“Try again.  Don’t be afraid.  You’re a better player than I am.  You’ll be sure to win.  Luck lies in the last sixpence.  Don’t you know that?”

Thus urged, Martin put down the last small remnant of his day’s earnings.  The interest taken in the games had nearly counteracted the effects of the liquor, and he was, therefore, able to play with a skill nearly equal to that of his companion.  Slowly and thoughtfully he made his moves, and calculated the effect of every change in the board with as much intelligence as it was possible for him to summon to his aid.  But luck, so called, was against him.  His three last pieces, kings, were swept from the board by a single play of his adversary, at a moment when he believed himself sure of the game.  A bitter imprecation fell from his lips, as he turned from the table, and thrusting his hands nearly to his elbows in his pockets, stalked into the bar-room, leaving the man who had won from him the remnant of his day’s earnings for the twentieth time, to enjoy the pleasures of success.  This man was too much occupied in kind attentions to others who were to be his victims, to even see Martin again during the evening.

After having lost his last farthing, the latter, feeling miserable enough, sat down at a table on which were three or four newspapers, and tried to find in them something to interest his mind.  He was nearer to being sober than he had been for many weeks.  On the night before, he had gambled away his last penny, and the consequence was, that he had been obliged to do without liquor all day.  The effects of the two glasses he had taken since nightfall had been almost entirely obliterated by the excitement of the petty struggle through which he had passed, and his mind was, therefore, in a more that usually disturbed state.  The day had been one of troubled feelings; and the night found him less happy than he had been through the day.

As he ran his eye over the newspaper he was trying to read, pausing now and then at a paragraph, and seeking to find in it something of interest, the words, “Thanksgiving in Massachusetts,” arrested his attention, He read over the few lines that followed this heading.  They were a simple statement of the fact, that a certain day in November had been appointed as a thanksgiving day by the Governor of Massachusetts, followed by these brief remarks by some editor who had recorded the fact:—­“How many look forward to this day as a time of joyful re-union!  And such it is to thousands of happy families.  But, somehow, we always think of the vacant places that death or absence leaves at many tables; and of the shadows that come over the feelings of those who gather in the old homestead.  Of the absent, how many are wanderers, like the poor prodigal!  And how gladly would they be received if they would only return, and let all the unhappy past be forgotten and forgiven!  Does, by any chance, such a wanderer’s eye fall upon these few sentences?  If so, we do earnestly and tenderly entreat him, by the love of his mother, that is still with him, no matter how far he has gone from the right path, to come back on this blessed day; and thus make the thanksgiving of that mother’s heart complete.”