nothing.  He goes on by degrees, until becoming more hardened, he does not fear to do that which would have made him recoil with horror, in the outset.  He may go to another city—­carry letters of introduction to prominent gamblers—­forty other letters may get there before him, putting the robbers on the look out, getting them to set their stool-pigeons.  The young man is trapped—­he is enticed into a gambling hell—­don’t call them sporting saloons or gambling-rooms, (said the speaker,) but call them what they are, hells—­he loses all his money—­his character is gone—­he is ruined, and who then cares for him—­does the gambler?

Let me relate an instance which came under my immediate notice:—­A young man in Baltimore, sometime after he had been ruined at a gambling hell, went there, but having no money, was not cared for by the gambler.  He laid down on the floor in a corner of the room, night after night.  One day, in particular, it was asked who he was.  “Only a loafer,” replied the gambler.  The young man was aroused from his stupor by the one with whom he had gambled and lost, and was told to go about his business.  The young man replied, “Sir, you should be the last man to treat me so; it was with you I first played cards, it was under your roof where I tasted the first glass of wine;” and whilst thus expostulating, the gambler pushed him out, he reeled down the stairs, fractured his skull on the curb-stone and fell into the gutter.  Mr. Green was present and saw this base transaction.  He raised the young man from the gutter, gave him a handkerchief to wipe the blood from his forehead.  The next day that young man was found dead under one of the wharves.  Now he, Mr. Green, could not say that the gambler murdered him, but he was dead and held the handkerchief in his clenched fist.  That young man had swallowed the wrong pill; why did not the gamblers tell him they were robbers and assassins, why did they not stick to the truth.  They dare not do it, and he (Mr. Green) thought it his duty as a reformed man to speak truly and act honestly.  The present law which so much troubles Mr. Freeman was passed with due deliberation unanimously, and when it goes into effect on the first of July he would not wonder if there should be a very great amount of trouble among more gamblers than Mr. Freeman. (Applause.)

Mr. Freeman. The gentleman wants to know, why this law grieves me so—­why! because it is trash.  He (the speaker) did not expect to live in Pennsylvania but a few days longer, as he intended going South, and if he should chance to come back again, and choose to play a game of cards, he did not wish to be placed on a par with incendiaries, robbers and murderers.  All of you, no doubt, have heard of steamboat racing, boilers blowing up, &c.—­everybody is up in arms about it, and cry aloud for a law to stop this abominable racing.  Now he (the speaker) could make the round statement that there never has been one explosion of a boiler during the time of