"Gambler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the Habitual Gambler.—His Family sharing in the Degradation, and becoming the suffering Victims of his Vices.—The Sudden Resolve to be a Man again, and remove to an unsettled Country, to begin Life anew in ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... Drake had set the example was the armament which Lord George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland, sent against Porto Rico in 1598. The ill-starred expeditions of Raleigh to Guiana in 1595 and again in 1617 belong rather to the history of exploration and colonization. Clifford, "courtier, gambler and buccaneer," having run through a great part of his very considerable fortune, had seized the opportunity offered him by the plunder of the Spanish colonies to re-coup himself; and during a period of ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... been waiting anxiously for such an opportunity, but now that it came he hesitated. He was desperately afraid of losing money. He had little of the gambler's spirit. ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... dat man has been?" he demanded, shaking a trembling finger towards Bunker's house, "he has been everything but an honest man—a faro-dealer, a crook, a gambler! He vas nothing—a bum—when his vife heard about him and come here from Boston to marry him! Dey vas boy-und-girl sveetheart, you know. And righdt avay he took her money and put it into cows, and the drought come along and killed them; and now he has nothing, not so much ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... Moore, passionately. "Why, you girl—you white-faced flower! You with your innocence and sweetness steady that damned pup! My Heavens! He was a gambler ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... money, I soon was a marked person and courted by all the gay officers of the capital. One of their number was a Major Schuvealoff. A bon vivant and gambler, was Major Schuvealoff, with the tastes of a Grand Duke. On a mission of this kind a secret agent always likes to find a man who is "fast." I knew the Major to be in the Russian pay. Kowalsky tipped me off to that. I knew that it was from him I could get everything ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... '97 when he came to the rescue of an officer, splitting the skull of an Orakzai, wounding three others, and making prisoner a fourth who sought to interfere. Thus he won promotion, and he held it after somewhat the same manner. A blunt man. A fairly good man. A very good man with the saber. A gambler, it is true—but whose affair is that? A ready eye for rustling curtains and footholds near open windows, but that is his affair again—until the woman's husband intervenes. And they say he can look after himself in such cases. At least, he lives. Behold ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... such an excess that the clubs were completely deserted, and all the young men of gambling tastes flocked here each night, sure to find lansquenet or faro, and for stakes which no public table could possibly supply. It was not alone that this life of a gambler estranged Kostalergi from his wife, but that the scandal of his infidelities had reached her also, just at the time when some vague glimmering suspicions of his utter worthlessness were breaking on her mind. The birth of a ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... exploite the Bourse, whether as a gambler in the public funds or other companies, he sagely perceives that it is time to turn to some other profession, and, providing himself with a black gown, proposes blandly to Bertrand to set up—a new religion. "Mon ami," says the ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sleeve which was turned up in place of his left arm attested with what courage he fought at Patay, at the time of that sublime charge when the heroic General de Sonis unfurled the banner of the Sacred Heart. He had been a duelist, sportsman, gambler, lover, but to those of his old companions of pleasure whom chance brought to Rome he was only a devotee who lived economically, notwithstanding the fact that he had saved the remnants of a large fortune for alms, for ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... sell them out to any one, high or low, who will pay for the privilege of exploiting them. You sell them to the rum-dealer and the dive-keeper and the gambler. You sell them to the ...
— The Machine • Upton Sinclair
... dissipated the fortune hoarded up with so much care by my parents, and yet was ashamed on account of my origin to be called by my name. Happily for me, she was fond of visiting and amusements. Otherwise, to escape from her, I might have become a gambler, or worse; but, to avoid meeting her, I remained at home—for there she seldom was. At first from ennui, but afterward from real delight in the occupation, I gave myself up to study. Reading formed my mind and heart. I became a changed being. Some months ago my father died, my ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... resort, with the same certainty that eagles are gathered together at the place of slaughter. By this the author takes a great advantage for the management of his story, particularly in its darker and more melancholy passages. The impostor, the gambler, all who live loose upon the skirts of society, or, like vermin, thrive by its corruptions, are to be found at such retreats, when they easily, and as a matter of course, mingle with those dupes, who might ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... at once. She had come on board that morning with one Ned Stratton, a brother gambler, but neither a favorite nor intimate of Jack's. From certain indications in the pair, Jack had inferred that she was some foolish or reckless creature whom "Ed" had "got on a string," and was spiriting away from her friends and family. With the abstract morality ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... drink. Many of them were evil-looking customers, in fact about as tough a lot as a man would care to see, unshaven generally, but not always, dirty, truculent and rough, insolent in manner. In our passage of the main street I saw just three decent looking people—one was evidently a gambler, one a beefy, red-faced individual who had something to do with one of the hotels, and the third was a tall man, past middle age, with a clean shaven, hawk face, a piercing, haughty, black eye, and iron gray hair. He was carefully and flawlessly dressed in a gray furred ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... alone did the crowd consist of the brawler, the gambler, the bully, and the debauchee, though these, it must be confessed, predominated. It was a grand medley of all sects and classes. The modest demeanor of the retiring, pale-browed student was contrasted with the ferocious aspect ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... covetous and grasping; he strides through the gilded halls of ambitious emperors and ministers, who go with "light hearts" to kill thousands of human beings with newly-invented infernal machines; he works havoc in the brains of the vain. The Devil shuffles the cards for the gambler, and destroys our peace whether he makes us win or lose on the turf; he sits joyfully grinning on the tops of bottles and tankards filled with alcoholic drinks; he entices us on Sundays to shut our museums and open ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... beyond their contracts, the premium on gold at the date of their purchase and would bring bankruptcy and ruin to thousands. Fluctuation, however, in the paper value of the measure of all values (gold) is detrimental to the interests of trade. It makes the man of business an involuntary gambler, for in all sales where future payment is to be made both parties speculate as to what will be the value of the currency to be paid and received. I earnestly recommend to you, then, such legislation as will insure a gradual return to specie payments and put an immediate stop to fluctuations in ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... is a great deal more hope for a drunkard or a murderer or a gambler than there is for a lazy man. I never heard of a lazy man being converted yet, though I remember talking once with a minister in the back woods of Iowa about lazy men. He was all discouraged in his efforts to convert lazy men, and ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... tossed it about for a few seconds, he swiftly holds them apart, and if his opponent can guess which hand the pebble or stone is in, he wins; if not, he loses. Immense amounts are frequently wagered in this game, for the North American Indian is an inveterate gambler. ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... the cupboard. The shield split down the middle, revealing shelves of metal boxes and packets of papers. Drew unfastened his money belt and handed it over. As he was tucking his shirt in his belt once more the gambler ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... don't believe your story, and there's an end of it. The fact of your borrowing was utterly disgraceful; it shows me that the poor boy had fallen in a trap, instead of meeting with a friend who was likely to guide and improve him. You confess yourself a gambler, and I go away with the conviction that you ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... the fault of others is easily perceived, but that of oneself difficult to perceive; a man winnows his neighbour's faults like chaff, but his own fault he hides, as a cheat hides the bad die from the gambler. ...
— The Buddhist Catechism • Henry S. Olcott
... a carriage with a notorious gambler and scoundrel named Burton. There was a trunk on behind, and they were driving towards the wharf. It is ten minutes before the boat starts for New York, and I may save ...
— Woman's Trials - or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us. • T. S. Arthur
... great people for sport and amusement and it would be difficult to imagine a more inveterate gambler. Their greatest ambition is to ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... table, and Bill, unlucky gambler, rose with an oath that would have been savage if it ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... administrative and court ceremonial which he held in horror,—the conventional phrase,—in so great horror that he never finished the period he had begun. The Nabob, for his part, finished his in unforeseen ways that were sometimes full of surprises; he was a first-rate gambler too, losing games of ecarte at five thousand francs the turn, at the club on Rue Royale, without winking. And then he was so convenient when one wanted to get rid of a picture, always ready to buy, no matter at what price. These motives of condescending amiability had been reinforced ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... combined to force him against his will into this anomalous position of gentlemanly gambler, which suited neither his temperament nor ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... hypocrite seeks not merely to cover his vices, but to gain credit for virtue. The cheat and impostor endeavor to make something out of those they may deceive. The cheat is the inferior and more mercenary, as the thimble-rig gambler; the impostor may aspire to a fortune or a ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... rector, and the sub-rector, and the almoner played at cards together, and that the rector won money from the others—the almoner had told him so—and, moreover, that the rector was the thaif of the world, and had been a gambler in his youth, and had once been kicked out of a club-house at Dublin for cheating at cards, and after that circumstance had apparently reformed and lived decently till the time when I came to the religious house with my pack, but that the sight ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... reign in 1715, leaving his throne to his great-grandson, a child of five years, Louis XV. The impoverished country was in the hands of a regent, Philippe, Duke of Orleans, whose financial undertakings were all unfortunate. John Law, the son of a Scotch banker, was an adventurer and a gambler who yet became celebrated as a financier and commercial promoter. After killing an antagonist in a duel in London, he escaped the gallows by fleeing to the Continent, where he followed gaming and at the same time ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... sis has her shortcomings," he observed, patronisingly, in that young woman's presence, "but she's no gambler; don't say it, ma, I beg of you! She only knows five rules of the game, and I judge it's cost her about three thousand dollars each to learn those. And the only one she never forgets is, 'When in ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... easy matter to lay snares for Serge. He was a gambler. She could let him have ready money to satisfy his passion. Once in the clutches of the demon of play, he would neglect his wife, and the mother might regain a portion of the ground she had lost. ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... father was driven to a gambler's grave and that her mother died of a broken heart, and that the man who caused all this wishes to break the heart of the ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... without interference from the Government. He took a number of precautions, which he admitted; and he spent a large sum of money, as he also testified, to obtain assurances which were not sufficient to have satisfied so astute a gambler; yet he made the venture. Any criminal lawyer must have begun investigation by insisting, rigorously, that no such man, in such a position, could be permitted to plead that he had taken, and pursued, such a course, without assurances which did ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... waitress employed in one of the "sporty" restaurants in New Haven, and to make the mesalliance worse, the girl was not even of respectable parents. Her father, Billy Delmore, the pool-room king, was a notorious gambler and had died in convict stripes. Fine sensation that for the yellow press. "Banker's Son Weds Convict's Daughter." So ran the "scare heads" in the newspapers. That was the last straw for Mr. Jeffries, Sr. He sternly told his son that he never wanted ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... gettin' at their sacret papers one way or the other; and at last he begins to thry the same game with us; and as he saw that Mr. Brooke was very fond of high play, and would bet any thing one offered him, the ould Count sends for a great gambler from Vienna, the greatest villain, they say, that ever touched a card. Ye may have heerd of him, tho' 'twas long ago that he lived, for he was well known in them times. He was the Baron von Breckendorf, and a great friend afterward ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... auspicious number of the months of the year. Similarly seven was perhaps lucky or sacred as being the number of the planets which gave their names to the days of the week, and three because it represented the sun, moon and earth. When a gambler stakes his money on a number such as the date of his birth or marriage, he acts on the supposition that a number which has been propitious to him once will be so again, and this appears to be a survival of the belief ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... never be able to regard Mr. Harrison with as much respect as you do. It may be ignorance, but I never could see much difference between a speculator in stocks and a gambler." ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... gambler's partner and the crowd and gave Ford elbow-room and some moral support, which did its part, in that it prevented any interference with the ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... of "the Becker Case" were these: Herman Rosenthal, a gambler of notorious reputation, one day went to District Attorney Whitman with the story that he was being hounded by the police—at the command of a certain Police Lieutenant. Rosenthal asserted that he had ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... The gambler dropped his dog's-ear'd cards, The waiting-women screamed, As the light of the fire, like stains of blood, On the wild men's sabres gleamed. Then into their cups they splashed their crusts, And cursed the fool of a town, And leapt on the ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... the accumulated merit of years of toilsome and expensive worship, and when almost on the brink of the grave, venturing all upon a new-preached faith and a new-found Saviour. We have seen the abandoned gambler become a faithful and zealous preacher of the gospel. We have seen the poor giving out of their poverty help to others, poorer still. We see many Chinese Christians who were once narrow and avaricious, giving out of their hard-earned month's wages, or more, yearly, to help the church's work. ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... the gambler never owns his winnings. The man who accumulates by sharp practices or by undue profits never owns it. Even the young person who has large fortune given him does not own it. We only own what we have rendered definite service to bound. The owning is ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... had not been for him I should have neglected my cloak business beyond repair. He handled me as a gambler's wife does her husband. He would seek me out in front of some unfinished building, at Tevkin's, or at some "boom" caf, and make me sign some checks, consult me on something or other, or wheedle me into accompanying him to my factory for an hour or two. But ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... Palestrina's mentioned by Van der Straeten; his name was Ambrosio de Cotes. He was the Maestro de Capilla of the King's Chapel at Grenada; he was of either Flemish or English birth, and, though he was a churchman, was a gambler and drunkard; he kept a mistress, who ought to have been pretty to fit her pretty name, Juana de Espinosa. Besides, De Cotes caroused miscellaneously, he ran the streets at night, in bad company, and singing bad ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... necessarily first a gambler, a votary of Chance; and the blind goddess had always been very kind to Mr. Anisty. He felt that here again she was favoring him. Maitland he had eliminated from this girl's life; Maitland had failed to keep his engagement, ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... answer to Robinson's proposal, a strapping wench came up to Booth, and, taking hold of his arm, asked him to walk aside with her; saying, "What a pox, are you such a fresh cull that you do not know this fellow? why, he is a gambler, and committed for cheating at play. There is not such a pickpocket in the whole quad."[Footnote: A cant word ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... prominent in the politics of the State; but those who knew the man, and I was one of those, had every reason to believe that he was an honest man, and that he was the personification of integrity. He was neither a speculator nor a gambler. Even after the defalcation was made known there was nothing to indicate that any part of the money had been appropriated to his own use. Yet the money had mysteriously disappeared. Where was it? Who had it? These were questions the people of the State desired to have answered, but ...
— The Facts of Reconstruction • John R. Lynch
... was a conception of the droll irony of a situation in which so fervid a hater of millionaires should be working, indirectly at least, for the prosperity of a man like Dryfoos, who, as March understood, had got his money together out of every gambler's chance in speculation, and all a schemer's thrift from the error and need of others. The situation was not more incongruous, however, than all the rest of the 'Every Other Week' affair. It seemed to him that there were no crazy fortuities ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... confidence was shared by the German Ambassador, his most trusted mentor. We can hardly suppose that the Austrian Minister shut his eyes altogether to the possibility of a struggle with the Slav world. Having Germany as his partner, however, he determined, with the self-possession of a fearless gambler, to proceed with ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... the resource of war. It will be a most dangerous experiment. Defeat, or even the alternation of success and failure, which is the ordinary course of war, would be fatal to him; but brilliant success might, as I have said before, establish him. It would be playing double or quits. He is by nature a gambler. His self-confidence, his reliance, not only on himself, but on his fortune, exceeds even that of his uncle. He believes himself to have a great military genius. He certainly planned war a year ago. I do not believe that he has abandoned it now, ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... Suicide!—the gambler's end! Already the Potter's Field claims many of these victims. The successful murderers and thugs linger in the dark shadows of Dupont Street. They crowd Murderer's Alley, Dunbar's ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... abroad; he took a great fancy to me, and I left my father's house (which had grown insufferable) to live with him. He had been a very handsome man—a gay spendthrift; he had got through his fortune, and now lived on his wits—he was a professed gambler. His easy temper, his lively humour, fascinated me; he knew the world well; and, like all gamblers, was generous when the dice were lucky,—which, to tell you the truth, they generally were, with ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... a great gambler. Bad fortune he bears with the greatest equanimity. You never hear of his committing suicide after being ruined at play; he just goes away, and sets to work to earn enough for a fresh stake. The government have tried to put down gambling in the State of Mexico, but not with much ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... not for us to blame him who lived under his roof and profited by his generosity. He was a benefactor to us in our trouble—for we were poor, too." But here Erle checked himself abruptly, for he did not care to tell Fern that his father had been a gambler, and had squandered all his wife's property; but he remembered almost as vividly as though it were yesterday, when he was playing in their miserable lodgings at Naples, after his father's death—how a grave, stern-faced man came into the room and sat ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... at the canal. Nothing in the whole of Van Buren's history exhibits a more foolish disregard of public sentiment, or led to a greater disaster. But the Regency, blinded by its overwhelming victory at the last election, was prepared to pay a gambler's price for power, and, in the twinkling of an eye, before the Assembly knew what had happened, the Senate removed Clinton from the office of canal commissioner, only three votes being recorded for him. ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... "Siegfried, and spare money! Why, what an innocent you are! If he had money at all, he would leave it on the card-table, he is such a gambler. The fact is, he is on such a sandbank, just at present, that it will be fortunate for him if his barque ever ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... say a word or two. On finding himself the uncontrolled inheritor of his father's ill-gotten wealth, he accelerated his progress in drunkenness and profligacy. He took to the turf, became a gambler and spendthrift, and went backwards in squandering his fortune through as unprincipled a course as his father pursued in making it. From step to step he came down until nothing was left. Having no manly ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... stood two men, each himself a stake in the game, and while the dice were still being tossed for their very bones, they talked of—human material! They uttered those ruthless, shameful words without a shadow of indignation, as though it were natural for their living bodies to be no more than a gambler's chips in the hands of men who arrogated to themselves the right to play the game of gods. Without hesitating they laid their one, irrevocable life at the feet of a power that could not prove whether it had known how to place the stakes rightly except by their dead bodies. And ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... stood, she went on, to avoid the awkward silence: "Those horrid industrials! I am sure Uncle Brome will lose everything in them. He's a born gambler. Mr. Carson has got him interested in these ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... of the four men that had stood by me most in my time; now one was a miser and smuggler, and got himself hung; and one was a thief, and died of a split wishbone, on what he called "a throne;" and one was a fighter and gambler and poet, and he had a heavy fist, and he turned remorseful into a Burmese monk; and one was Stevey Todd. And Madge Pemberton thought at one time I was all right, but she was wrong there. And I thought how here was Andrew and another Madge, and here ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... do not stand upon trifles in the way of their flirtations, but extract fresh reasons for glorifying the object of their preference, from facts which the unwary lay before them by way of warnings. If he is a spendthrift, it is so noble to be free and generous; if he is a gambler, he is of such a fine unsuspecting disposition, he is only the dupe of the designing. In short, whatever you say to put them on their guard, only makes them expose themselves the more; and, therefore, I made no further attempt to open the eyes of Miss ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... tell me about his luck in the big pools, when the men bet on the day's run; and I'm afraid I rather revelled in seeing a row on deck one evening, when one man accused another of being a cheat and a professional gambler, and almost cried about some money he'd lost. If I had been the first man, I wouldn't have trusted the other in the beginning, because he had fat lips, greasy black curls, and wicked eyes so close together you felt they might run into one, if he winked ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... still close enough under the lee of the Russians to permit of their reaching the shelter of its batteries without very serious loss, should they elect to make the attempt. It was a moment demanding both boldness and astuteness of action, and, gambler-like, Togo resolved to risk everything upon a single throw. Instead of making the signal to close with the enemy and immediately bring him to battle, the Admiral signalled, "Change course sixteen points east," ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... from the blow. In the same year he was appointed professor of mathematics at the lycee of Lyons. His small treatise, Considerations sur la theorie mathematique du jeu, which demonstrated that the chances of play are decidedly against the habitual gambler, published in 1802, brought him under the notice of J. B. J. Delambre, whose recommendation obtained for him the Lyons appointment, and afterwards (1804) a subordinate position in the polytechnic school at Paris, where he was elected ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... curious," said Blucher, composedly, stroking his long white mustache—"that was really curious. Leesten had never before handled a card; he did not know the game, and yet he won from such an old gambler as I am two hundred louis d'ors in the course of a few hours. Leesten won the money that was to pay for the carriage- horses, and you may give him thanks for being compelled to drive for six months longer ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... other hand, Chesterfield, whom George II. called 'a tea-table scoundrel,' was an inveterate gambler, he mistook vice for virtue, practised dissimulation as an art, and studied men's weaknesses in order that he might flatter them. One of the chief ends of man, in the Earl's opinion, was to shine in society; we need not therefore ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... perhaps the most skilful of all those of Napoleon. Everything was done accurately and rapidly, and without throwing away chances. Some of his later campaigns, though equally brilliant, show him acting more with the gambler's spirit, running unnecessary risks with almost a blind reliance upon his star, in the hope of obtaining results ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... their trainer, but his own; he interfered in their management, and would have things his own way; he would command every thing, except success, which was beyond his power, and in missing that he lost all. Otherwise, he was lucky as a mere gambler. His audacity, and the funds he always had at his disposal, carried him triumphantly, where many a more prudent but less wealthy player withdrew from the contest. Games of skill had no attraction for him, but at an earlier date in his career he had been a terror to the ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... shameless inheritance-chaser, despoiler of pupillary funds, gambler at the bourse, who whines like a whipped dog ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... inculcates, against the violation of justice, on the part of the government, towards the humblest individual, in the smallest matter affecting his civil rights, his property, liberty, or life. And such is the contrast, which the trial by jury presents, to that gambler's and robber's rule, that the majority have a right, by virtue of their superior numbers, and without regard to justice, to dispose at pleasure of the property and persons of all bodies of ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... of slang dictionaries, he pushed his my everywhere, not hoping for something to turn up, but determined that his own cleverness should contrive that desirable arrival. When he met Anna Gessner at Ascot a year ago, the propitious moment seemed at hand. "The girl is a gambler to her very boots," he told himself, while he reflected that a seat upon the box of such a family coach would certainly make his fortune. Willy Forrest resolved to secure such a seat without a moment's ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... slothful to the scorn of money-bags and the passion for renown. Lo! in that mocking dance of death called the Progress of the Age, one who did not find Enough in a sovereign's revenue, and seeks The Little More as a gambler on the turf by the advice of blacklegs! Lo! another, with lands wider than his greatest ancestors ever possessed, must still go in for The Little More, adding acre to acre, heaping debt upon debt! Lo! a third, whose name, ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Daggett [that was the tinhorn] do the throwing?" says Aggy. "He's a new chum, and we fellers always feel they have the luck. You may think this is all foolish superstition," says he, turning to the gambler, "but I tell you, honest, there's a good deal in it," and that was the second true thing Ag ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... dreaminess that had led him upon lonely rambles among the hills rather eccentric in a boy of seventeen; Edgar Poe, the quiet, the gentlemanly, the immaculately neat, the scholarly, the poetic, had been a spendthrift and a reckless gambler. His debts, for a boy of his age, were astounding. No one was more amazed at the sum of them than Edgar himself. He had always had the lordly indifference to money, and the contempt for keeping account of it, that was the natural result ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... because no Judge would admit as evidence something you declared you had been told. Besides, I'll own that it's an unlikely tale. I was not at or near the factory that night, but I had done some business with Fred Hulton. The lad was a gambler and I'd lent him money; as a matter of fact, I never got it all back. However, a man who now and then acted as my agent learned something about the customs of the factory and went there the night he met Featherstone. But he ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... wondered how any man in the North could know her name. He glanced coolly from face to face to note any vagrant signs of the game that was being played upon him, but beyond a healthy curiosity the faces betrayed nothing. Then he turned to the gambler and ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... Alamo. This man," pointing to the prisoner, "is a gambler who killed a man yesterday. We hunted him here, tried him an hour ago, and found him guilty. The last man we hung here, three years ago, asked for a parson. We brought him the man who used to live where we found ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... makes and never under any circumstances give your partner misinformation; this is the most vital rule there is, and any one who disregards it is detested at the bridge table. No matter how great the temptation to make a gambler's bid, you are in honor bound ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... I to woman be a friend? I deal with man, and when I can Reclaim with interest all I lend. Who but a witless gambler plays For farthing stakes these golden days? No, woman—woman—woman— Must only play ...
— Twenty • Stella Benson
... a gambler, left the table, picked the little stocking up carefully, looked at it tenderly, and when he laid it down another twenty had gone into the toe to keep company with the one placed there ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... trance He lay, content that unthrift Circumstance Should plough for him the stony field of Chance. Yea, gathering crops whose worth no man might tell, He staked his life on a game of Buy-and-Sell, And turned each field into a gambler's hell. Aye, as each year began, My farmer to the neighboring city ran, Passed with a mournful anxious face Into the banker's inner place; Parleyed, excused, pleaded for longer grace, Railed at the drought, the worm, the rust, the grass, Protested ne'er again 'twould come ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... had chosen this hazardous mode of conveyance at night, as the coach crept by his place of concealment in the wayside brush, to elude the sheriff of Monterey County and his posse, who were after him. He had not made himself known to his fellow-passengers, as they already knew him as a gambler, an outlaw, and a desperado; he deemed it unwise to present himself in his newer reputation of a man who had just slain a brother gambler in a quarrel, and for whom a reward was offered. He slipped from the axle as the stage-coach swirled past the brushing branches of ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... of Lincoln, was the son of a Presbyterian minister, the Rev. John Berry, who lived on Rock Creek, five miles from New Salem. The son had strayed from the footsteps of the father, for he was a hard drinker, a gambler, a fighter, and "a very wicked young man." Lincoln cannot in truth be said to have chosen such a partner, but rather to have accepted him from the force of circumstances. It required only a little time to ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... Marrable was member for his county in the reigns of George I. and George II., and enjoyed a lucrative confidence with Walpole. Then there came a blustering, roystering Sir Thomas, who, together with a fine man and gambler as a heir, brought the property to rather a low ebb; so that when Sir Gregory, the grandfather of our Miss Marrable, came to the title in the early days of George III. he was not a rich man. His two sons, another Sir Gregory and a General Marrable, ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... the idea sweeping him off his feet. "By God, I make one more effort; just one more effort! And if that fails, I give it up; it shall be the last! This time I swear it shall be the last. Yes, I go, I demand an interview. It is my right." He was as full of hope now as he had ever been. As a gambler eagerly stakes his last bet, so Von Barwig hastened to finish dressing and go to her, to make his ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... to himself for the portrait of Valere. The wild and fascinating excitement of play, the gambler's exultation when he is successful, his furious curses on his bad luck when he loses, his superstitious veneration for his winnings, are drawn from the life. When Fortune smiles, Valere neglects Angelique, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... Marquess of Lorne," he began, "rode with Prince Rupert of the Rhine. He was a notorious gambler, a loose liver, and a cynic. And he even threw the family Luck across the ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... the strange shadow made by the hair seemed to find a reflex from within. Perhaps the reckless adventurer, the careless gambler with life and liberty, saw through the walls of this squalid room, across the wide, ice-bound river, and beyond even the gloomy pile of buildings opposite, a cool, shady garden at Richmond, a velvety lawn sweeping down ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... lot against double the shares?" Jowett asked sharply, his face flushed with eager pleasure. He was a born gambler. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... his good fortune as a gambler, Virginie came to look upon him with favor. Pierre was quite out of the race and Adolphe's affection was reciprocated as much as his heart could desire. But with his good fortune in love came all the suffering, all the torture, the suspicions that tear the hearts of us men when we set our hopes upon ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... abstraction dropped like a cloak discarded. He fully realized, as I did, that his unique reputation was at stake. I wondered, as I had wondered at the Guest House, whether, in undertaking to clear Colin Camber, he had acted upon sheer conviction, or, embittered by the death of his client, had taken a gambler's chance. It was unlike him to do so. But now beyond reach of that charm of manner which Colin Camber possessed, and discounting the pathetic sweetness of his girl-wife, I realized how black was ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... variations. Each nut tree is a new individual but with a family inheritance strongly enough marked to make the planting of seedlings, when done in large quantities, from the best parents, a sort of gamble in which the percentage is in favor of the gambler—which is, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... to the question: what is leisure? I discover (he said) that most men do something: (10) for instance, the dice player, (11) the gambler, the buffoon, do something, but these have leisure; they can, if they like, turn and do something better; but nobody has leisure to turn from the better to the worse, and if he does so turn, when he has no leisure, he does ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... is in essence the belief of the true gambler—not the man who backs his skill at cards, or his knowledge of racing against his rival—but who goes to the tables at Monte Carlo backing runs of good or ill luck. It has been defined as a belief in the imagined tendencies of chance to produce events continuously favourable ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... ON BAIL: A gambler's wife who has shared his illegal gains must help him pay his debt to the law; their son, ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... voice seemed to come from a stateroom behind the gambler. Towering with rage, he rushed to the door and tried to open it. Failing in that, he demanded admittance in loud angry tones, at the same time shaking the door violently, and kicking against it with a force that seemed likely to break in ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... mistress of a Russian Grand Duke. She exacted a twenty thousand pound pearl tiara from him as the price of her favours for a week or so. It would have pipped him a good deal to have found so much, and he was not in the ordinary way a gambler. He might, indeed, just have found the twenty thousand and the not slight charges of a week at an hotel with the fair creature. He must have been worth at that date five hundred thousand dollars and a little over. Well, he must needs go to the tables and lose forty ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... of course, are big words in the language of any man. But I had more than an inkling that my husband had been taking a gambler's chance to reach the end in view. And now, in that twilit shadow-huddled cubby-hole of a room, it came over me, all of a heap, that having taken the gambler's chance, we had met a fate not uncommon ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... you have to regret in a drunkard; a gambler, a man who beats you, and a black-leg, who will one day come ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... play I," said Steve aggrievedly. "I stole just one measly horse and every one's called me a horse-thief ever since. But I've played poker, lo! these many years, and no one ever called me a gambler once. The best I get is, 'Clear out, you blamed sucker. Come back when you grow a new fleece!' and when I get home the wind moans down the chimney, 'O-o-o-gh-h! wha-a-t have you do-o-one ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... reviews sent him by the press-cutting agency would prove this portrait incomplete. He noticed with a vague astonishment that the flimsy scraps of paper were trembling in his fingers like banknotes in the hands of a gambler, and he laid them down on the breakfast-table in disgust of the feminine weakness. This unmistakable proof that he had written a book, a real book, made him at once happy and uneasy. These fragments of smudged prints were his passport into a new and delightful ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... or nearly the whole of his income. His secret, well guarded as it was, need be no secret to the reader. Mr. White, who had never touched a playing-card in his life and who grew apoplectic at the sin and shame of playing the races, was an inveterate gambler. His passion was for Sunken Treasure Syndicates, formed to recover golden ingots from ships of the Spanish Armada; for companies that set forth to harness the horse-power of the sea to the services of commerce; for optimistic companies that discovered radium mines ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... exposition of the crimes of the political opposition in Pedro County. Their candidate, MacDougall, had come to the state as a "tin-horn gambler," yet now he was going around making speeches in churches, and talking about the moral sentiment of the community. "And him with a district chairman keeping three families in Pedro!" declared ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... that he mannitched to live as he did. If he had been a common man, you'd have said he was no better than a swinler. It's only rank and buth that can warrant such singularities as my master show'd. For it's no use disgysing it—the Honrabble Halgernon was a GAMBLER. For a man of wulgar family, it's the wust trade that can be—for a man of common feelinx of honesty, this profession is quite imposbil; but for a real thoroughbread genlmn, it's the esiest and most prophetable line ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Strehlenau, known as Nikolaus Lenau, the third in the group of the poets of Weltschmerz (Lord Byron is the best example in England), was born in Southern Hungary August 13, 1802. The father, a gambler and libertine, died before the boy was five years old; the mother, a high strung, passionate woman, battled with poverty for the sake of her children, of whom Nikolaus was her idol. His first impression of nature was the silent solitude and ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various |
