"Gamble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the very earliest opportunity, the national energy is falling away. That driving zeal, that practical vigour that once distinguished the English is continually less apparent. Our workmen take no pride in their work any longer, they shirk toil and gamble. And what is worse, the master takes no pride in the works; he, too, shirks toil and gambles. Our middle-class young men, instead of flinging themselves into study, into research, into literature, ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... won the entire fortune—amounting to some forty dollars—of that guileless youth. After the game was finished, Mr. Oakhurst drew the youthful speculator behind the door and thus addressed him: "Tommy, you're a good little man, but you can't gamble worth a cent. Don't try it over again." He then handed him his money back, pushed him gently from the room, and so made a devoted ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... time-table has gone wrong, but I haven't given up hope. Tom is only human and he can't work miracles. He may have been so placed that it simply wasn't possible to make a break. But one thing you can gamble on, and that is that he hasn't given up trying. And when a man has that spirit his chance is sure ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... and did not return until the last stragglers on the terrace of the hotel were ready to go to bed. He was irregular even in playing, which was after all his chief pastime. Possibly he knew of reasons why it should be good to gamble on one day and not upon another. Then he had his fits of amateur seamanship, when he would insist upon taking the tiller from Ruggiero's hand. The latter, on such occasions, remained perched upon the stern in case of an emergency. San Miniato was a thorough landsman and never understood ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... are all we'll see of one of John P. Tobias's treasure, Tom," I said. "And it looks as if these poor fellows saw as little of it as ourselves. Can't you imagine them with it there at their feet—perhaps playing to divide it on a gamble; and, meanwhile, the other fellows stealing in through some of these rabbit runs—one with a knife, the other with a gun—and then: off with the loot and up with the sails. Poor devils! It strikes me as a very pretty ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... of the mediums and an old woman count the colors in a fine blanket. Usually there are five colors, so "the spirit is powerless to injure the people for five years." Next the couple gamble, but the medium always loses. Finally the spirit becomes discouraged and departs. The decorations are now taken from the room, and the sick person is carried down to the river by the members of the family. Arrived ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... handed Elsie to a seat. Arthur was a good deal changed since his recall from college; and in nothing more than in his manner to Elsie; he was now always polite; often cordial even when alone with her. He was not thoroughly reformed, but had ceased to gamble and seldom drank ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... eh?" said Sam, slowly and meditatively. "Well, it don't make no difference where you come from; we want good men in here, and you'll find this a good country, I'll gamble on that. I've followed the front clean acrost the State, the last ten years, and I tell you it's all right here. You can make it if you take hold right. Now I must be gittin' along again over toward Plum Centre. See you again if you stop ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... were introduced, and at length were played for a slight stake. To participate in this Thomas refused, on the plea that he did not know enough of the games to risk anything. He had not the moral courage to declare that he considered it wrong to gamble. ...
— No and Other Stories Compiled by Uncle Humphrey • Various
... this diamond was a valuable one—a little Jew chap, a diamond merchant, who was with us, had put it at three or four thousand when Padishah had shown it to him—and this idea of an ostrich gamble caught on. Now it happened that I'd been having a few talks on general subjects with the man who looked after these ostriches, and quite incidentally he'd said one of the birds was ailing, and he fancied it had indigestion. It had one feather in its tail ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... this matter the initiative rested with the directorate. Very little experience was available as a guide to what the expeditionary force might require in the future. Every order placed was practically a gamble, and every new type of aircraft and engine gave the staff twofold cause for anxiety. Would the new machine prove reliable when the trade produced it, and, if it proved reliable, would it then fulfil the ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... words undergoes transfiguration as the epochs pass. Yet in all their fashions, even the crudest, they deserve much tenderness. He consults a clergyman (1829) on the practice of prayer meetings in his rooms. His correspondent answers, that as the wicked have their orgies and meet to gamble and to drink, so they that fear the Lord should speak often to one another concerning Him; that prayer meetings are not for the cultivation or exhibition of gifts, nor to enable noisy and forward young men to pose as leaders of a school of prophets; but if a few young men of ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... carefully. Keep in personal touch with your creditors, keep your promises, pay on account when you cannot pay in full, hustle, be honest, keep good company, don't gamble, don't be a sport. If you practice these virtues, offers of aid will come to you ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... there was a man who did nothing but gamble, and for that reason people never called him anything but Gambling Hansel, and as he never ceased to gamble, he played away his house and all that he had. Now the very day before his creditors were to take his house from him, came the Lord and St. Peter, and asked him to give them shelter for the ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... strongly inclined to cry, but she kept back the sobs and said, "You know, John, how sullen and almost hateful you were before, when you were bewitched after those mean stocks. I don't think you should meddle with such things; they are too big for you. Let the rich fools gamble, if they want to; if they lose, they can afford it, and nobody cares but to laugh at them. Oh, John, you promised me ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... me to do what I declared three years ago I never would do, and that I have refused to do ever since—loan a man money with which to gamble or pay gambling debts. I need this money, Willett, to send home. I've been saving and sending home ever since I joined, but that's not why I won't play—and ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... says one guest, whom we shall picture as a desirable and wealthy young man from the North. "Now let's do something. Do you play or sing? Are you athletic? Do you go boating on the St. John's River? Do you gamble? Can you ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... became old and inactive, his Christmases grew gradually duller, until he did little more than sit out a play or two, and gamble with his courtiers, his Christmas play-money requiring a special draught upon the treasury, usually for a hundred pounds. He died on ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... not," said Teresa. "You see, nobody in his right mind wants to be a pioneer. To explore, yes; to settle rich new country with known and limited hazards, yes; but not to risk his children, his whole racial future, on a wild gamble. This group was driven into space by a conflict which just couldn't be settled at home. ...
— The Burning Bridge • Poul William Anderson
... love, but God will some day give you ten and you will have to return an hundred fold. He has given the ten to Gregory Goodloe, and now is the night of his despair, but his morning will dawn. You can't dance down and drink down and gamble down and lust down a man like that. He can bide his time until his sheep come to the fold to be fed and warmed ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... don't know what he did with them. All the margin there was in it for me was the literary exercise which in value hardly covered the cost of the ink. Perhaps he had married each one of the women and had killed them off, because he enjoyed the excitement of courtship's gamble more than the sure thing of matrimony. If so, I was undoubtedly an accomplice, although entirely innocent. A jury, however, might not take that comfortable view of it, if a handwriting expert were called and took seven weeks to tell them his story. They would ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... began to beam. "He's a sure-enough go-getter, Clay is, every jump of the road. I'd follow his dust any day of the week. You don't never need to think he's any shorthorn cattleman, for he ain't. He's the livest proposition that ever come out of Graham County. You can ce'tainly gamble on that." ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... attract a substantial body of loyal readers, but in the meantime there was, if John would forgive the gross commercialism of the expression, "no immediate money in him." Nevertheless, Mr. Jannissary was prepared to gamble on John's future. Even if he should never make enough to cover the expense of publishing John's book, he would still feel compensated for his loss merely through having introduced the world to so excellent a novel. Idealism was not very popular, he said, but thank God he was an ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... his shoulder-blades. And the go-fever which is more real than many doctors' diseases, waked and raged, urging him who loved Maisie beyond anything in the world, to go away and taste the old hot, unregenerate life again,—to scuffle, swear, gamble, and love light loves with his fellows; to take ship and know the sea once more, and by her beget pictures; to talk to Binat among the sands of Port Said while Yellow Tina mixed the drinks; to hear the crackle of musketry, and ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... the fact is I'm over age, but I'll gamble I can pack a gun an' shoot as straight an' eat as much as ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... no help but in fighting fire with fire. They are the only conservative party, because they are the only one based on an enduring principle, the only one that is not willing to pawn to-morrow for the means to gamble with to-day. They have no hostility to the South, but a determined one to doctrines of whose ruinous tendency every day more and more ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... you gamble on that—and the lightnin's a fool to us!" shouted Dollops in reply. "Let her have it, Gov'nor! Bust the bloomin' tank. Give her her head; give her her feet; give her her blessed merry-thought if she wants ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... Mrs. Atterson finally agreed. "Go ahead—if it won't cost much more than what you say to get the corn in. I understand it's a gamble, and I'm taking a gambler's chance. If the river rises and floods the corn in June, or July, then we get ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... flag, I know I'd have run it up in triumph. The constable stood up in the skiff, and paled the glory of the day with the vividness of his language. Also, he wailed for a gun. You see, that was another gamble we had taken. ...
— The Road • Jack London
... deposited here with a sub-conscious command to remain in the general area. There had been a slight element of risk in leaving him alone, armed only with the crude weapons he could manipulate, but that was part of the gamble. ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... checked by Fletcher. "I'm not doing it for a gamble," he said, curtly. "Please keep your money in your pockets, or the match ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... desire to touch him, to swear eternal fealty to him—until one looks into his pale eyes, eyes almost milky in their paleness—and gets the merest hint of the thoughts which actuate him. If he has a failing I did not find it. He does not drink, gamble...." ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... the group and at life in general, while the snow melted upon his broad shoulders and trickled in little, hurrying drops down to the nearest jumping-off place. "Come, drownd your sorrer," Bill advised amiably. "Nobody said nothing but Sammy, and I'll gamble he wishes he hadn't, now." If his counsel was vicious, his smile was engaging—which does not, in this instance, mean that it ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... This little piece of land where the old Indian woman had lived and brought up her boy, was rich and valuable. It was therefore coveted by the white man. At first men had said: "She will die soon; the boy will then sell the hut for a song, gamble off the money, and then go the way of all who are stained with the dark and tawny blood of the savage—death in a ditch from some unknown rifle, or death by the fever in the new Reservation." But the old woman still lived on; and the boy, by his industry, sobriety, duty and devotion to his ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... it to any other supercargo than Timar, who would run away with the money, and drink and gamble till ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... scandalized Captain-General. "Such an outrage shall never be perpetrated while I govern! To close the schools in order to gamble! Man, man, I'll resign first!" ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... influences. A true mother's influence should last long after she is at rest. Said Thomas H. Benton: "My mother asked me never to use tobacco; I have never touched it from that time to the present day. She asked me not to gamble, and I have never gambled, and I cannot tell who is losing in games that are being played. She admonished me, too, against hard drinking, and whatever capacity for endurance I have at present, and whatever usefulness I may have attained in life, I have attributed to having complied ...
— Dew Drops, Vol. 37, No. 10, March 8, 1914 • Various
... wildcatter. Canadians have too often wakened up only at the wildcat stage, and British capital has come in to reorganize inflated and collapsed properties on a purely investment basis. The American pioneer does nothing on an investment basis. He goes in on a wild and rampant dare-devil gamble. If he loses—as lose he often does—he takes his medicine and never whines. If he wins, the ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... you'd want me to have money so that you could gamble it away. You would even help me to get the money for that purpose . . . ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... a word out of school; ha, ha! Let's drink, gents. Gamble? Lord bless you, it's common as dish-water down there—I've played euchre for hours with old Tom Benton, Harry Clay and Gen. Scott, ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... trap is almost always some metaphor or comparison the concrete aspect of which is turned against him. You may remember the dialogue between a mother and her son in the Faux Bonshommes: "My dear boy, gambling on 'Change is very risky. You win one day and lose the next."—"Well, then, I will gamble only every other day." In the same play too we find the following edifying conversation between two company-promoters: "Is this a very honourable thing we are doing? These unfortunate shareholders, you see, we are taking the money out of their very pockets...."—"Well, out of what do ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... head shook. "I'm far from sure. It's a wild gamble at best, but we can't be any worse off than we are now. If the priests win out, we're sunk and no mistake about it; but there's a fighting chance my idea could ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... I am quite ready to be grateful for a beneficent change, and I have again and again made light of the wailings of persons who persist in chattering about the good old times. But I am talking now about the spirit of the gambler; and I cannot say that the human propensity to gamble has in any way died out. Its manifestations may in some respects be more decorous than they used to be; but the deep, masterful, subtle tendency is there, and its force is by no means diminished by the ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... had referred to the subject of gambling since the day they had gone up to the Dents de Loup together. She wondered if he had spoken deliberately, intending to remind her of the fact that, since she had refused to marry him, he was perfectly free to gamble if he chose. Yet he had spoken so casually, apparently quite without arriere pensee that it almost appeared as though the memory of that day upon the mountain had been wiped out of his mind. He seemed unconscious ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... their heads, sweeping them from their palaces to the prison and the guillotine, was only gathering very slowly in the dim horizon of squalid, starving Paris: for the next half-dozen years they would still dance and gamble, fight and flirt, surround a tottering throne, and hoodwink a weak monarch. The Fates' avenging sword still rested in its sheath; the relentless, ceaseless wheel still bore them up in their whirl of pleasure; the downward movement ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... and was severely punished by a long prison term. But the members of the all-powerful propertied class could contract to deliver stocks which they did not own or which were non-existent, or they could gamble in produce often not yet out of the ground, and the law saw no ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... you have to spend; to grow a crop, you have to plant the seed. Here's where you plunge—it is a gamble, a bet on the seed versus the eternal cussedness of things. It's you against the chances of a crop. If the drought comes, or the flood, or the chinch-bug, or the brown-tailed moth, you may find ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... rule so high nowadays, and the catches are occasionally so large (the other day a steam drifter brought in over 200 pounds worth of fish to Grimsby as the result of one night's fishing), that the great Martinmas fishing of the east coast has become a gamble in which fortunes may be made and lost. Many a boat earns over 2000 pounds from October to December. A lucky skipper may take 200 pounds for his share of the home fishing alone. But such figures would have sounded fantastic in FitzGerald's ...
— Edward FitzGerald and "Posh" - "Herring Merchants" • James Blyth
... out here. An' your father's the man to deal it. There'll be dog-goned little wheat burned in this valley, you can gamble ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... I'll pause right yere for the double purpose of takin' a drink an' sympathisin' with you a whole lot in not knowin' the Colonel. You nacherally ain't as acootely aware of the fact as I be, but you can gamble a bloo stack that not knowin' Colonel Sterett borders on a deeprivation. He is shore wise, the Colonel is, an' when it comes to bein' fully informed on every p'int, from the valyoo of queensup before the draw to the political effect of the Declaration ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... the late publications that treat of Irish interests in general, and none of them are of first-rate importance. Mr. Gamble's "Travels in Ireland" are of a very ordinary description, low scenes and low humour making up the principal part of the narrative. There are readers, however, whom it will amuse; and the reading market becomes more and more extensive, and ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... as some among the sailors were hinting at a mutiny for spirits, and our last case of Gamble's meat was opened for the sick, our look-out on the jury-mast gave the welcome note of 'Land!' and soon, to us on deck, the heights of St. Helena rose above the sea. Towed in by friendly aid, here we are, then, precious Emily, refitting: and, as it must be a week yet before we can be ready, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... intending to stop. But instead of quitting the place there and then, I was fool enough to argue the position out solemnly to myself, with the result that I eventually decided the whole affair from beginning to end to be entirely of the nature of a gamble, and naturally felt bound to test whether the luck was going to ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... "I'll gamble a sizable sum on her artistic future. The matter will be arranged on a business basis. I shall lend her the money, and she shall ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... made into biscuits: these are pricked with holes, dried and baked. They can be eaten just as they are, or made into a porridge, with from twenty to thirty times their weight of water. They were to be bought at Gamble's, ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... Lottie, "that will not satisfy me. A thing is either right or wrong. If you can prove to me that a quiet game of cards is wrong, I won't play any more—at least I ought not," she added hastily. "Because some vulgar and fast people gamble with them is nothing. You will take a sleigh-ride with us to-morrow, and yet loud jockeys bet and gamble over ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... of prey. "Uncle Gabriel!" she almost shrieked, "if you don't trust Ephraim, then take your money back again... it's only because you are our mother's brother that we accept it from you at all.... Ephraim shall repay you to the last farthing.... Ephraim doesn't gamble... you sha 'n't lose a single penny ...
— A Ghetto Violet - From "Christian and Leah" • Leopold Kompert
... killed—'cause people ain't doin right. Some don't treat the others right. No'm they never did. They used to threaten em and take 'em out in cars and beat 'em up, just for disputin' their word or not paying 'em and de lack. The white man has cheated a heap because we was ignorant and black. They gamble on the cotton and take might' near all of it for the cheap grub they let out to make de crop on. Conditions are better but a heap of the young black and white too deblish lazy to work. Some of dem get killed out goin' on ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... the brother of a marquis shouldn't turn thief as well as anybody else. They say he hasn't got anything of his own;—and I suppose that is what makes men steal other people's property. Peers go into trade, and peeresses gamble on the Stock Exchange. Peers become bankrupt, and the sons of peers run away;—just like other men. I don't see why all enterprises should not be open to them. But to think of that little purring cat, Lady Eustace, having been so very—very clever! ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... a certain sporting set of theatrical men who are very dangerous companions. Their daily work is exciting, and when they want change they often gamble, because that is the only form of excitement which is keener than the stir and tumult of the theatre. When Devine won three hundred pounds on one Derby he was a lost man. He pitted his wits against the bookmakers'; ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... destroyed, so long as those delicate fore-legs remained sound. These were the ethics that obtained at Woodview, and within the last few days showed signs of adoption by the little town and not a few of the farmers, grown tired of seeing their crops rotting on the hill-sides. The fever of the gamble was in eruption, breaking out in unexpected places—the station-master, the porters, the flymen, all had their bit on, and notwithstanding the enormous favouritism of two other horses in the race—Prisoner and Stoke Newington—Silver Braid ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... ravelins, stockades, and all that, than any of them did; and he worked with a right goodwill in fixing that battery all right. I have always thought it was a pity Porter did not leave him in command there with Gamble. That would have settled all the question about his punishment. We should have kept the islands, and at this moment we should have one station in the Pacific Ocean. Our French friends, too, when they ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... safe gamble that he will be out at Stanwick in the morning looking over those places he has neglected heretofore," laughed Ashton-Kirk, as the driver slammed the door shut after them and started toward the ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... old squatter drinks and gambles; his son will drink less, gamble more—though it was not a young man who recently lost L40,000 in a night's sitting at a club in Melbourne—and lead a wanton life; but he will probably have the sense to educate his children thoroughly, instead of taking them away from school at seventeen, as was done with himself; and ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... seen why it was that an enlisted man often went for months without being able to draw his pay. This meant not only a hardship to him while he was without money, but, it also followed that when he got it he had a greater amount than he could possibly need, and was more than apt to gamble or drink away his sudden accession of wealth. We always tried to make a man who had drawn a lot of back pay deposit it or send it home. Mr. Harlow, the Y.M.C.A. secretary attached to the regiment, helped us a great deal in getting the money transferred to the United States. The men, ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... called Fortune. Most men gamble with her, and gain all, and lose all, as her wheel rolls. But do thou leave as unlawful these winnings, and deal with Cause and Effect, the chancellors of God. In the Will work and acquire, and thou hast chained the wheel ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... here and Greeleville. In da Gamble's Bible is my age. Don't know my age. Pretty much know how old, I bout 90. I wuz little girl when ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... lowest classes, unemployed and listless, lie basking in the sun like lizards; and unregarded children,—every heavy glance of their young eyes full of desperation and stony depravity, and their throats hoarse with cursing,—gamble, and fight, and snarl, and sleep, hour after hour, clashing their bruised centesimi upon the marble ledges of the church porch. And the images of Christ and His angels ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... say Preblesham's report was particularly enlightening, but it at least squelched any notion the Grass might be dying of itself. I did not expect any great results from the scientists' expedition, but I felt it worth a gamble. In the meantime I dismissed the lost continent from my mind and ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... Nucingen did not gamble, Nucingen did not patronize the Arts, Nucingen had no hobby; thus he flung himself into his passion for Esther with a headlong blindness, on which ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... witty," answered his son. "Astrardente did not gamble; he had no vices of late. He was kind to ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... was something gallant and romantic in this wild invasion: a few hundred men, with no commissariat and insufficient clothing, with enough ammunition and guns for only the merest flurry of battle, doing this unbelievable gamble with Fate—challenging a republic of fighting men with well-stocked arsenals and capable artillery, with ample sources of supply, with command of railways and communications. It was certainly magnificent; ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... by which a few exploit social disorganization to their own ends. In the degree to which institutions fail to function, the unscrupulous journalist can fish in troubled waters, and the conscientious one must gamble with uncertainties. ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... indefinable air of manliness, which indicated that it would not do to go too far with him. There was a point, as all his friends knew, where his forbearance gave way and he sternly asserted his rights. He was not so popular in camp as some, because he declined to drink or gamble, and, despite the rough circumstances in which he found himself placed, was resolved ...
— The Young Explorer • Horatio Alger
... is, in the first place, all a gamble. The pearl merchants buy the oysters as I bought my mussels, by the lump and as a chance, based on the law of average product. They rot the oysters as you do the mussels. The smell is the same: and many other things are the same. For instance, it is almost impossible to keep the diver ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... newcomers and have many underhanded ways of expressing their antagonism. Of course, if these settlers are merely tenants and the region shows distinct signs that a number of city pioneers are about to buy property there, it may be a gamble worth taking, since one can always buy property cheaper before a boom than after it has set in. Also, these settlements are frequently located in the most beautiful sections of the country. Some of the houses are quaint ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... fresh kegs and a continual scuffle of fighters over cheating at cards. No marvel the second officer flogged and carved at the knaves like an African slaver. The first night the whole crew set on us with drawn swords because we refused to gamble the doublets from our backs. La Chesnaye laid about with his sword and I with my rapier, till the cook rushed to our rescue with a kettle of lye. After that we escaped to the deck of the ship and locked ourselves inside Ben ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... siege of Schweidnitz, where Frederick was present in person. He seems to have lived a rather free-and-easy life during his term of office, kept shockingly late hours, and learned, among other things, to gamble,—a fact for which Herr Stahr thinks it needful to account in a high philosophical fashion. We prefer to think that there are some motives to which remarkable men are liable in common with the ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... straight and square to the last day of our lives. However, the wind died down a bit next day, and we both felt a lot better—better in body and worse in mind—as often happens. Before we got to Melbourne we could eat and drink, smoke and gamble, and were quite ourselves again. We'd laid it out to have a reg'lar good month of it in town, takin' it easy, and stopping nice and quiet at a good hotel, havin' some reasonable pleasure. Why shouldn't we see a little life? We'd got the cash, and we'd earned that pretty ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... can get a little sleep and move early in the morning. I'll have to report this thing in person at Walsh, but before I do I want to know if Hank Rowan was really killed at Stony Crossing. If we find him there as Rutter said, you can gamble that trouble has camped in our dooryard for a lengthy stay. And it might be a good idea for you to give your men a gentle hint to keep their mouths closed about this affair—all of it. There's a slim chance at the best of finding that gold, even if ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... only real natural-born gamblers in the world. Take a man that seems to be one and it's only because he's got a big streak of woman in him, even if it don't show any other way. Men, of course, will gamble for the fun of it; but it ain't ever funny to a woman, not even when she wins. It brings out the natural wolf in her like nothing else does. It was being proved this night all you'd want to see anything proved. ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... the taunt. "Asa Worthen likes care taken of his ship," he said, half to himself. "I'm thinking he would not think well of this.... He's not a man to gamble...." ...
— All the Brothers Were Valiant • Ben Ames Williams
... always commit some blunder in the moment of success! To the death! This child would gamble away his life as if it ...
— Vautrin • Honore de Balzac
... you, I had plenty of money. You pretended to love me and I was fool enough to accept your love. I let you have money. I had a good, comfortable home, and now where am I? You have squandered every penny on the races. You don't know how to gamble, and yet you gamble away every cent you get. You do not come home when you have a stake and say, 'Here, my dear, is a hundred or two for you.' No, no, you come in and dole me out a few stamps and say, 'Make yourself ...
— Cad Metti, The Female Detective Strategist - Dudie Dunne Again in the Field • Harlan Page Halsey
... angry at being rebuked by an ignorant ruffianly gaucho, who like most of his kind would tell lies, gamble, cheat, fight, steal, and do other naughty things without a qualm. Besides, it struck me as funny to hear the golden plover, which I wanted for the table, called "God's little birds," just as if they were wrens or swallows or humming- birds, ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... without doubt many savages. Still, few readers will suppose there was much reason to boast of the elevation of women, or the presence of much refined "sentiment" between the sexes! As long as women do all the drudgery of house and field work, while their lazy husbands drink and gamble; as long as they are liable (and their children too) to be sold or put on the hazard of a cast of the dice; as long as they are themselves ferocious enough to go out to battle with their husbands; I presume you will think ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... Mexicans used to travel hundreds of miles, and bring their money with them in order to squander it at their favorite game of monte. Not only this fact is true, but men will often sell themselves into the slavery of debt in order to satisfy their craving desire to gamble. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... be on the look-out for a man answering to my description. If I could leave behind in Berlin a really good false clue, it was just possible that Clubfoot might follow it up before taking general dispositions to secure my arrest if that clue failed. I decided I must gamble on this hypothesis. ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... "Gamble. I'm in the upper brackets, though. As I say: some of us have the knack. I doubt if your brother does, though. After nine years he wouldn't still be working the Atlas ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... trenches. Some of them were the bodies of very young men—poor boys of sixteen and seventeen from German high schools and universities who were the sons of noble and well-to- do families, had been accepted as volunteers by Prussian war-lords ruthless of human life in their desperate gamble with fate. Some of these lads were brought to the hospitals in Furnes, badly wounded. One of them carried into the convent courtyard smiled as he lay on his stretcher and spoke imperfect French very politely to Englishwomen who ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... acts, by which the Spanish nation suffers great loss of reputation among those pagans. Inasmuch as they are paid there in three yearly installments, the result is that, as soon as they have received their money, most of them gamble it away in their quarters, and then go about barefoot and naked. Many sell their arquebuses to the natives, which is a great evil. They have to go about begging alms and commit innumerable acts of meanness among the pagans themselves—who, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... Hortense, delighted. "My husband is an angel, you see, Lisbeth. He does not gamble, he goes nowhere without me; if he only could stick to work—oh, I should be too happy. Why take us on show to my father's mistress, a woman who is ruining him and is the cause of troubles that are ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... once, and the next day they removed to the most modest lodgings they could find within easy access of the gardens. Then; very warily and gently, Saint-Cyr unfolded to Pauline his new-born hopes. She was terribly alarmed at first and sobbed piteously. 'It is so wicked to gamble, Georges,' she said;—' no blessing can follow such a plan as yours. And I dare not tell papa about it.' 'It would be wicked, no doubt,' said Georges, 'to play against one's friend or one's neighbor, as they do in clubs and private circles, because in such ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... on trust and expected to live up to it. Think how it cramps one's style, not to mention limiting one's choice of real estate. A gentleman may stake his future happiness and his hope of a home on the toss of a coin, but he mustn't presume to want to see the other party to the gamble again, even if she's the only thing in the whole sweep of his horizon worth seeing. Is that fair? Where is Eternal Justice, I ask you, when ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... effect. But each woman defrauded or stripped of her property to starve would be a warning to all the rest: in a few years women would manage their property just as well as men. I believe they would manage it better. A smaller percentage of women would gamble on the Stock Exchange, the Mining Exchange, Austrian and Spanish lotteries, and horse-races; and a much smaller percentage of women would embark in desperate "business" speculations, heavy purchases of ...
— Speculations from Political Economy • C. B. Clarke
... all colors join, To gamble, riot, quarrel, and purloin; When Afric's sooty sons, a race forlorn, Play, swear, and fight, like Christians freely born; And Indians bless our civilizing merit, And get dead drunk with truly Christian spirit; When heroes, skilled in pocket-picking sleights, Of equal property and equal ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... crimson-lipped girl, With the magical smile, I would count that the gamble Were well worth the while, Not a chance would I miss, If only the prize Were a honey-bee kiss Gathered in sips From those full-ripened lips, And a love-flashing ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson
... accomplished fact, and, reflecting that the disaster did not really concern them, many of them regarded it dispassionately, even jocosely. They did not care for a lot of rich people in Boston who had been supplying Northwick with funds to gamble in stocks; it was not as if the Hatboro' bank had been wrecked, and hard-working folks had lost their deposits. They could look at the matter with an impartial eye, and in their hearts they obscurely ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... shop is a clandestine betting agency. No later than last week a concierge in the Avenue du Roule was found hanging from a tree in the Bois de Boulogne. Now, working men, servants, and junior clerks who gamble do not need to take their own lives. They move to another quarter, they disappear. But a man of position, an official whom gambling has ruined, who is overwhelmed by clamorous creditors, threatened with distraint, and on the point of being dragged before a court of justice, cannot disappear. ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... to. A gal as attractive, vivacious, and clever as you are, would have to marry—in self-defense, if for no other reason. Marriage need not interfere. It might help. With that hazard and gamble out of the way, it would allow you to expand your talents in planning, executing, and managing in ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... concerns myself and others. Take my own case: I have a ranch down there; I have my water record. I have gone on working the ranch, making improvements from year to year, and every dollar I could scrape up I put into more land. I wasn't speculating. I can gamble with any man when I have to; but this wasn't gambling. There was the land, and there was the water. The increase of value was merely a question of time. Others bought as I bought. We put our money and our years ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... that allusion had been made in the address to the popular sentiment, that men are what their mothers made them. She repelled this sentiment as an indignity to her sex. What mother, she asked, ever taught her son to drink rum, gamble, swear, smoke, and chew tobacco? The truth was, that the boy was virtually taught to regard his mother as inferior, and that it was not manly to follow her instructions. When he left the hearth-stone ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... of winter, they cannot avoid remembering, that it was by taking care of the pennies, that they were enabled so nicely to clothe themselves. The news-boys have never been taught the true value of money. They have not hesitated to gamble it away, or to spend it for segars and tobacco, and other unnecessary and hurtful things. They have been exceedingly improvident and have had no idea of laying up ...
— The Nest in the Honeysuckles, and other Stories • Various
... father!'—"I know nothing but what they say," he blurted forth; "they talk of his having lost a lot of money. I dare say it's all nonsense. I never set much store by rumour. And if he's sold the horse, well, so much the better. He won't be tempted to gamble again." ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... from the idle youth he had known at Billingsfield, trembling in the intervals of his idleness at the awful prospect of the entrance examination, and frantically attempting to master some bit of stray knowledge which might possibly be useful to him. Cornelius would hunt, would gamble, would go to the races and would give wines at college; John was to be a reading man who must avoid such things as he would avoid the devil himself, not only because he was too wretchedly poor to have any share whatever in the amusements of Cornelius ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... individuals had come from different quarters, either to witness the proceedings, or to swap their horses, their saddles, their bowie-knife, or anything; for it is while law is exercising its functions that a Texan is most anxious to swap, to cheat, to gamble, and to pick pockets and quarrel under its nose, just to show his ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... You don't mind my saying it, do you?—but there were so many people in this town who had something besides millions—amusing, well-bred, jolly people who had no end of good times, but who didn't gamble and guzzle and stuff themselves and their friends—who were not eternally hanging around other people's wives. Where ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... meeting assembled at Montgomery. J. E. Campbell being absent, Professor C. W. Boyd presided. The meeting to a certain extent was a successful one. A Thanksgiving sermon was preached by Dr. C. H. Payne. Dr. H. F. Gamble read a paper on "Science in Common School Education." The Association took high ground by adopting a resolution urging a compulsory school law. A committee consisting of C. W. Boyd, Rev. G. B. Howard, J. W. Scott, John H. Hill, and Byrd Prillerman, was appointed ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... his disdain of this comrade who had once been his mainstay. Then he sent Burt out to hunt fresh meat and engaged his other men at cards. As they now had the means to gamble, they at once became absorbed. Wilson smoked and divided his thoughtful gaze between the gamblers and the drooping figure of the girl. The morning air was keen, and she, evidently not caring to be near her captors beside the camp-fire, had sought the only sunny spot in this gloomy ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... well last night. But he could not overcome with nerve what he had lacked in capital. Five cards and many dollars oft will beat a better hand. But his dollars had been few. So had he tested again a time-tried truth, and proved it. A man should not gamble at all; that is, not when he needs to win. For then he was sure to lose. That was why they called luck ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... goopy eyes too big for her head! This parent business is too much of a gamble. If you could go pick out a nice blue-eyed, pink-and-white, ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... we should appear to disregard the laws laid down by older nations. We have tolerated what no European power would have tolerated; we have been patient with men who have put back the hand of time for centuries, who lie to our representatives daily, who butcher innocent people, who gamble with the lives of their own soldiers in order to gain a few more stars and an extra stripe, who send American property to the air in flames ...
— Cuba in War Time • Richard Harding Davis
... chance, incur the risk, incur the chance, encounter the risk, encounter the chance; stand the hazard of the die. speculate, try one's luck, set on a cast, raffle, put into a lottery, buy a pig in a poke, shuffle the cards. risk, venture, hazard, stake; ante; lay, lay a wager; make a bet, wager, bet, gamble, game, play for; play at chuck farthing. Adj. fortuitous &c. 156; unintentional, unintended; accidental; not meant; undesigned, purposed; unpremeditated &c. 612; unforeseen, uncontemplated, never thought ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... weeks after his father's death, the Heir of Linne seemed sobered, and as if he intended to lead a better life; but after a little while he forgot all about it, and began to riot and drink and gamble as hard as ever. He filled the old house with his friends, and wild revelry went on in ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... outward quietness and sobriety. Why pay for stone-work for other people to look at;—why lay out money in marble pillars and cornices, seeing that you can neither eat such things, nor drink them, nor gamble with them? But the Beargarden had the best wines—or thought that it had—and the easiest chairs, and two billiard-tables than which nothing more perfect had ever been made to stand upon legs. Hither Sir Felix wended on that January afternoon as soon as he had ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... the remotest idea of the resources at the command of the Committee, or who did not stop to think of what might have happened had Johannesburg been depleted of its armed force, and so left at the mercy of a few hundred Boers. There were always, as there will always be, men prepared for any reckless gamble, but this course was most earnestly considered time after time by the Committee when some fresh suggestion or development seemed to warrant a reconsideration of the decision already arrived at not to attempt any aggressive measures. Finally the matter ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... Maryland, announcing their arrival through the papers, and on flaming hand-bills, headed, "cash for negroes." These men were generally well dressed, and very captivating in their manners; ever ready to drink, to treat, and to gamble. The fate{356} of many a slave has depended upon the turn of a single card; and many a child has been snatched from the arms of its mothers by bargains arranged in a state ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... well. In the same month the Morning Post and the Spectator pressed for further enquiry. The October number of the National Review contained a searching criticism of the whole business and called special attention to the Stock Exchange gamble in ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... little while, another woman, whom he had known—a Mrs. Josephine Ledwell, a smart widow, who came primarily to gamble on the Board of Trade, but who began to see at once, on introduction, the charm of a flirtation with Cowperwood. She was a woman not unlike Aileen in type, a little older, not so good-looking, and of a harder, more subtle commercial type of mind. She rather interested ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... all sorts of nameless gifts. And yet," he added, as he followed Saton towards the door, "the world goes round, and the things which happened yesterday repeat themselves to-morrow. Your new science should teach you, at least, not to gamble against certainties." ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... million of livres richer in plate and china, than in the June before, when she quitted it. She acknowledged that she left behind her some creditors and some money at Aix-la-Chapelle; but at Mentz she did not want to borrow, nor had she time to gamble. The gallant ultra Romans provided everything, even to the utmost extent of her wishes; and she, on her part, could not but honour those with her company as much as possible, particularly as they required nothing else for their civilities. Such was the Empress's expression to her lady in waiting, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... a great gambler, even in those days. It was the fashion, then, to gamble. Everybody except the priests and parsons gambled, and there was a scarcity of priests and parsons in the sixties. Men would gamble their dust, and when that was gone they would gamble their worldly possessions, and when those had vanished they would gamble their clothes, and if they lost ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady
... had long ago changed into a tragic retreat. The bourgeois press madly libelled the army. Whereas, on the eve of the advance, the ruling parties told us that we were an insignificant gang and that the army had never heard of us and would not have anything to do with us, now, when the gamble of the drive had ended so disastrously, these same persons and parties laid the whole blame for its failure on our shoulders. The prisons were crowded with revolutionary workers and soldiers. All the old ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky
... loved, though even they were apt to be very naughty in the bazaar, to gamble and to toy with opium, bhang, and (alleged) brandy, to dally with houris and hearts'-delights, to use unkind measures towards the good bunnia and sowkar who had lent them monies, and to do things outside the Lines that were not known in ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... Frank, a' your uncle's follies and your cousin's fliskies, were nothing to this! Drink clean cap-out, like Sir Hildebrand; begin the blessed morning with brandy-taps like Squire Percy; rin wud among the lasses like Squire John; gamble like Richard; win souls to the Pope and the deevil, like Rashleigh; rive, rant, break the Sabbath, and do the Pope's bidding, like them a' put thegither—but merciful Providence! tak' care o' your young bluid, and ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... and a half dollars, and this was only one of many rich creeks. From '59 to '71 came twenty-five million dollars in gold from the Cariboo country. By '65 hydraulic machinery was coming in and the prospectors were flocking out; but to this day the Cariboo mines have remained a freakish gamble. Mines for which capitalists have paid hundreds of thousands have suddenly ended in barren rock. Diggings from which nuggets worth five hundred dollars have been taken have petered out after a few hundred feet. Even where the gravel merged to whitish gold quartz, the most expert engineer ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... college; it was to be the best business college in Chicago. Bean matriculated without formality and studied stenography and typewriting. Aunt Clara had been afraid that he might "get in" with a fast college set and learn to drink and smoke and gamble. It may be admitted that he wished to do just these things, but he had observed the effects of drink, his one experience with tobacco remained all too vivid, and gambling required more capital than the car fare he was usually provided with. ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... have to land a good job. I know, and everybody else knows, that clothes do count no matter what we say to the contrary. I'll bet you're some looker when you're dolled up! Please," she continued "just try it for a gamble?" ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the noon-day light the nineteenth century, in a nation claiming to be the freest and most enlightened on the face of the globe, a portion the population of fifteen States have thus agreed among themselves: "Other men shall work for us, without wages while we smoke, and drink, and gamble, and race horses, and fight. We will have their wives and daughters for concubines, and sell their children in the market with horses and pigs. If they make any objection to this arrangement, we will break them into subjection with the cow-hide and the bucking-paddle. They shall ...
— The Duty of Disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Act - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 9, An Appeal To The Legislators Of Massachusetts • Lydia Maria Child
... admitted Tim. "A bare chance. Not a chance I'd gamble on. Not when I've a bigger chance than that. You wouldn't say, weighing me up now, that I've got ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... is very tender of her. I have long lost all my colds, and the weather mends a little. I take some steel drops, and my head is pretty well. I walk when I can, but am grown very idle; and, not finishing my thing, I gamble(6) abroad and play at ombre. I shall be more careful in my physic than Mrs. Price: 'tis not a farthing matter her death, I think; and so I say no more to-night, but will read a dull book, and go ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... be one of Nature's favourite haunts, from the numbers of people who come here to worship her, especially on Bank Holidays. Those are her high festivals, when her adorers troop down, and build booths and whirligigs and circuses in her honour, and gamble, and ride donkeys, and shy sticks at cocoanuts before her. Also they partake of sandwiches and many other appropriate offerings at the shrine, and pour libations of bottled ale, and nectar, and zoedone, and ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... and bank-balance before being allowed to enter the baccarat rooms, Aristide paid his two francs and made a bee line for the tables. I am afraid Aristide was a gambler. He was never so happy as when taking chances; his whole life was a gamble, with Providence holding the bank. Before the night was over he had converted his two louis into fifty. The next day they became five hundred. By the end of a week his garments were wadded with bank notes whose value amounted to a sum so stupendous as to ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... very early next morning and proceeded to the Audience Hall to worship the God of Wealth. We all accompanied her and took part in the ceremony. During the next few days we did nothing but gamble and scramble for Her Majesty's winnings. This was all very nice in its way, until one day one of the Court ladies began to cry, and accused me of stepping on her toes in the scramble. This made ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling
... the mills, regarded austerely by little Father Roche, who had given him his first Communion—for, down in Massachusetts he had learned to wear his curly hair plastered down on his forehead, smoke bad cigars, and drink "old Bourbon," to bet and to gamble, and be a figure ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... see, sir," returned Mr. William, "that's what I say, myself. Why should a man ever go and gamble, and the like of that, and let himself down inch by inch till he can't let himself down ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... cocoa-groves, own most of the plantations up the country, and have obtained the finest site on the hill behind the town for their stately tombs. Every afternoon their carriages roll out into the country, conveying them to their substantial bungalows to smoke and gamble. They have fabulous riches in diamonds, pearls, sapphires, rubies, and emeralds. They love Malacca, and take a pride in beautifying it. They have fashioned their dwellings upon the model of those in Canton, but whereas cogent reasons compel the rich Chinaman at home to conceal ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop) |
