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, “First-rate player.”  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 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 shall 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 with sorrow to the grave.  I will not curse my destroyer, but oh! may God avenge the wrongs and impositions practised 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 shall have received this letter from me the cold grave will have closed upon me forever.  Life is to me 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 brushed 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?

When things go wrong at a gaming-table, they shout “Foul! foul!” Over all the gaming-tables of the world I cry out “Foul! foul!  Infinitely foul!”

In modern days, in addition to the other forms of gambling, have come up the thoroughly organized and, in some States, legalized institution of lotteries.  There are hundreds of citizens on the way to ruin through the lottery system.  Some of the finest establishments in town are by this process being demolished, and the whole land feels the exhaustion of this accumulating evil.  The wheel of Fortune is the Juggernaut that is crushing out the life of this nation.  The records of the Insolvent Court of one city show that, in five years, two hundred thousand dollars were lost by dealing in lottery tickets.  All the officers of the celebrated Bank of the United States who failed were found to have expended the money embezzled for lottery tickets.