Punch or The London charivari (3.1842)

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. 239

PUNCH'S LETTERS TO HIS SON

happy men. Gaming is a moral Aaron's rod, and swallows up all
meaner passions.

Consider, my son, the vigilance, the self-concentration, the judg-
ment, the quickness of wit, and at times, the dexterity of finger,
letter xx.—on the philosophy of gaming. necessary to a successful gamester; and you will look upon the

,r c ^T ■„ T, .* . , , character with still-increasing; veneration. Did you ever know a

My dear box—1 ou will 1 trust, alter these many tond and anxious . , „ -„ , , t%-j i x.- -c ■ j

' gamester tail madly m love ? Did you ever know him, 11 a married

epistles, look upon all men as divided into two classes—the men who
eat men, and the men who are eaten. With this conviction, it will,
I hope, be your determination always to obtain a good, sufficing
belly-full of your fellow-creatures ; and never to contribute in your
own person a single mouthful to the banquet of the anthropophagi.

It is a vulgar mistake, the very crassitude of ignorance, to look
upon only those men as man-eaters, who despatch their victims with
a club or tomahawk, and lighting the festive fire, make their own
maw an honourable tomb for their enemies. This mode of eating
only distinguishes the savage from his more refined brother, who
disguises and sophisticates his cookery, and by the aid of certain
social sauce, makes even himself forgetful of the horror which—to use
the cook's phrase—is the stock of the feast.

In your boyhood, you were, I know, a most active taker of bird's
nests. It was your delight to possess yourself of the eggs, ere the
process of incubation had commenced, and having very tenderly
sucked out the contents, you would thread the mere shell on a piece
of grass, as a trophy of your adroitness and good fortune. My dear boy,
it is quite possible—indeed, it is every day accomplished—to treat
the substance of men, as you have treated the eggs of larks and
sparrows. How many successful egg-suckers could I point out to you,
who applying the thousand means with which law and social
chicanery supply every man, wise and adroit enough to use them,—
have so sucked and sucked, that they have left nothing but the mere
outside—the fragile shells of men ! There is my old acquaintance,
Barabbas Moses, with his sixty in a hundred. Twenty years ago he
lived by putting off pencils, with apocryphal lead in them. How has

man, waste his profitable time, his profitable thoughts, upon the woman
he has buckled himself to ? If he be a father, what is the laughter of
his children to the melody of the dice ? What human hearts to the
ace and king of the same suit, when trumps \ He is exalted far
above the weakening influences that pull down other men, and from
his elevation looks with a cold eye of dignity upon the pettiness
of human affections. You will hear other men rave about the
beauties of nature; of hill and dale, mountain and flood. To the
gamester, how small the space that bounds his imagination—but then
how rich, how fertile—those half-dozen yards of bright green cloth !

You will hear men talk about the sweets of industry ; of the
dignity of labour ; the more especially those men who never yet set
their foot to a spade, or their hand to a plough. The sweets of
industry! what are they to the sweets of fortune I And for the dig-
nity of labour, give me, say I, the dignity of luck !

Observe what is called the industrious man. Mark his daily mar-
tyrdom. He rises early ; breakfasts lightly ; hurries oft' with his
bread-and-butter yet undigested to his labour. He toils his eight,
ten, nay twelve hours ; comes home ; eats his crust; and with hardly
strength remaining to take off his stockings, slinks wearied to bed.
In a brief time—how very brief!—the cock crows, and the industrious
man has serious thoughts of shaving ; again he is up—again has he
bolted his morning meal,—and again is he out to go over the
drudgery of how many thousand yesterdays ! The year's wound up ;
and for all this toil, this anxiety, this daily crucifixion of spirit, the
industrious man counts one—two—shall we say three hundred golden

pieces ! For all this tedious miserv—three hundred pounds ?
lie giown thus rich—how has he become thus treble-gilt ? My son, AT . . tt • u i i 1

t.ako.^n o rv,™t „„(„m„v;_____ 1 tt , • i <- r My son, turn vour eyes to the gamester. He rises when he likes

lie lias ueen a most enternr nnc ecm-siicirpv Hnw manv hnvu. n+ _ »_. ' •> •/ o

he has been a most enterprising egg-sucker. How many birds of fine
feather has he destroyed in the egg—how many shells of men might
he wear about him ! It is a poor thing to scalp a man ; a coarse,
rough operation : but to feast upon his vitals, nay, to abstract his
very marrow from him, to leave no blood-mark there, yet leave him
with sufficient vitality to crawl about and look like a man—that, my
son, is the master-piece of civilization, the genius of refined life.

There is, however, a more open—a more generous mode of living
upon men; a mode, dignified by fashion, exalted by authority—I
mean gamine1.

The gamester is, indeed, a privileged person ; a creature, who
merges all the petty, wearying anxieties of life into one sublime pas-
sion. Become a gamester, and you are fortified, nay, exempt from
the assaults of divers other feelings that distract and worry less

—dallies, at "his own sweet will," with his breakfast. He then
lounges away the hours, pleasantly meditating on the coming night-
He enters the arena. With what a graceful assurance doth he take
the box in his hand. One—two—three : he throws sixes, and pockets
five hundred pounds ! What a miserable, felon, outcast sneak-up
does your industrious man appear after this ! What a poor, sweating
slave ! Whilst on the other hand, what an air of power is about the
gamester! What a glory—what a magic ! He inherits in one
minute by the potent shake of his elbow, all that poor, sordid, labour
wears its back into a hoop for—its eyes into blindness ! Will you,
after this, ever dream of becoming that miserable negative'—an
industrious man ? Depend upon it the true jewels of life—rightly
worn—are the four aces. Hope has been vulgarly pictured with an
anchor. Let your hope carry a dice-box !

As for luck, you may nearly always ensure that, if you properly
educate your perceptions, and your fingers. Cultivate your thumb-
nails, my dear boy ; the smallest sacrifice to the personal graces is not
lost upon the gamester.

But I will take the worst side of the picture. You are doomed
to be unlucky—you are fated always to lose. You have no genius
—like the genius of Socrates, that always popped into its master's
hand the very trump required,—to aid and abet you. The world
turns its back on you ; and neither by cards nor dice can you fob
your brother mortal out of a single guinea. Debts come in like the
waves about you : you have no home—no abiding-place ! This is
the moment, my son, for you to exercise the most heroic of virtues.
There is cord—there is steel—there are silver rivers. If you cannot
live, you can die ; and dying, you will have this consolation : if you
have steadily and inexorably vindicated the character of a gamester,
your death will inflict no pang upon a single creature left behind
you ; and you will have the pleasing consolation to reflect that you
have never done the world a greater service than when you
quitted it.

Why is the Welsh language like the Maelstrom ?—Because it is not easily sounded,
" I'm a rising young man, and a capital prospect before me "—as Sinbad the sailol
said when he was lifted into the air by the eagle.
•' I blush for you," as the rouge-pot said to the old dowager.

" I shall never be able to make this passage out," as Sir John Ross said when he
couldn't find his way to the North Pole.

" Messages carefully delivered,"as the ear-trumpet said to the old maid.

"Please to remember the Name and Address-"—a disappointed play-wrigflt hi>&
had the malice to write over the door of the Dramatic Authors' Society :—" lei on
parle Francais."