company refused to patronize the institution, saying: ’93That society is good for the defense of merchants, but we railroad people are not injured by this evil;’94 not knowing that, at that very time, two of his conductors were spending three nights of each week at faro tables in New York. Directly or indirectly this evil strikes at the whole world.
Gambling is the risking of something more or less valuable in the hope of winning more than you hazard. The instruments of gaming may differ, but the principle is the same. The shuffling and dealing of cards, however full of temptation, is not gambling, unless stakes are put up; while, on the other hand, gambling may be carried on without cards, or dice, or billiards or a ten-pin alley. The man who bets on horses, on elections, on battles, the man who deals in ’93fancy’94 stocks, or conducts a business which hazards capital, or goes into transactions without foundation but dependent upon what men call ’93luck,’94 is a gambler. Whatever you expect to get from your neighbor without offering an equivalent in money, or time, or skill, is either the product of theft or gaming. Lottery tickets and lottery policies come into the same category. Fairs for the founding of hospitals, schools and churches, conducted on the raffling system, come under the same denomination. Do not, therefore, associate gambling necessarily with any instrument, or game or time or place, or think the principle depends upon whether you play for a glass of wine or one hundred shares of railroad stock. Whether you patronize ’93auction pools,’94 ’93French mutuels,’94 or ’93book-making,’94 whether you employ faro or billiards, roulette and keno, cards or bagatelle, the very idea of the thing is dishonest; for it professes to bestow upon you a good for which you give no equivalent.
This crime is no new-born sprite, but a haggard transgression that comes staggering down under a mantle of curses through many centuries. All nations, barbarous and civilized, have been addicted to it. Before 1838 the French government received revenue from gaming-houses. In 1567 England for the improvement of her harbors instituted a lottery to be held at the front door of St. Paul’92s Cathedral. Four hundred thousand tickets were sold at ten shillings each. The British Museum and Westminster Bridge were partially built by similar devices. The ancient Germans would sometimes put up themselves and families as prizes, and suffer themselves to be bound, though stronger than the persons who won them.
But now the laws of the whole civilized world denounce the system. Enactments have been passed, but only partially enforced, and at times not enforced at all. The men interested in gaming-houses, and in jockey clubs, wield such influence by their numbers and affluence, that the judge, the jury, and the police officer must be bold indeed who would array themselves against these infamous establishments. The House of Commons of England actually adjourns on Derby Day to go out and bet on the races; and in the best circles of society in this country today are many hundreds of professedly respectable men who are acknowledged gamblers. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in this land are every day being won and lost through sheer gambling. Says a traveler through the West: ’93I have traveled a thousand miles at a time upon the Western waters, and seen gambling at every waking moment from the commencement to the termination of the journey.’94 The Southwest of this country reeks with this sin. In some of those cities every third or fourth house in many of the streets is a gaming place, and it may be truthfully averred that each of our cities is cursed with this evil. Men wishing to gamble will find places just suited to their capacity, not only in the underground oyster-cellar, or at the table back of the curtain, covered with greasy cards, or in the steamboat smoking cabin, where the bloated wretch with rings in his ears deals out his pack, and winks at the unsuspecting traveler’97providing free drinks all around’97but in gilded parlors and amid gorgeous surroundings.
This sin works ruin, first, by providing an unhealthful stimulant. Excitement is pleasurable. Under every sky and in every age men have sought it. The Chinaman gets it by smoking his opium; the Persian by chewing hasheesh; the trapper in a buffalo hunt; the sailor in a squall; the inebriate in the bottle, and the avaricious at the gaming table. We must at times have excitement. A thousand voices in our nature demand it. It is right. It is healthful. It is inspiriting. It is a desire God-given. But anything that gratifies this appetite by means which hurl it back in a terrific reaction, is deplorable and wicked. Look out for the agitation that, like a rough musician, in bringing out the tune plays so hard he breaks down the instrument! God never made a man strong enough to endure the wear and tear of gambling excitement.
A young man having suddenly inherited a large property, sits at the hazard tables, and takes up in a dice-box the estate won by a father’92s lifetime’92s sweat, and shakes it, and tosses it away. Intemperance soon stigmatizes its victim, kicking him out, a slavering fool, into the ditch, or sending him, with the drunkard’92s hiccough, staggering up the street where his family lives; but gambling does not in that way expose its victims. The gambler may be eaten up by the gambler’92s passion, yet you only discover it by the greed in his eyes, the hardness of his features, the nervous restlessness, the threadbare coat, and his embarrassed business. Yet he is on the road to hell, and no preacher’92s voice, or startling warning, or wife’92s entreaty, can make him stay for a moment his headlong career. The infernal spell is on him; a giant is aroused within; and though you bind him with cables, they would part like thread, and though you fasten him seven times round with chains, they would snap like rusted wire; and though you piled up in his path heaven-high Bibles, tracts and sermons, and on the top should set the Cross of the Son of God, over them all the gambler would leap like a roe over the rocks, on his way to perdition. ’93Aceldama, the field of blood!’94
Again, this sin works ruin by killing industry. A man used to reaping scores or hundreds of dollars from the gaming table will not be content with slow work. He will say: ’93What is the use of trying to make these fifty dollars in my store, when I can get five times that in half an hour down at Billy’92s?’94 You never knew a confirmed gambler who was industrious. The men given to this vice spend their time, not actively employed in the game, in idleness or intoxication or sleep or in corrupting new victims. This sin has dulled the carpenter’92s saw, and cut the hand of the factory wheel, sunk the cargo, broken the teeth of the farmer’92s harrow, and sent a strange lightning to shatter the battery of the philosopher. The very first idea in gaming is at war with all the industries of society. Any trade or occupation that is of use is ennobling. The street sweeper advances the interests of society by the cleanliness effected. The cat pays for the fragments it eats by clearing the house of vermin. The fly that takes the sweetness from the dregs of the cup, compensates by purifying the air and keeping back the pestilence. But the gambler gives not anything for that which he takes. I will recall that sentence. He does make a return; but it is a disgrace to the man that he fleeces, despair to his heart, ruin to his business, anguish to his wife, shame to his children, and eternal wasting away to his soul. He pays in tears and blood and agony and darkness and woe.
What dull work is ploughing to the farmer when in the village saloon in one night he makes and loses the value of a summer harvest! Who will want to sell tapes and measure cloth and cut garments and weigh sugar, when in a night’92s game he makes and loses, and makes again and loses again the profits of a season? John Borack was sent as mercantile agent from Bremen to England and this country. After two years his employers mistrusted that all was not right. He was a defaulter for eighty-seven thousand dollars. It was found that he had lost in Lombard street, London, twenty-nine thousand dollars; in Fulton street, New York, ten thousand dollars, and in New Orleans, three thousand dollars. He was imprisoned, but afterward escaped, and went into the gambling profession. He died in a lunatic asylum. This crime is getting its lever under many a mercantile house in our cities, and before long down will come the great establishment, crushing reputation, home comfort and immortal souls. How it diverts and sinks capital may be inferred from one authentic statement before us. The ten gaming-houses that once were authorized in Paris passed through the banks yearly three hundred and twenty-five million francs.
Furthermore, this sin is the source of dishonesty. The game of hazard itself is often a cheat. How many tricks and deceptions in the dealing of the cards! The opponent’92s hand is oftentimes found out by fraud. Cards are marked so that they may be designated from the back. Expert gamesters have their accomplices, and one wink may decide the game. The dice have been found loaded with platina so that doublets come up every time. These dices are introduced by the gamblers unobserved by the honest men who have come into the play, and this accounts for the fact that ninety-nine out of a hundred who gamble, however wealthy when they began, at the end are found to be poor, miserable, haggard wretches, who would not now be allowed to sit on the doorstep of the house that they once owned.
In a gaming-house in San Francisco, a young man having just come from the mines deposited a large sum upon the ace, and won twenty-two thousand dollars. But the tide turns. Intense anxiety comes upon the countenances of all. Slowly the cards go forth. Every eye is fixed. Not a sound is heard until the ace is revealed favorable to the bank. There are shouts of ’93Foul! foul!’94 but the keepers of the table produce their pistols, and the uproar is silenced, and the bank has won ninety-five thousand dollars. Do you call this a game of chance? There is no chance about it.
Notice also the effect of this crime upon domestic happiness. It has sent its ruthless ploughshare through hundreds of families, until the wife sat in rags, and the daughters were disgraced, and the sons grew up to the same infamous practises, or took a short cut to destruction across the murderer’92s scaffold. Home has lost all charms for the gambler. How tame are the children’92s caresses and a wife’92s devotion to the gambler! How drearily the fire burns on the domestic hearth! There must be louder laughter, and something to win, and something to lose; an excitement to drive the heart faster, fillip the blood and fire the imagination. No home, however bright, can keep back the gamester. The sweet call of love bounds back from his iron soul, and all endearments are consumed in the fire of passion. The family Bible will go after all other treasures are lost, and if his crown in heaven were put into his hand he would cry: ’93Here goes; one more game, my boys. On this one throw I stake my crown of heaven.’94
A young man in London, on coming of age, received a fortune of one hundred and twenty thousand dollars, and through gambling, in three years, was thrown on his mother for support. An only son went to New Orleans. He was rich, intellectual, and elegant in manners. His parents gave him, on his departure from home, their last blessing. The sharpers got hold of him. They flattered him. They lured him to the gaming table and let him win almost every time for a good while, and patted him on the back and said, ’93First-rate player.’94 But fully in their grasp they fleeced him, and his thirty thousand dollars were lost. Last of all, he put up his watch and lost that. Then he began to think of his home, and of his old father and mother, and wrote thus:
My beloved parents, you will doubtless feel a momentary joy at the reception of this letter from the child of your bosom, on whom you have lavished all the favors of your declining years. But should a feeling of joy for a moment spring up in your hearts, when you should have received this from me, cherish it not. I have fallen deep, never to rise. Those gray hairs that I should have honored and protected, I shall bring down in sorrow to the grave. I will not curse my destroyer, but, oh, may God avenge the wrongs and impositions practiced upon the unwary, in a way that shall best please him! This, my dear parents, is the last letter you will ever receive from me. I humbly pray your forgiveness. It is my dying prayer. Long before you will have received this from me, the cold grave will have closed upon me forever. Life to me is insupportable. I cannot, nay, I will not suffer the shame of having ruined you. Forget and forgive is the dying prayer of your unfortunate son.
The old father came to the post-office, got the letter, and fell to the floor. They thought he was dead at first, but they rushed back the white hair from his brow and fanned him. He had only fainted. I wish he had been dead, for what is life worth to a father after his son is destroyed? ’93Aceldama, the field of blood!’94
When things go wrong at a gaming table they shout: ’93Foul! Foul!’94 Over all the gaming tables of the world I cry out: ’93Foul! foul! Infinitely foul!’94
’93Gift stores’94 some years ago were abundant throughout the country. With a book or knife, or sewing-machine, or coat, or carriage, there went a prize. At these stores people got something thrown in with their purchase. It might be a gold watch, or a set of silver, a ring, or a farm. Sharp way to get off unsalable goods. It filled the land with fictitious articles, and covered up our population with brass finger-rings, and despoiled the moral sense of the community, and threaten to make us a nation of gamblers. The Church of God has not seemed willing to allow the world to have all the advantage of these games of chance. A church fair opens, and toward the close it is found that some of the more valuable articles are unsalable. Forthwith, the conductors of the enterprise conclude that they will raffle for some of the valuable articles, and under pretense of anxiety to make their minister a present, or please some popular member of the church, fascinating persons are dispatched through the room, pencil in hand, to ’93solicit shares,’94 or perhaps each draw for his own advantage, and scores of people go home with their trophies, thinking that it is all right, for Christian ladies did the embroidery and Christian men did the raffling, and the proceeds went toward a new communion set. But you may depend on it, that as far as morality is concerned, you might as well have won by the crack of the billiard-ball or the turn of the dice-box. Do you wonder that churches built, lighted, or upholstered by such processes as that come to great financial and spiritual decrepitude? The devil says: ’93I helped to build that house of worship, and I have as much right there as you have;’94 and for once the devil is right. We do not read that they had a lottery for building the church at Corinth, or at Antioch, or for getting up an embroidered surplice for St. Paul. All this I style ecclesiastical gambling. More than one man who is destroyed can say that his first step on the wrong road was when he won something at a church fair.
The gambling spirit has not stopped for any indecency. There occurred in Maryland a lottery in which people drew for lots in a burying-ground! The modern habit of gambling about everything is productive of immense mischief. The most healthful and innocent amusements of yachting and base-ball playing have been the occasion of putting up excited and extravagant wagers. That which to many has been advantageous to body and mind, has been to others the means of financial and moral loss. The custom is pernicious in the extreme, where scores of men in respectable life give themselves up to betting, now on this boat, now on that; now on this ball club, now on that. Betting, that once was chiefly the accompaniment of the race-course, is fast becoming a national habit, and, in some circles, an opinion advanced on finance or politics is accosted with the interrogation: ’93How much will you bet on that, sir?’94 This custom may make no appeal to slow, lethargic temperaments, but there are in the country tens of thousands of quick, nervous, sanguine, excitable temperaments, ready to be acted upon, and their feet will soon take hold on death. For some months, and perhaps for years, they will linger in the more polite and elegant circle of gamesters, but, after a while their pathway will come to the fatal plunge.
Shall I sketch the history of the gambler? Lured by bad company, he finds his way into a place where honest men ought never to go. He sits down to his first game, but only for pastime and the desire of being thought sociable. The players deal out the cards. They unconsciously play into Satan’92s hands, who takes all the tricks and both the players’92 souls for trumps’97he being a sharper at any game. A slight stake is put up, just to add interest to the play. Game after game is played. Larger stakes and still larger. They begin to move nervously on their chairs. Their brows lower, and eyes flash, until now they who win and they who lose, fired alike with passion, sit with set jaws, and compressed lips, and clenched fists, and eyes like fireballs that seem starting from their sockets to see the fatal turn before it comes; if losing, pale with envy and tremulous with unuttered oaths cast back red-hot upon the heart’97or, winning, with hysteric laugh’97’94Ha, ha! I have it!’94
A few years have passed, and he is only the wreck of a man. Seating himself at the game, ere he throws the first card, he stakes the last relic of his wife’97the marriage-ring which sealed the solemn vows between them. The game is lost, and staggering back in exhaustion he dreams. The bright hours of the past mock his agony, and in his dreams, fiends with eyes of fire and tongues of flames circle about him with joined hands, to dance and sing their orgies with hellish chorus, chanting: ’93Hail, brother!’94 kissing his clammy forehead until their loathsome locks flowing with serpents, crawl into his bosom, and sink their sharp fangs and suck up his life’92s blood, and coiling around his heart pinch it with chills and shudders unutterable.
Take warning! You are no stronger than tens of thousands who have by this practice been overthrown. No young man in our cities can escape being tempted. Beware of the first beginnings! This road is a downgrade, and every instant increases the momentum. Launch not upon this treacherous sea. Splintered hulks strew the beach. Everlasting storms howl up and down, tossing unwary crafts into the Hell Gate. I speak of what I have seen with my own eyes. To a gambler’92s death-bed there comes no hope. He will probably die alone. His former associates come not nigh his dwelling. When his last hour comes, his miserable soul will go out of a miserable life into a miserable eternity. As his poor remains pass the house where he was ruined, old companions may look out a moment and say: ’93There goes the old carcass’97dead at last;’94 but they will not get up from the table. Let him down now into his grave. Plant no tree to cast its shade there, for the long, deep, eternal gloom that settles there is shadow enough. Plant no forget-me-nots or eglantines around the spot, for flowers were not made to grow on such a blasted heath. Visit it not in the sunshine, for that would be mockery, but in the dismal night, when no stars are out, and the spirits of darkness come down horsed on the wind, then visit the grave of the gambler.
Autor: T. De Witt Talmage