Chapter X: Part VII: Conclusions (2)

Originally _gentleman_ was merely a designation, not a description, and it was meant to apply to men occupying a certain conventional social position. It had no reference to the qualities of heart, mind and soul. Later the word _gentleman_ was given an exclusively ethical application. Both ideas are extremes, and both are wrong, because the former might apply to thieves, liars, cads, fops and ruffians, and the latter might apply to servants and slaves, many of whom are men of the best and truest type. There is an old saw that runs--

"What is a gentleman?
He is always polite,
He always does right,
And that is a gentleman."

If it is difficult to ascertain what a gentleman is, it is not difficult to ascertain what a gentleman is not. For example, a gentleman is not--

1. One who jumps into the one vacant seat when there are women standing.

2. One who smokes or swears in a public elevator in the presence of a lady.

3. One who dashes through swinging doors and lets them bang into the face of those behind.

4. One who jumps on the platform of a moving car when others are patiently waiting to get on.

5. One who eats with his knife, picks his teeth in public, spits on the floor, wipes his mouth on the tablecloth, coughs or sneezes in public without covering his mouth, or cleans his nails in a public place.

6. One who carries his umbrella extended horizontally under his arm, with the sharp ferrule sticking out behind to the inconvenience if not peril of others.

7. One who rushes into a car before those in it have time to get off.

8. One who occupies two seats for himself and his newspaper or parcels in a crowded car.

9. One who fails to apologize when he has unintentionally insulted another.

10. One who refuses to apologize or make amend when he has intentionally insulted another.

11. One who always wants to bet or to fight when he is getting the worst of an argument.

12. One who neglects to respect old age.

13. One who is mean, selfish and inconsiderate of the rights and convenience of others.

14. One who deliberately uses uncouth or vulgar language.

15. One who is intentionally neglectful of his appearance to the extent of wearing soiled linen in public and of neglecting his person so that he is obnoxious to the olfactory organs of those around him.

16. One who lacks tolerance and who wrangles with everybody who does not do as he would like them to do.

17. One who has a hot temper and does not know enough to put his foot on the soft pedal.

18. One who laughs at a drunken man or woman or who induces them to become so.

19. One who thinks that the world owes him a living and who proceeds to collect it from everybody he comes across, by foul means or fair.

20. One who does not know that women, children and elderly people are entitled to a preference and to unusual consideration on all occasions.

Gentlemen, be seated, and we will inquire still further as to what a gentleman is and is not. Of course, at this command you are all seated. The commander knew that there would be no exceptions in your judgment. But, even if you do not agree with the opinions of those quoted above, you have your own notions as to what is a gentleman, and it is a safe bet that not one of you live up to those qualifications. The most perfect of gentlemen sometimes fail to live up to their best. We all fall down once in a while.

Some people define gentlemen as follows:

_Gentleman_--One who does not wear detachable cuffs; one who changes his shirt every day; one whose clothes are of the latest pattern; one who wears a cane, a silk hat and patent leather shoes; one who has money and spends it freely; one who tips the waiter generously, and who would not soil his hands by shaking hands with a laborer; one who is above work and who would not associate with a common tradesman; one who respects to the point of worship anybody who has money and who detests to the point of hatred everybody who has not; one who has his nails manicured twice a week, and who always wears gloves in public; one who thinks that the greatest thing in the world is to belong to the smart set and to be fashionable.

Such people forget that the _gentleman_ is solid mahogany, while the fashionable man is only veneer. They forget that the gentleman is not so much what he is without as what he is within. You cannot make a gentleman out of fine clothes, even if you add elegant manners. Nor will education complete him. When you educate the thief you do not necessarily cure his thievery, and you often make him a more accomplished thief. And some of the greatest thieves and cut-throats have the most elegant manners and wear the finest clothes. The real gentleman must be a gentleman clean through, from the center of his heart to the top of his brain. Culture and refinement in the true sense proceed from within. While they can be purchased at any good boarding-school, this is another brand, and partake of the qualities of varnish. They are a sort of polish.

Gentlemen, be seated. Ah, you do not seat yourselves so quickly! You begin to see the light. Perhaps you realize that you are not so much of a gentleman as you at first thought you were. You may have the instincts of a gentleman, you may have good breeding, good manners, education, refinement, good intentions, even culture, yet you know down in your secret souls that you have some qualities that are not those of the real, true gentleman. You may have gentleness, generosity, honesty, polish, and yet you lack some of the other ingredients that are used in the manufacture of a gentleman. But never you mind. None of us are perfect--not even the writer! And you frown when you are told that _you_ are not gentlemen. But you are not. There is no such thing as a gentleman. How can there be when a gentleman is a _perfect man_? The thing to do is to try to be a gentleman. Let's try hard.

Gentlemen, be seated. You all sit, because you _try_ to be gentlemen, and, for aught I know, you are as much gentlemen as anybody. Anyway, if you try, you are, to all intents and purposes; for, if a man does the best he can he is entitled to the highest honors, and what higher honors are there than to be known as a real gentleman?

Gentlemen, be seated, and we shall hear from a wonderful philosopher, Herr Friedrich Nietzsche. A million sages and diagnosticians, in all ages of the world, have sought to define the gentleman, and their definitions have been as varied as their minds, as we have already seen. Nietzsche's definition, according to Mencken's translation, is based on the fact that the gentleman is ever a man of more than average influence and power, and on the further fact that this superiority is admitted by all. The vulgarian may boast of his bluff honesty, but at heart he looks up to the gentleman, who goes through life serene and imperturbable. There is in the gentleman an unmistakable air of fitness and efficiency, and it is this that makes it possible for him to be gentle and to regard those below him with tolerance. The demeanor of highborn persons shows plainly that in their minds the consciousness of power is ever present. Above all things, they strive to avoid a show of weakness, whether it takes the form of inefficiency or of a too-easy yielding to passion or emotion. They never sink exhausted into a chair. On the train, when the vulgar try to make themselves comfortable, these higher folk avoid reclining. They do not seem to get tired after hours of standing at court. They do not furnish their homes in a comfortable, but in a spacious and dignified manner, as if they were the abodes of a greater and taller race of beings. To a provoking speech, they reply with politeness and self-possession--and not as if horrified, crushed, abashed, enraged or out of breath, after the manner of plebians. The gentleman knows how to preserve the appearance of ever-present physical strength, and he knows, too, how to convey the impression that his soul and intellect are a match for all dangers and surprises, by keeping up an unchanging serenity and civility, even under the most trying circumstances.

Thus spake Nietzsche, but he was really defining an aristocrat, or one of the so-called nobility, for which he had a profound respect. Here is still another definition:

_Gentility_--Perfect veracity, frank urbanity, total unwillingness to give offense; the gentleness of right-hearted, level-headed good nature; kindliness tactfully exercised through clear sense that duly appreciates current circumstances involving the personal rights, privileges and susceptibilities of others; and, while justly regarding these, acting on what they generally suggest so considerately and so gracefully that a pleasurable, heartfelt recognition of finest decency is inspired in others.

An old wag once said, "I never refuse to drink with a gentleman, and a gentleman is a man who invites me to take a drink." That is the Kentucky idea. But this is not:

_Gentleman_--One who has courage without bravado, pride without vanity, and who is innately--not studiously, but innately--considerate of the feelings of others.

And so the definitions vary inversely as the square of the desirability of the kind of gentleman we try to be. In brief, a _gentleman_ is indefinable as it is unmistakable. You can always tell him when you meet him, but you cannot tell how or why.

Gentlemen, be seated. This is final. Just think over what you have heard, and see if there is not now a clear idea of what a gentleman is and is not. If you have read between the lines, you have seen the true lights on the subject. Wit and mirth and humorous allusions--such as they are--should not obscure the real issue. Do we not all know now what a gentleman is? Quite true that we cannot define it, without a very large vocabulary and thousands of words, yet we feel that we know. And, knowing what a gentleman is, surely we shall all try to be one. And then what more can the gods require?

_Beards_

And so the beard is coming in fashion again. Consoling thought to you of the fertile facial soil and with ugly contour or ungainly blemishes to conceal, but distressing to those chubby-faced, masculine beauties whose tender skins will not yield a plentiful crop. But, you have had your day, oh, ye of the germ-proof, Napoleonic countenance; so, discard your Gillettes, and make way for his majesty--The Beard. The halcyon days of the razor are no more, if we are to believe fickle Dame Fashion, and we are now to welcome the day of the shears. If nature has been stingy, and that glorious excrescence, the beard, is impossible to you, mon cher, pray accept our sympathy; but, please be generous enough to take the inevitable with good grace, and not worry us with foolish arguments about bearded barbarians and unsanitary savages. We know that you can make a strong case against the beard, but we imagine we can make one equally strong in its favor. All of your progenitors had them, including Adam--if we are to believe the ancient monuments, all of which show those gentlemen with a bushy beard of no mean dimensions. You say the ancient Egyptians wore no beards? Yes, but please observe that on occasions of high festivity, they wore false beards as assertions of their dignity and virility, and always represented their male deities with splendid hirsute adornments tip-tilted at the ends. It is true that they called the Greeks and Romans "barbarians" (bearded, unshaven, savages), and that about 300 B. C., the latter began to shave and in turn to call other peoples "barbarians"; but these incidents were only passing fancies, freaks and fashions soon to make way for the approaching, persistent reign of the beard. You say that Julian argued arduously against the beard? Yes, but would you take for a model a man whose whole body was bearded, and who prided himself on his long finger-nails and on the inky blackness of his hands? And don't forget that the reason Alexander abolished beards in his army was one that hardly fits your case, for was it not because the enemy had a habit of using the beard as a handle, much to the inconvenience--to say nothing of the discomfort--of the victim?

The beard has had an eventful career, and has always been the bone of contention between nations, churches, politicians, kings, gods, and barbers. As to the last, suffice it to say that beards existed before barbers, and that barbers are now as favorable to beards as they are unfavorable to safety razors. As for the churches, they have been alternately pro and con: Israel brought the beard safely out of Egyptian bondage; the Orientals cherished it as a sacred thing; the Scriptures abound with examples of how it was used to interpret pride, joy, sorrow, despondency, etc., the Greek church was for beards, and the Roman church against; the Popes of Naples wore beards at various periods; and now, most of our popes, priests and preachers keep their "chins new reaped." In Asia, wars have been declared on alleged grievances concerning shaving, and Nero offered some of the hairs of his beard to Jupiter Capitolinus who could well have bearded a dozen emperors from his own. Herodotus has more to say of beards than of belles, bibles and Belzebub, and the other poets and historians have found inspiration in like theme. In some times, beards denoted noble birth and in others they were tokens of depravity or of ostracism. The Roskolniki, a sect of schismatics, maintained that the divine image resided in the beard, and for ages the beard was the outward sign of a true man. In brief, the beard has had a Titanic struggle for existence, first up, then down, first on and then off. Just as it would attain the zenith of its glory, some beardless king would come along and dethrone it, as was the case in Spain, for example, when Philip V's tender chin refused to bear fruit, which calamity soon changed the fashion among the Spanish nobility. And, no sooner would the bald chin be established in favor, than some ugly-faced prince would come forward with an edict that the elect must again display the manly beard, as in France, when the young king's face was so disfigured with scars that he found a beard necessary to give him an appearance of respectability, whereupon all his faithful subjects found that they also had scars to conceal, much to the dismay of the barbers.

Then, again, the beard was often attacked by the assessors, as well as by the churches and fashions; for did not Peter the Great levy a heavy tax on all Russian beards, and did not Queen Elizabeth, in spite of bearded Raleigh, impose a tax of 3s. 4d. on all beards above a fortnight's growth? These were unfair handicaps to the beard, and greatly hampered its progress, but, beards, like truth, crushed to earth will rise again, and so always did the beard. For, observe that in the reign of Henry VIII the lawyers wore imposing beards, which became so fashionable that the authorities at Lincoln's Inn made them pay double common to sit at the great table; but mark that this was before 1535 when Henry raised his own crisp beard which afterwards became so celebrated. Beginning with the 13th century, when beards first came in fashion in England, up to the present, the poor beard has had a checkered career, but of late it has held its own with commendable persistency, and now all Europe is bearded, as it was in the beginning.

If the beard was sometimes held in respect, as in the Bastile, where an official was kept busy shaving the captives, and as in our own prisons, where the guests of the state are kept beardless, do you say that occasionally it was held in contempt and betokens laziness and rudeness? Yes, but, when your entire list of digressions is exposed, and your whole catalog of objections exhausted, you will find that His Majesty the Beard still waves triumphantly. It may be trod under foot for a time, but, just as the shaven beard will soon grow again, so will the beard that has been legislated against by court, church or fashion. In days of old, to touch the beard rudely was to assail the dignity of its owner; and when a man placed his hand upon his beard and swore by it, he felt bounden by the most sacred of oaths. We all have a certain reverence for traditions, and those of the beard are still respected, among the uncivilized as well as among the civilized. Was it not Juan de Castro, the Portuguese admiral, who borrowed a thousand pistoles and pledged one of his whiskers, saying, "All the gold in the world cannot equal this natural ornament of my valor?" Persius associated wisdom with the beard, and called Socrates "Magister Barbatus" in commendation of that gentleman's populous beard. And do not the sculptors and painters usually represent Jupiter, Hercules and Plato with the same tokens of strength, fortitude, sturdiness and virility? Who would favor a "beardless youth" to Numa Pimpolius--he of the magnificent flowing beard? Who would prefer a Shakespeare, a Longfellow, a Whitman, a Ruskin, a Charlemagne, shorn of their hirsute adornments? Or a Lincoln, Grant or Lee? But, of course, there are beards and beards; we are not lost in admiration at sight of such anomalies as those of John Mayo ("John the Bearded"), or of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, nor even with that majestic forest of hair which was attached to Queen Mary's agent to Moscow, George Killingworth, whose beard measured five feet two inches, and which so pleased the grim Ivan the Terrible that he actually laughed and played with it. Coming down to the present, some of us will prefer the silky, golden beard, such as adorns the handsome countenance of Judge Wilkin, of the Children's Court; some the splendid snow-white beard of Hudson Maxim, or the shorter and less white beard of our able and amiable Edwin Markham; or the mixed, philosophic beard of General Vanderbilt; or, perchance, we prefer the sandy, semi-gray beard of that profound jurist, statesman, philosopher,--Judge Gaynor. And then there is the erudite Bernard Shaw, and our virtuous statesman Judge Hughes, and then there was the sage and honorable keeper of the public baths, Dr. Wm. H. Hale, and Oscar Hammerstein, the impressario. Yes, the beard is coming, so away with your safety razors, and supply your barber with shears. Away with your alum, salves and powders, and look up the old recipes for hair-restoring. The Roman youths used household oils to coax the hairs to grow, but the apothecaries of those days were not so cunning as ours, and soon we may expect to see the bill-boards and advertising pages filled with notices of new preparations guaranteed to grow a beard in a night, and directions how to care for, dress, comb, clip and preserve it. No doubt we shall soon become as careful of those sacred emblems of maturity and manhood, our whiskers, as Sir Thomas Moore was of his, who, as he put his head upon the block, carefully laid his beard out of the way, and then cracked a joke. What kind of a beard shall we wear? Consult the artists and barbers, and trim it as you do your hair--as best suits and becomes you. Charles the First adopted the Vandyke beard, after the artist of that name. Ruskin, and other philosophers, wore their beards as nature intended, trimming them about once every decade. Actors, waiters, and doctors will probably wear no beards, for obvious reasons, but they will all wish they could, if they read James Ward's "Defense of the Beard," in which eighteen excellent reasons are given, among which might be mentioned, protection to throat and chest, and Nature. And yet, on the other hand, there are serious objections to the beard, among which is the one made immortal by those classic lines of Homer--or was it Lewis Carroll?--which runneth thus:

"There was once a man with a beard,
Who said, 'It is just as I feared:
Two Owls and a Hen,
Four Larks and a Wren
Have all built their nests in my beard!'"

There has been some scientific inquiry as to why woman was made beardless, but the question was never satisfactorily settled until the poets became interested in the problem, and the result was as follows:

"How wisely Nature, ordering all below,
Forbade a beard on woman's chin to grow;
For, how could she be shaved--whate'ver the skill--
Whose tongue would never let her chin be still."

_Gambling_

In 1890, a reformed gambler named John Philip Quinn, wrote a book, "Fools of Fortune," which I read with interest when it first came out. Later I met this man and saw him expose numerous tricks of gamblers. The book comprehends a history of the vice in ancient and modern times, and in both hemispheres, and is an exposition of its alarming prevalence and destructive effects, with an unreserved and exhaustive disclosure of such frauds, tricks and devices as are practised by professional gambler, confidence man and bunko steerers; and the book was given to the world with the hope that it might extenuate the author's twenty-five years of gaming and systematic deception of his fellow men.

I wish every boy and every public official could read that book. Its pages are twice the size of these, and there are no less than 640 of them--a big and a valuable book. It would do more good in the world than a great many so-called religious books that I could mention; and, if I am ever rich, I would like to have it reprinted and sold for ten cents a copy so that everybody could get one.

Alongside of this book in my library is another, entitled, "What's the Odds," by Joe Ullman, the famous (or infamous) bookmaker. What a contrast! This book tells many "interesting" stories of the turf, of the pool-room and of the card-room, and it tends to cast a luring glamor around racing and all sorts of gaming.

By the side of this book in my library is another, entitled "Gambling: or Fortuna, Her Temple and Shrine. The True Philosophy and Ethics of Gambling," by James Harold Romain, which is an able defense of gambling. How much harm these two last-mentioned books may have done, no man may say. Certainly they have done no good. If ever a book should be suppressed by law, these two books should come first.

Mr. Romain says, "The keepers of gambling resorts are denounced, as though they were responsible for the gambling propensity in mankind. Resorts for gambling do not cause the passion. It is a tendency to which all men are prone, more or less. The essential fact is the existence of this passion. There can never be great difficulty in obtaining the means for its gratification."

Now, it is quite true that gambling is a tendency to which most people are prone, more or less, but that is no argument for increasing the temptation, nor for encouraging the vice. Men are prone to steal, to drink, to be dishonest, to lie, to cheat, to be immoral; but these tendencies must be checked and suppressed, not encouraged. Because some men will steal, should we license them and furnish them with ways and means to carry out their brutal instincts? Civilization is striving to eliminate man's brute passions. Thousands of institutions such as the law and the church, the prisons and reformatories, the libraries and the schools, are constantly combating man's animal tendencies. Shall we stop all this and let man's passions have full sway? Mr. Romain says, yes. He says, "In the name of liberty and equality, a brave battle has been fought for individuality. Unjust and unwise interference by the state has been ably resisted. It is demanded that private judgment be released from the embrace of authority. The truth is, one man has no natural right to make laws for another. True, he may repel another, when his own rights are infringed, but he has no right to govern him." Of course, this is anarchy. The doctrine of "no laws" is an exploded theory. By common consent, the world has come to an understanding that the majority of the people shall make laws to govern the whole, and there is no other way. What is detrimental to the community must be suppressed, and the law is the best suppressor.

While Fortuna may proudly enumerate her great votaries in America, including Aaron Burr, Edgar Allen Poe, William Wirt, Luther Martin, Gouverneur Morris, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, General Hayne, Sam Houston, Andrew Jackson, Generals Burnett, Sickles, Kearney, Steedman, Hooker, Hurlbut, Sheridan, Kilpatrick, Grant, George D. Prentiss, Sargeant S. Prentiss, Albert Pike, A. P. Hill, Beauregard, Early, Ben Hill, Robert Toombs, George H. Pendleton, Thaddeus Stevens, Green of Missouri, Herbert and Fitch of California, Jerry McKibben, James A. Bayard, Benjamin F. Wade, Broderick, John C. Fremont, Judge Magowan, Charles Spencer, Fernando Wood and his brother Benjamin, Colonel McClure, Senator Wolcott, Senator Pettigrew, Senator Farwell, Matthew Carpenter, Thomas Scott, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Hutchinson of Chicago, and Pierre Lorillard; think of the long list of greater men who were not addicted to gambling. This list is fairly complete, yet it is by no means representative. If these men had the passion, they no doubt felt sorry for it and they would be the first to warn others of the vice. Some of them were ruined by it. It is a folly to be ashamed of, not to be proud of. It is a weakness, and all great men have their weaknesses. Think of the great men who were inveterate smokers and drinkers; yet we would not hold them up as examples for the young simply because they acquired these bad habits. Are we to emulate the faults of the great, or their virtues?

Of all the passions that have enslaved mankind, none can reckon so many victims as gambling. In the wrecking of homes, in the destroying of character, in the encouragement of dishonesty, in the dissolving of fortunes, gambling has only one rival--drink. The two are brothers. They walk hand in hand. One seldom exists without the other. If drink comes first, gambling follows shortly; if gambling gets hold of its victim first, drink soon joins his brother. And with these two terrible, fascinating, insidious habits firmly entrenched in a man's system, all the other vices are invited in to keep the others company. Smoking, a lesser evil, usually accompanies the rest, in fact usually comes first; but it is hardly to be classed as a vice, since it in itself has no immoral effects, and is simply a bad and an expensive habit, although it is one that many enjoy without harm or danger, even with profit. Gambling appeals to a latent instinct, and hence is all the more alluring. It is a disease that, when it once gets hold, seldom lets go. The victim may shake it off, for a time, but it will surely show its fangs again, and it will require a struggle and many of them, throughout life, to conquer it. It will crop out in divers ways and its influence will be felt in all transactions. True, all life and business is a gamble, in one sense--that is, a chance, but that is no reason why we should make gambling King. Our efforts should be directed to dethroning it, not to crowning it.

If you have a boy growing up, remember that he has a latent instinct to gamble. Remember that unless you show him the dangers of the vice, he will surely get the fever. It is just as sure as it is that he will be tempted to steal and to lie. You will observe him shooting marbles for gain. Then, craps. Then he will be playing cards for money. Then he will get interested in the penny-slot devices that are to be found in the cigar and candy stores. He will keep a sharp lookout for prize packages. He will take a chance in every lottery that he hears of, including those that are usually conducted in church fairs. Next, he will hear of faro, roulette and other games of chance, and soon he will find his way into a regular gambling den. He will probably lose, the first time, and then he will save up, and go again to recover his losses. If he loses again he will have all the more reason to go again, to get square. If he should win the first time, he will get the fever anyway, and he will at once see visions of an easy fortune ahead. Either way, he will stick to it, and to stick to it means ruin. He will need more money than you will give him, and he will be tempted to get money by dishonest means. If he does not steal, he will perhaps take something from the house and sell it in order to get money with which to gamble. If he cannot get that something in your home, he may be tempted to get it from some other home. He will sell his toys. He will go without shoes and spend the money at gambling. If he cannot get money, he will run away and earn it. He will forget all your teachings and do anything to get money. And, when once he gets into one of those gilded palaces of the devil, where big stakes are played for, where everything is bright, elegant and alluring, where one man is seen to make a fortune in a night, which sometimes happens, and where sumptuous tables are spread with all the luxuries and dainties of the season for the delight of the patrons, where wine and cigars are freely given to both winner and loser--then bid goodbye to your boy, for he is lost. The chances are that he will never get over it. The fascination will be too much for him. He will surely go again. Win or lose, he will look forward to the day when he can try his luck with the great Goddess of Chance. The yawning jaws of the tiger are ever open for fresh victims such as he, and if he gives them a chance they will inevitably close down on him. If he loses at first, he will begin to study "systems" to beat the game. He will spend sleepless nights studying how to win out. If he finds that, with all his studying, he still cannot retrieve his losses, he will try other forms of gambling, such as horse racing, but all with the same result. He is bound to lose in the end. But, the strange thing is, that you cannot make him believe this. Every man seems to have an inborn notion that he is different from everybody else; that he is, by some freak of nature, a marked man to win; that if he keeps it up long enough luck must change; that he above all others has been picked out by Dame Fortune to win; that it is only a question of time when luck will again smile upon him. So, he keeps it up, chasing the will o' the wisp, following the rainbow to find the proverbial pots of gold that are said to lie at the other end. History proves all this. The road to ruin is straight and clear. It is easy to follow. Walking is good. It is well lighted. The mirage of Fortune looms up big at the other end which seems just a little farther on. He may get weary and discouraged, at times, but Hope and Promise beckon him on. He sees his possessions vanishing, as he plods on, he sees his reputation and character leaving him, but he believes that these can easily be restored when he arrives at his destination. But he never arrives. He falls by the wayside. He dies, mourned by few, shunned by many, discouraged, desolate, homeless, friendless, forsaken--a worthless wreck.

Among the hundreds of thousands of gamblers, you can count the few prosperous ones on your fingers. Whether it be stock-market gamblers, race track gamblers, card gamblers, or what-not, the universal law is that they all must lose in the end. Every once in a while you read of some famous once-rich gambler who has just died poor and forsaken, fortune gone. The few successful ones are successful only for a short time. And the chances of your boy being one of the successful ones is about equal to his chances of becoming the king of England. The odds are all against it. In playing against the dealer, or bookmaker, or "house," the percentage is large against him. If by chance he should win, there are two chances to one that the gambler will get it all back and more too, at the next sitting. People say, "I will try it once more, and I am sure to win this time, and if I do I will quit the game forever." But the forever never comes. If they win, they will soon come to an understanding with themselves that they will try it just once more, to win just a little more, then stop. If they lose, they soon agree with themselves that they will try it just once more to get back what they lost. In either case they are bound to get back to the gaming table, and the gamblers all know this. Hence, when the professional gambler sees a winner leave his place, he does not frown; he only smiles, because he knows that the winner will soon be back to drop his winnings plus a little more.

And what are we to do with this common enemy of mankind? Are we to sit down and sigh, and say, "Well, people will gamble anyway, and if they are fools enough to throw away their money that way, let them do it"; or are we to bend our energies to suppress it? Are we to allow gambling houses to exist in our midst, thus inviting our young men to become victims? Are we to allow lotteries and petty gambling devices everywhere as we do now? Are our churches to encourage the vice at their fairs in order to make money to _redeem_ the world? No, we must stamp it out wherever we find it.

_Wedding Bells_

Wedlock, indeed, hath oft compared been
To public feasts, where meet a public rout,
Where they that are without would fain go in,
And they that are within would fain go out.
_Sir John Davies._

Let us listen, for a moment, to the merry jingle of the wedding bells, as they echo through the corridors of the Hall of Time. What is a wedding, and a marriage, and why? What object was sought, in the beginning, when custom demanded a marriage ceremony before cohabitation? Why has that ancient custom followed man to every far corner of the globe, and why do all peoples resent any effort to destroy that custom? Why so many different forms of ceremony, what do they mean, and why do they differ so?

Bolingbroke says that marriage was instituted because it was necessary that parents should know their own respective offspring; and that, as the mother can have no doubt that she is the mother, so a man should have all the assurance possible that he is the father: hence the marriage contract, and the various moral and civil rights, duties and obligations which follow as corollaries.

Monogamy was the original law of marriage, but in Genesis we are told that Lamech took unto himself two wives. The Jews, in common with other Oriental peoples, married when they were very young, but the Talmudists forbade marriage by a male under thirteen years and a day. There was not much ceremony, in the early days, except the removal of the bride from her father's house to that of the bridegroom, called "taking a wife," and in primitive ages this was done by seizure and force. The only "ceremony" took place on the preceding day, when the marriage had been agreed upon in advance, and consisted of a formal elaborate bath by the bride in the presence of her female companions. In later times, marriage ceremonies gradually became very elaborate, and have generally remained so and became more so ever since, in all parts of the world. Abraham appears to have the honor of having secured the first divorce in history, for we are told he sent Hagar and her child away from him. In Deuteronomy XXIV, it is stated that a man had the power to dispose of a faithless wife by writing her bill of divorcement, giving it into her hand and sending her out of his house. When a man died, without issue, his brother had first claim upon the widow, and she could not marry another till the brother had formally rejected her. One peculiarity of the ancients was, that they assumed that the impending wedding of a couple had a very depressing effect, and it was consequently the custom for all friends and neighbors to take means to cheer up the doomed ones by all sorts of boisterous amusements. Married life was looked upon as a business, and perhaps a perilous one.

Cecrops seems to have been the first to introduce among the Athenians the formal marriage ceremony with all its solemn and binding obligations. The ancient Greeks early decided that marriage was a private as well as a public necessity, and the Spartans treated celibacy as a crime. Lycurgus made laws so that those who married too late, or unsuitably, or not at all, could be treated like ordinary criminals, and not only was it unrespectable to be a bachelor, but it was dangerous. Plato preached that a man should consider the welfare of his country rather than his own pleasure, and that if he did not marry before he was thirty-five he should be punished severely. The Spartans advocated marriage for the reason that they wanted more children born to the state, and when a married woman gave birth to no children she was made to cohabit with another man. The Spartan King, Archidamus, fell in love with and married a very little woman, which so incensed the people that they fined him: they did not believe in marriage for love, but in marriage for big, sturdy offspring. Often, fathers would choose brides for their sons, and husbands for their daughters, who had never seen each other, and compel them to marry. In Greece, until Aristotle put a stop to it, the custom of buying wives was common.

By the Romans, as well as by the Jews and Greeks, marriage was deemed an imperative duty; and parents were reprehended if they did not obtain husbands for their daughters by the time they were twenty-five. The Roman law recognized monogamy only, and polygamy was prohibited in the whole empire. Hence, the former became practically the rule in all Christiandom, and was introduced into the canon law of the Eastern and Western churches. During the time of Augustus, bachelorhood became fashionable, and to check the evil, as well as to lessen the alarming number of divorces, which were also getting fashionable, Augustus imposed a wife tax on all who persisted in the luxury of celibacy.

The superstition that some days and months are unlucky or lucky for weddings seems to have originated with the Romans, May and February being thought unpropitious, while June was particularly favorable to happy marriages. These beliefs were based on things which cannot possibly concern people of other climes and religions, and, like all superstitions, are unfounded and absurd.

We know very little of the marriage affairs of the ancient Egyptians, but we do know that they were not restricted to any number of wives. In modern Egypt, a woman can never be seen by her future husband till after she has been married, and she is always veiled. A similar custom prevailed in ancient Morocco, the bride being first painted and stained, and then carried to the house of her husband-to-be, where she was formally introduced to him. He was satisfied, however, that she would suit him, for he had previously sent some of his female relatives to inspect her at the bath. The Mahomedans of Barbary do not buy their wives, like the Turks, but have portions with them. They retain in their marriage rites many ceremonies in use by the ancient Goths and Vandals. The married women must not show their faces, even to their fathers. The Moors of West Barbary have practically the same customs as the Mahomedans and the Moroccoans the groom never seeing the bride till he is introduced to her in the bridal chamber. The modern Arabians, since they have conformed to the Koran, marry as many wives as they please, and buy them as they do slaves. Among the Bedouins, polygamy is allowed, but generally a Bedouin has only one wife, who is often taken for an agreed term, usually short,--which sounds something like the "trial marriage" plan recently suggested by a now-famous American lady. The wedding consists in the cutting of the throat of a young lamb, by the bridegroom, the ceremony being completed the moment the blood falls upon the ground. Among the Medes, reciprocal polygamy was in use, and a man was not respectable unless he had at least seven wives, nor a woman unless she had five husbands. In Persia, living people were sometimes married to the dead, and often to their nearest relations. In the seventeenth century, the nobility might have as many wives as they pleased, but the poor commonality were limited to seven: and they might part with them at discretion.

Trial marriages were also in vogue in Persia, and seldom was a marriage contract made for life. A new wife was a common luxury. Persian etiquette demands that before the master of the house no person must pronounce the name of the wife, but rather refer to her as "How is the daughter of (naming her mother or father)?"

The Chinese believe that marriages are decreed by heaven, and that those who have been connected in a previous existence become united in this. Men are allowed to keep several concubines, but they are entirely dependent on the legitimate wife, who is always reckoned the most honorable. The Chinese marry their children when they are very young, sometimes as soon as they are born.

In Japan, polygamy and fornication are allowed, and fathers sell or hire out their daughters with legal formalities for limited terms. In Finland it was the custom for a young woman to wear suspended at her girdle the sheath of a knife, as a sign that she was single and wanted a husband. Any young man who was enamored of her, obtained a knife in the shape of the sheath, and slyly slipped it in the latter, and if the maiden favored the proposal, she would keep the knife, otherwise she would return it.

In another part of Finland, a young couple were allowed to sleep together, partly, if not completely dressed, for two weeks, which custom, called bundling or tarrying, was common in Wales and the New England States, and is supposed not to have resulted in immoral consequences.

In Scotland, the custom has long prevailed of lifting the bride over the threshold of her new home, which custom is probably derived from the Romans. The threshold, in many countries, is thought to be a sacred limit or boundary, and is the subject of much superstition. In the Isle of Man, a superstition prevails that it is very lucky to carry salt in the pocket, and the natives always do so when they marry. They also have the international custom of throwing an old shoe after the bridegroom as he left his home, and also one or more after the bride as she left her home. In Wales the old-time weddings were characterized by several curious customs, such as Bundlings, Chainings, Sandings, Huntings and Tithings. In Britain, before Caesar's invasion, an indiscriminate (or but slightly restricted) intermixture of the sexes was the practice, and polygamy prevailed; and it was not uncommon for several brothers to have only one wife among them, paternity being determined by resemblance.

The foregoing facts and customs do not show the evolution of marriage, because in some countries the same forms and customs prevail to-day that prevailed six thousand years ago. As civilization advances, however, we find that the tendency is toward a more rigid enforcement of the marriage contract, and strictly against polygamy. The sanctity of the home and respect for marriage vows have not only passed into the statute law of civilized nations, but they have become proverbial with most all of the enlightened people. It must also be observed, however, that at the present time there seems to be a tendency in this country to make marriage more difficult and divorce more easy.

End of Project Gutenberg's What's What in America, by Eugene V. Brewster