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Gambling   /gˈæmbəlɪŋ/  /gˈæmblɪŋ/   Listen
Gambling

noun
1.
The act of playing for stakes in the hope of winning (including the payment of a price for a chance to win a prize).  Synonyms: gaming, play.  "There was heavy play at the blackjack table"



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"Gambling" Quotes from Famous Books



... tender fashion, but he was proud of many things—proud that he, and his before him, had braved the hardships of farming among the red, rocky hills of Kenmore instead of wrenching a livelihood from the water. This capacity for tilling the soil instead of gambling in fish had made of Glenn, and a few other men, the real aristocracy of the place. Nathaniel's grandfather, with his wife and fifteen children, had been the first white settlers of Kenmore. So eager had the Indians been to have this first Glenn among ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock

... body of Terry. Broderick killed him in a duel—or was it Terry killed Broderick? I forget which. Anyhow, right opposite, where that pawnshop is, is where the Overland stages used to start in '49. And every other building that fronts on the Plaza, even this one we're in now, used to be a gambling-house in bonanza times; and, see, over yonder is the Morgue and ...
— Blix • Frank Norris

... slept. At two o'clock in the morning the lights in the gambling rooms of the Belmont and the Plaza were still flickering streams out into the desert night; weak strains of discord were being drummed out of a piano in a dance hall; the shuffling of feet smote the dead, flat silence of the night with an odd, weird resonance. ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer

... de S——-tz was one of the most extravagant and profligate subjects that Russia had acquired by the partition of Poland. After squandering away his own patrimony, he had ruined his mother and two sisters, and subsisted now entirely by gambling and borrowing. Among his associates, in similar circumstances with himself, was a Chevalier de Gausac, a French adventurer, pretending to be an emigrant from the vicinity of Toulouse. To him was communicated what had happened in the morning, and his advice was asked how to act in the ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith

... declared satisfactory and were in a stockade pen behind the barracks. Then the eldest brother, his belt heavy with good government coin, rode with the little girl toward the hotel, a rough, one-story building flanked on either side by a gambling-house. ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates

... misery was brought home to me with new force when I saw Bernardo at a gambling saloon in the company of a handsome woman of doubtful reputation. That Annunciata should have preferred this fickle man to me! My debut at San Carlo aroused great enthusiasm, and Santa, whom I saw next day in her snug heavily curtained ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various

... Jasper, which was only the inter-mountain West, and far from the golden coast of his most fervid dreams, he found that adventure and romance apparently had packed up and gone elsewhere years ahead of him. There was nothing nearer either of them in Jasper than a tame gambling-joint in the back end of a saloon, where greasy, morose sheepherders came to stake quarters on roulette and faro, where railroaders squandered away their wages, leaving the grocerymen unpaid. And there was no romance for John Mackenzie in any such ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden

... legal tender and ministers got roaring drunk, down to the Civil War, there came rolling into the town the coaches of the great plantation owners of the region, who used Fredericksburg as a headquarters for drinking, gambling, and business. Among these probably the most famous was "King" Carter, who not only owned miles upon miles of land and a thousand slaves, but was the husband ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street

... Drunkenness was everywhere. It was no uncommon thing for a hogshead of wine to be opened, and left standing in the streets, that any might drink who chose. The pirates, flush with their ill-gotten gains, spent money on gambling and kindred vices lavishly. The women who accompanied them to this lawless place were decked out with barbaric splendor in silks and jewels. On the arrival of a ship, the debauchery was unbounded. Such noted pirates as Blackbeard, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... arms of Mr. Tweet—but Tweet's hospitality demanded its price. Outfit after outfit came crawling across the desert to pitch camp somewhere along the line and begin its portion of the big work in band. There was a post office at Ragtown, twenty or more saloons, dance halls and gambling dens combined, restaurants, tent hotels, stores, and even a bank and a motion-picture show. Thousands of rough, hard-drinking, hard-fighting men thronged the mushroom town, and it resembled a mining town of California's early days. Miners and cattlemen, too, made the town headquarters, and ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins

... the hopes of individuals—on perpetually agitating the mind with unreasonable desires of gain—on clouding the understanding with superstitious ideas of chance, destiny and fate—on diverting the attention from regular industry, and promoting a universal spirit of gambling, which carries all sorts of vices into all classes of people. Whatever way we look into human affairs, we shall ever find that the bad organization of society is the cause of more disorders than could possibly arise from the natural temper of the ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 1: Curiosities of the Old Lottery • Henry M. Brooks

... wanted to see, and so by walking and occasional lifts from farmers going my way and taking advantage of every thing that promised to assist me on my way, I eventually brought up at Dodge City, Kansas, which at that time was a typical frontier city, with a great many saloons, dance halls, and gambling houses, and very little of anything else. When I arrived the town was full of cow boys from the surrounding ranches, and from Texas and other parts of the west. As Kansas was a great cattle center and ...
— The Life and Adventures of Nat Love - Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick" • Nat Love

... great need of the railroads to-day is more business, more cars, better equipments, better pay for the men and less gambling ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... The French loans connected with the war, so much puffed and praised in England at the time for the supposed spirit in which they were taken up, had in fact only ministered to the commonest and lowest gambling; and the war had never in the least been popular. "Emile Girardin," wrote Dickens on the 23rd of March, "was here yesterday, and he says that Peace is to be formally announced at Paris to-morrow amid general apathy." But the French are never wholly apathetic ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... Malay John was queer, the place he ran was queerer still. Ostensibly he conducted a dance hall, and a profitable one at that; but below the dance hall, known only to the initiated, deep down in a sub-cellar, was perhaps the most remunerative gambling joint and pipe lay-out ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... is another of the Constitutional Refinements of these times to have fetter'd, and as to every valuable purpose, silenc'd, these Debating Societies. They were at least, to say the lowest of them, far better amusements than drunkenness, gambling, or fighting. They were no useless Schools to some of our very celebrated Speakers at the Bar and in Parliament: and, what is of infinitely more importance, they contributed to the diffusion of Political Knowledge and Public Sentiment. L.] at Coachmaker's-hall, ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield

... as it is like Bunyan. Death takes the sinner by the throat, and 'hands him down stairs to the grave.' The indulgence in any sinful propensity has this downward, deathly tendency. Every lust, whether for riches or honours, for gambling, wine, or women, leads the deluded wretched votary step by step to the chambers of death. There is no hope in the dread prospect; trouble and anguish possess the spirit. Hast thou escaped, O my ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... a running horse, or two, though you are a magistrate sworn to put down gambling: you need not bet upon the race-course yourself. You may subscribe to Fishmongers' Hall, and go there without throwing the dice. You may share the profits of a roulette table, without venturing your luck. It is strange that vulgar understandings ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 360 - Vol. XIII. No. 360, Saturday, March 14, 1829 • Various

... could catch them now and then: —'Why let these gambling clans Of human Cockers, pit liege men From mart and city, dale and glen, In death-mains, but to swell and swell again Their swollen ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy

... a gambling room—The Nonpareil—and there are plenty more like it in Richmond, I can tell you," said Talbot. "Those who follow war must have various kinds of excitement. Besides, nothing is so bad that it does not have its ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... part of the well cultivated tarro-fields, which formerly surrounded Hanaruro, now lie waste. On the great market-place, horse and foot races are proceeding all day long, and give occasion to extensive gambling. The Wahuaners have as great a passion for horse-racing, as the Malays for cock-fighting, and without hesitation venture their whole stock of wealth on a race. The purchase of a horse is, indeed, the great object of their ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue

... Vauversin, with a cigarette in his mouth, twanging a guitar, and following Mademoiselle Ferrario's eyes with the obedient, kindly look of a dog! The entertainment wound up with a tombola, or auction of lottery tickets: an admirable amusement, with all the excitement of gambling, and no hope of gain to make you ashamed of your eagerness; for there, all is loss; you make haste to be out of pocket; it is a competition who shall lose most money for the benefit of M. de Vauversin and ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson

... age and size. He is one of the best shots and riders in England. He rode his horse Abracadabra, and won the famous Guttlebury steeple-chase. He has horses entered at half the races in the country (under other people's names; for the old lord is a strict hand, and will not hear of betting or gambling). He has lost and won such sums of money as my Lord George himself might be proud of. He knows all the stables, and all the jockeys, and has all the 'information,' and is a match for the best Leg at Newmarket. Nobody was ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the obese and drunken chief surrounded by fawning harpies was a shameful and disgusting one. One example is sufficient to show how the thing was done. A concession for gambling was applied for. The man who interpreted knew a smattering of 'kitchen' Kaffir, and his rendering of the 'monopoly for billiards, card playing, lotteries, and games of chance' was that he alone should be allowed to 'tchia ma-ball (hit the balls), hlala ma-paper (play the papers), ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... proceedings brought by Colonel Fielding in October 1722, five months after the loss of his Chancery suit, against the cardsharper, Robert Midford, who was then apparently threatening him with outlawry for the recovery of the gambling debt begun, as we have seen, at Princes' Coffee-house six years before. Had the colonel borrowed the L700 from Mrs Cottington, with intent to discharge those debts; and, on being brought to law by her (on her nephews' and nieces' behalf) for that debt, did it occur to him ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden

... so-called orthodoxy plod on their way indifferently. Error thrives, a multitude of souls are deceived, but many seem but little concerned. Evil raises its head everywhere and sneers at the Christian people. Dens of vice, gambling-houses, lewd picture-shows, and a hundred other forms of evil are tolerated and even looked upon as "necessary evils" by religious professors. He who really loves God just as truly hates all evil. He so hates it in himself ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor

... Salamis had immortalized were, according to these praisers of the past, of nobler manners and more majestic virtues than their degenerate descendants. "Then," exclaimed Isocrates, "our young men did not waste their days in the gambling-house, nor with music-girls, nor in the assemblies, in which whole days are now consumed then did they shun the Agora, or, if they passed through its haunts, it was with modest and timorous forbearance—then, to contradict an elder was a greater offence than nowadays to offend a parent—then, ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Rathburn. "I admit several robberies—holdups of crooked, gambling joints like you've got in this town, an' petty-larceny bankers who robbed poor stockmen with sanction of the law. I've killed one man who had it coming to him. But I've shouldered the blame for every killing an' every robbery that's been staged in the desert country for the last three ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts

... which we view objects that makes us fancy they might have been or might still be otherwise, The precise knowledge of antecedents and consequents makes men practical as well as philosophical Necessarians.—It is the want of this knowledge which is the principle and soul of gambling, and of all games of chance or partial skill. The supposition is, that the issue is uncertain, and that there is no positive means of ascertaining it. It is dependent on the turn of a die, on the tossing up of a halfpenny: to be fair it must be a lottery; there is no ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... for a few weeks in the winter are apt to speak of the place, on their return, in a manner that conveys the impression that it is a Paradise on earth, with gambling facilities thrown in. But, then, they are visitors. Their sojourn comes to ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... squalid and unsanitary, and its untidy, unpainted shacks of rough lumber harbored southern European labor, of which Hector McKaye would have none. In Darrow, also, there were three groggeries and a gambling-house, with the usual concomitant of women whose profession is the oldest and ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne

... on. Mr. Zachary Smith resisted the blandishments of "cut-throat" euchre. He had no money to spare for gambling, he informed his guests; he would look on. He sat over the stove whilst the others played. Later on the cards were put away, and the travellers, curling themselves into their blankets, composed themselves ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum

... the property of the Stamford family—having been won, it is said, in a raffle by Sir —— Stamford, during the stock-gambling mania of the South Sea scheme. The history of this gentleman may be found in an interesting series of questions (unfortunately not yet answered) contained in the 'Notes and Queries.' This island is entirely surrounded by the ocean, which here contains a large amount of saline ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various

... that you had better let me lend you the rest, for the present," he suggested. "I am afraid your uncle would be rather annoyed to know that you had been gambling to such an extent. You may be able to think of some way of ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... are never found at Glen Alpine. These are poison-oak, rattlesnakes and poisonous insects. The rowdy, gambling and carousing element are equally absent, for should they ever appear, they speedily discover their lack of ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... something. Bar the windows, lock the doors, shut it up for ever, close in your own heart. A few nights ago, I went with an English friend to the Conversationshaus. When we had leaned awhile against one of the columns, and watched the dancers in the magnificent saloon, he proposed to show me the grand gambling-room. ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... demanded Mr. Jackson. "For I spent some time gambling and horse-racing with the gentry there, and I know many of them. I was a wild lad" (I repeat his exact words), "and I ran up a bill in Charlestown that would have filled a folio volume. Faith, all I had left me was the clothes on my back and a good ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... is done in a very different way. I cannot think they will help to refine the ragamuffins if they read them, and I'm sure they can do no good to the better class of boys, who through these books are introduced to police courts, counterfeiters' dens, gambling houses, drinking saloons, and ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott

... would support a family of five people for three or four years! Bacchanalian orgies that dim even those of the depraved, corrupt, and degenerate Nero are of nightly occurrence.[AI] Drunkenness, lechery, and gambling are the sports and pastimes of these ultra rich men, and it is even whispered that milady is not much behind milord in the ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir

... we joined in prayer and praise, and listened to much that was of interest to us as the Elder told of early years spent in dissipation, opium smoking, and gambling; of his conversion through Pastor Hsi, and of first efforts to preach the Gospel. Meanwhile, the shepherd folded his sheep, carefully counting them lest one should be missing, and the women prepared the millstones for grinding on the morrow. I saw much illustrated that had been familiar ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable

... America I spent a few months, the remembrance of which I would gladly blot from my memory. Money came to me fast from gambling, and as quickly went. All the time I was restless, fearful, ill at ease and sick at heart. I had never heard one single word of how my disappearance might have afflicted those I left behind. I knew not whether you really thought me dead, or whether ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... number of native and exotic swindlers than are to be found in any other European nursery. What young Englishman that visits it, but has not determined, in his heart, to have a little share of the gayeties that go on—just for once, just to see what they are like? How many, when the horrible gambling dens were open, did resist a sight of them?—nay, was not a young fellow rather flattered by a dinner invitation from the Salon, whither he went, fondly pretending that he should see "French society," in the persons of certain Dukes and Counts who ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... and the passengers, instead of retiring to their berths, once more assembled at the gambling-tables. The practice of gambling on the western waters has long been a source of annoyance to the more moral persons who travel on our great rivers. Thousands of dollars often change owners during a passage from St. ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown

... down the hill into the city; glad to go; the trustful, waiting quiet oppressed, taunted him. It sent him back more mad against Destiny, his heart more bitter in its great pity. Let him go to the great city, with its stifling gambling-hells, its negro-pens, its foul cellars;—his place and work. If he stumble blindly against unconquerable ills, and die, others have so stumbled and so died. Do you ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis

... laughable had it not been so serious and pitiful, to see the frantic attempts of the poor in this town to keep up appearances, and counterfeit the style of those who had grown rich by cheating widows and orphans in bucket shops and stock gambling. The little minnows put on all the snobbish airs of the whales who had grown so large by devouring all the small fish ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss

... your sin will find you out," and it proved true in my case. One night I was out gambling, and had had quite some luck. The fellows got to drinking, and in fact I got drunk, and when I started for home I could hardly walk. I fell down several times, when who should come along but mother and sister, and when they saw ...
— Dave Ranney • Dave Ranney

... my comrade to me, as he stood up and stretched his lengthy, stalwart figure, "work all day, and sit up gambling and singing hymns—when they are not intriguing with ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke

... circulates a gambling fever not only throughout the Riviera—from Cannes to Genoa—but everywhere its victims may carry it. After being stamped out from all the German watering-places, the demon "Play" has fixed his abode in this fair spot, in the very pathway of invalids and others, and, under the aegis of ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux

... taking parts, he is likely to keep your girl's heart in a state of incertitude, for 't is only mortal for eighteen to fancy twenty more than forty-four. Therefore, unless ye want a gambling bankrupt for a son-in-law, give ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... owner of the rake had to give the boy as many marbles as the number over the arch. If the boy missed, the owner took his marble. It was very profitable for the owner. And my mother found out I had a rake. That night it went into the kitchen fire, while I was lectured on the awful consequences of gambling." ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton

... morning we see numbers of roosters staked out by short strings to pegs driven in the sidewalks. These are the game-cocks which furnish to the Puerto Rican his favorite amusement and opportunity for gambling. ...
— A Little Journey to Puerto Rico - For Intermediate and Upper Grades • Marian M. George

... greatest man in the city, and lords it even in the law courts; when class-magistrates, bidding for high office, deal out justice according to the rank of the criminal; when exchanges are turned into great gambling-houses, and senators and men of title are the chief gamblers; when, in short, 'corruption is universal, when there is increasing audacity, increasing greed, increasing fraud, increasing impurity, and these are fed by increasing indulgence ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley

... make it interesting, then no doubt your English and American shareholders will spend all the money we make for them very efficiently in shooting and hunting, in operations for cancer and appendicitis, in gluttony and gambling; and you will devote what they save to fresh land development schemes. For four wicked centuries the world has dreamed this foolish dream of efficiency; and the end is not yet. But the end ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw

... mean tracing the course of every pie lent to the members. Those responsible for the proper conduct of co-operative societies will see to it that the money advanced does not find its way into the toddy-seller's bill or into the pockets of the keepers of gambling dens. I would excuse the rapacity of the Mahajan if it has succeeded in keeping the gambling die or toddy from the ...
— Third class in Indian railways • Mahatma Gandhi

... of which the fashion for travel was only a phase: dislike of the new courtier who scorned to live in the country, surrounded by a huge band of family servants, but preferred to occupy small lodgings in London, and join in the pleasures of metropolitan life. The theatre, the gambling resorts, the fence-schools, the bowling alleys, and above all the glamor of the streets and the crowd were charms only beginning to assert themselves in Elizabethan England. But the popular voice was loud against the nobles who preferred to spend their money on ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard

... divide village life); the community Methodist church; the Presbyterian church group (no church); the library; two soft-drink parlors where all kinds of beverages are sold; the daily train; the motion-picture show; the dance hall; a gambling clique; sex attraction; gossip; the "sporting" impulse; the impulse to ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... who was born at Bergamo about 1730, appears to have been somewhat of a charlatan. He was self-taught, and, though a performer of a good deal of brilliancy, was but a poor musician. He was restless, vain, and conceited, and addicted to gambling. He is said to have played the most difficult double-stops, octaves, tenths, double-shakes in thirds and sixths, harmonics, etc., with the greatest ease and certainty. At one time he appeared as a rival of Nardini, ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee

... be all right," returned Joe. "I am glad it is not gambling debts; though a hundred dollars wouldn't cover much. I hope you are coming through in ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas

... on deck, what the house could afford was good enough for them, whether they thought so or not. During the '80s Chicago was a gamblers' paradise. Everything was run "wide open," as the saying is, under police regulation and protection, and Billy Boyle's was in the very centre of the gambling district. If Billy had been paid cash, and could have been kept away from the race-tracks, he would have grown rich beyond the terrors of the sheriff. While the gamblers were winning they supped like princes ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... careless as his errand-boy who may stop on the street to throw a stone at a sparrow; nor can the manager of a large plantation have as good a time on a rainy day as his day-labourers who spend it in gambling. The accumulation of wealth is always accompanied by its evils; no Rothschild nor Rockefeller can be happier than a ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya

... watching the gamesters and the game. Had I not known something of the banking peculiarities of the West, I should have believed that they were gambling for enormous sums. At each man's right elbow lay a huge pile of bank-notes, flanked by a few pieces of silver— dollars, halves, and quarters. Accustomed as my eyes had been to bank-notes of five pounds in value, the table would have presented to me a rich appearance, had I not ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid

... holy one, I did not like this business of gambling, but, O Muni, I think, I was made to consent to it drawn by fate! Neither Bhishma, nor Drona, nor Vidura, nor Gandhari liked this game at dice. No doubt, it was begot of folly. And, O thou who delightest in the observance of ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

... was one of the most illustrious ecclesiastics of his day; Gilbert is described by Ordericus Vitalis as having been a man of exemplary charity, and deeply versed in all sciences, though it is admitted that he was somewhat too much addicted to worldly pleasures, and not averse from gambling; and Arnulf, whose letters and epigrams are preserved among the manuscripts of the Vatican, was a prelate who would have done honor to St. Peter's chair.—All these were bishops of Lisieux, during the ages when canonization was not altogether so unfrequent as in our days. Arnulf ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner

... house; he had not wished for the society which her presence entailed, nor for the dissipations of London life into which he was dragged more or less against his will. Added to which, Helen had not striven to please him in essential matters. She had married a gambling, drinking blackguard, whom he had forbidden to enter his doors; and now, when she might retrieve her position, and marry well and creditably, she refused to make the slightest ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron

... variety of cooperating causes, but not so upon the present occasion. It is apparent that our existing misfortunes have proceeded solely from our extravagant and vicious system of paper currency and bank credits, exciting the people to wild speculations and gambling in stocks. These revulsions must continue to recur at successive intervals so long as the amount of the paper currency and bank loans and discounts of the country shall be left to the discretion of 1,400 irresponsible banking ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan • James Buchanan

... fatigue, of perplexity, or of fear Converting beneficent commerce into baleful gambling Gigantic vices are proudly pointed to as the noblest No generation is long-lived enough to reap the harvest Proclaiming the virginity of the Virgin's mother Steeped to the lips in sloth which imagined itself to be pride To shirk labour, infinite ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger

... arrived at Calcutta he had been shocked by the sensual ignorance of the Company's servants. Sunday was universally given up to horse-racing and gambling. Boys of sixteen were removed from the English public schools where they had hardly mastered the rudiments of education to become the magistrates, judges, revenue collectors, and governors of millions of natives recently brought under British sway. At ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith

... answered Wyllard. "It's rather full, and it seemed that they didn't want me. They're busy playing cards, and the stakes are rather high. In a general way, a steamboat's smoking-room is less of a men's lounge than a gambling club." ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss

... possible way of earning such a sum in four days; there was little more chance, he realized sardonically, of stealing it.... Sometimes large sums of money were won in a night's gambling in the lumber and mining towns over the West Virginia line. But, for that, he would require capital; he would have his wages to-morrow; however, if he gambled with that and lost, Clare and himself would face immediate, irredeemable ruin. He dismissed that consideration ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... only when Fred Fenimer is in funds, and that's not often. A precarious sort of existence, his—gambling in mining stocks, almost always in wrong. Hard on the daughter—wish some nice fellow would come ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller

... his 17th year. In 1896, lured by the gold rush, he left for California with his mother, then a widow. Once there, the rough but fascinating chaos engulfed him, and from it, at first hand, he drew the stage properties—Spaniards, Greasers, gambling houses—the humor, sin and chivalry of the '49—which color all his stories. After some little journalism and clerking, he was made secretary to the Supt. of the Mint, a position which was not too exacting to allow a great deal of leisure ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous

... been a gambler. He was from New York. He was well educated, gentle in his manners, and a general favorite with the rough and desperate fellows with whom he associated, but with whom he seemed out of place. The passion for gambling had put its terrible spell on him, and be was helpless in its grasp. But though he mixed with the crowds that thronged the gambling-hells, he was one of them only in the absorbing passion for play. ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald

... their surroundings. But some persons conceived the idea that all this evil was not necessary and inevitable; that it came from the liquor traffic, which might be prohibited and suppressed, as lottery-tickets, gambling-houses and impure books and pictures had already been. And they devoted themselves constantly and industriously to the work of correcting the public opinion of the people as to the liquor traffic by demonstrating to ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur

... play again, and she nearly upset the apple-cart by angrily telling Thigh she did not wish her house to be turned into a gambling hell. Thigh rose from the table, but Frank apologized for his wife, and begged of him to sit down. The incident was not without a good effect, for it removed Thigh's suspicions, if he had any, and convinced him that he was "in for a ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore

... Sosa was wealthy. His father, a former manufacturer of canned goods, had left him a fortune that he administered prudently, never gambling, nor keeping mistresses (he had no time for such follies) but finding all his amusement in sports that strengthen the body. He had a coach-house of his own, where he kept his carriages and his automobiles which he showed to ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... office," cried Carey, who had been a gentleman and a man of honor before the passion for gambling had seized upon him. Once he had dreamed of a home, of children who should be proud to own him as their father, and he still loved his wife. "What information did ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.

... women are wanted to grapple with the vast harvest—this great opportunity—and to gather in God's sheaves. Oh, to leave the world of vice and folly as naked as the earth is after the harvest! Empty public-houses! Empty gambling dens! Empty abodes of impurity! Empty slums! Empty all places where God is not! But thanksgiving in the home; the House of God filled with rejoicing people, telling out of hearts of gladness that labourers came into the fields of sin and gathered ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter

... doubt can be entertained that gambling is rapidly falling from its pristine eminence in the fashionable world: we seldom or never hear of thousands being now lost at a sitting; and those of the present generation can scarcely credit all that is said or written of the doings of their forefathers, or that whole estates were set on ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... abstain from reckless over-indulgence. With such a training later on even the temptations of alcoholic beverages would lose their danger. Not less injurious than the strong drinks are the cards. All gambling from the child's play to the stock exchange is ruinous for the psychophysical equilibrium. The same is true of any overuse of coffee and tea and tobacco, and as a matter of course still more the habitual use of the drugs like the popular headache ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg

... told you three months ago that I had paid your gambling debts for the last time. I make one exception. I will pay them once again—with the money you have stolen, which you may keep. Much good may it do you!" He flung the pocket-book on the turf at Hugo's feet as he spoke. "Take it. You have paid dearly ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... was a man trained as few men are trained to meet emergencies, to face crises with an impassiveness of countenance that would shame the Sphinx. He had lost thousands across the green cloth of gambling-tables without batting an eye. He had faced death and had killed men with a face absolutely devoid of expression, and upon numerous occasions his nerve—the consummate sang-froid of him—had alone thrown off the ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx

... this window also I gathered some of the tidings of the camp. I learned that Cortes had come back, bringing Guatemoc and several of the princes with him, together with many of the noble Aztec ladies. Indeed I saw and heard the soldiers gambling for these women when they were weary of their play for money, a description of each of them being written on a piece of paper. One of these ladies answered well to Otomie, my wife, and she was put up to auction by the brute ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard

... soon spread through the fort, and I observed that the sentries were doubled; but otherwise the people occupied themselves as before, in smoking, gambling, and cock-fighting, which seemed especially to interest all classes. My uncle listened attentively to the account I ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston

... the third act, of Setna's struggle to get the magic roll. Here the strange episode comes in of the rival magicians gambling; it recalls the old tale of Rampsinitus descending into Hades and playing at dice with Ceres, and the frequent presence of draught-boards in the tombs, shows how much the ka was supposed to relish such pleasures. The regular Egyptian game-board had three rows of ten squares, ...
— Egyptian Tales, Second Series - Translated from the Papyri • W. M. Flinders Petrie

... all her wealth," continued Stephano, "she was compelled to pledge her diamonds to thee, to raise the money wherewith to discharge a gambling debt contracted by her lover, the high-born, handsome, but ruined Marquis ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... remembered the case well. Patterson had had gambling transactions with a Wrykyn tradesman, had been found ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse

... to-day gambling(17) in the City to see Patty Rolt, who is going to Kingston, where she lodges; but, to say the truth, I had a mind for a walk to exercise myself, and happened to be disengaged: for dinners are ten times more plentiful with me here than ever, or than ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift

... Mr. Flint, as he put down the paper, and looked me gravely in the face—"I remember now; their names are in the list of bankrupts. A failure in the gambling corn-trade too. I hope they have not been speculating with the young ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren

... 'Oh, drink and gambling, and such-like. My grandfather, David Graham, kent the taste of Poosie Nancie's whisky too well to look after his ain, and it slipped through his fingers like ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan

... pretty young married woman, who spent most of her time racing, gambling and going to house parties. She looked excessively fragile and consumptive, but had lived hard and never had a day's illness in her life. She was accomplished, not at all intellectual, clever at games, a fine horsewoman and ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens

... in the "Peacock" in 1826, and concluded the first treaty between the Hawaiian Islands and the United States. The next year the first written laws were published against murder, theft, adultery and gambling. ...
— The Hawaiian Islands • The Department of Foreign Affairs

... there would be less objection, although banking is properly no part of insurance; but the fact is, a far more speculative business is done, called Tontine insurance. This form may be fitly characterized as the gambling form, inasmuch as the only hope of profit to a few is that the many will be robbed of their savings. Tontine insurance is profitable to the few in just the proportion that misfortune shall overtake those who participate ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various

... So far as the former is concerned, no system has succeeded, or will ever succeed, in extirpating it. Vice may be punished, but it is too deeply rooted in human nature to be wholly cured. Its predominating forms are drinking and gambling, neither of which is checked by the dormitory system. At Oxford, for instance, both these vices prevail despite the most elaborate system of gates and night-patrols. Our college faculties must perforce content themselves with detecting ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various

... October at the agency and see thousands of Indians, for they are gathered to receive rations and annuities. It is a wild spectacle; groups of Indians are gambling, there are several horse races, and everywhere there is feasting. At night the revelry is increased; great fires are lighted, and groups of Indians are ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell

... will enable any reader to follow Belinda's play. It will also enable any one who may care to do so to restore to a place among our home amusements a game which carried all before it in Queen Anne's day, and which is really, when cleared of its gambling details, as good a domestic game for three players as cribbage or piquet is for two. My "Court Gamester," which was in its fifth edition in 1728, after devoting its best energies to ombre, contented its readers ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... common fruit. The power of his persuasiveness in speech, backed by the spectacle of his social accomplishments, continued to subdue me, and I protested only inwardly even when I knew that he was gambling with fortune. I wrote out many cheques, and still it appeared to me that they were barely sufficient to meet the current expenses of his household. Temple and I calculated that his Grand Parade would try the income of a duke, and could but be a matter ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... measures, it is found impossible to put gambling down entirely, and some of the alcaldes, knowing the inutility of attempting to do so, habitually give private instructions to their policemen not to hunt for people playing monte, and not to molest them if found doing ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking

... the Mormons were wilderness breakers of high quality. They not only broke it, but they kept it broken; and instead of the gin mill and the gambling hell, as corner-stones of their progress and as examples to the natives of the white men's superiority, they planted orchards, gardens, farms, schoolhouses and peaceful homes. There is today no part of ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock

... testify with thankfulness that they never knew the sins of gambling, drunkenness, fornication, or adultery. In all these cases abstinence has been, and continues to be, liberty. Restraint is the noblest freedom. No man can affirm that self-denial ever injured him; on the contrary, ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... Chinese restaurant which ostentatiously announced itself as the "New York Cafe." This side of the business street was in the territory of Uncle Sam, the other half floated the Mexican flag. After he had eaten, the young man drifted across to one of the gambling-houses that invited the patronage of ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine

... explain what risk they ran, but he speaks to willing ears. Gambling makes boys selfish and cruel as well ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes

... was in his dealings with Joseph that Morris's character particularly shone. His uncle was a rather gambling stock in which he had invested heavily; and he spared no pains in nursing the security. The old man was seen monthly by a physician, whether he was well or ill. His diet, his raiment, his occasional outings, now to Brighton, now to Bournemouth, ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... by we lose sight of the student of San Juan. He has absolutely sunk out of sight. Yet, if we peer into filthy pulperias here and there between San Luis and San Juan, we may catch a glimpse of a shaggy, swarthy savage, gambling, gambling as if for life; and we may also hear of more than one affray in which his dagger has "come home richer than it went." A little later, the son of wealthy Don Prudencio has become—not a common laborer—but a comrade of common laborers. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various

... boasted. He was much given to chaff, but his chaff was good-humoured. He was generous with his cigars. Such were his virtues. That he had no adequate means of his own and that he never earned a penny, that he lived chiefly by gambling, that he had no pursuit in life but pleasure, that he never went inside a church, that he never gave away a shilling, that he was of no use to any human being, and that no one could believe a word he said of himself,—these were specks upon his ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope

... Oliver Herford beginning: "There was a young prince Hohenzollern," which was said to have delighted the British ambassador. Finally, he listened while Ned Atherton and Morris L. Parrish explained the fascination of sniff, a gambling game played with dominoes much in vogue at the Racquet Club. His Imperial Highness said he preferred the German game of skat, played with cards, and James P. McNichol, the Republican boss, made ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett

... religious utility), seeking practical themes of widespread applicability, quite logically moved toward genuine middle-class tragedy. Thus Hill's Fatal Extravagance is concerned with the "vice" of gambling; while Charles Johnson's Caelia, or The Perjur'd Lover (1732) attacks fashionable libertinism of the day, telling the story which Richardson was later to retell in seven ponderous volumes. In Caelia the religious rationalization of the tragic action is subdued, Johnson apparently preferring ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore

... a furtive, broken way, as well he might; and how much more and how much less than the actual truth he told me I never knew with certainty, but it came to this. He had had heavy gambling losses, and had got into financial difficulties. The Baroness Bonnar had found this out, and had told him of a way by which he might recuperate himself. She had only hinted at first, and he had indignantly refused her proposal, but he had played about ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray

... twenty-one, darling," she said, referring to the turbulent heir. "You ought to be thankful that he has such good tastes, instead of drinking and gambling, like some other young men. Really and truly I believe he is a genius, but even if he is not, there is nothing to be gained by using force. Ron has a very strong will—you have yourself, you know, dear, only of course in your case it is guided ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... longer needed it; second, if he sent it back, possibly another book might be sent him instead. Squire Wedgwood answered this letter himself, and sent two books, with a good, long letter of advice about improving one's time, and "not wasting life in gambling and strong drink, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... "and there was a professional sharper there—Wright has just told me so—and he will not let me off. If they found out things at headquarters I should be rusticated, and I am only in my first term. The Proctor has vowed to make an example of the next fellow caught gambling, and they say he ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... Gambling, in one form or another, appeared to be the occupation of all orders, encouraged considerably by the government, who had public lotteries, tickets and minute portions of tickets being ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston

... land and nodding. With an "Ugh!" they left their canoe and went on shore, where they were immediately pressed into the service to unload and gather hay for our beds. They had a "tom-tom"—an instrument something between a drum and a tambourine, which they play at all their feasts and gambling bouts—a scarlet top knotted cock of the woods, a small fish, a little birch bark basket with the lid tightly sewed down, and an old ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon

... in the late 19th century with a railroad linkup to France and the opening of a casino. Since then, the principality's mild climate, splendid scenery, and gambling facilities have made Monaco world famous as a tourist ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... impossible; but substitution may work wonders. Suppose, for example, that a young man is a gambler and his parents are much distressed about it. The common and foolish course is to lecture him on the sin of gambling and to tearfully urge him to associate only with very proper young men. But the young gambler is not in the least interested in that sort of a life, which appears to him to be a kind of living death, and such entreaty does not move him. ...
— Self-Development and the Way to Power • L. W. Rogers

... diplomatists were the citizens of Frankfort; but here again we find indeed a great money-market, the centre of the finance of the Continent, dissociated from any great productive activity. In the neighbourhood were the watering-places and gambling-tables; Homburg and Wiesbaden, Soden and Baden-Baden, were within an easy ride or short railway journey, and Frankfort was constantly visited by all the idle Princes of Germany. It was a city in which ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam

... first light of day sifted in through the tiny-paned windows; the elderly woman unconscious of the drama enacting before her eyes, unconscious of anything, her thin fingers still picking at the edge of her sack; the motionless watcher rigid as a casting in bronze: the passionate gambling stranger man holding the girl to him tightly, so tightly she could not but remain so, passive; then came the climax. Of a sudden the image that had been lifeless resolved itself into a man. Muscles played here and there visibly beneath the close-fitting ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge

... know why I am complaining so, and how I got my head broken, and why I'm going around with my clothes in tatters. The fact is I swept the board at gambling: but I wish I hadn't; for what's the sense in a feeble fellow like me running up against a lot of stout young men? You see, after I scooped in all the money they put up, and they hadn't a cent left, they all jumped on my neck, and some of them punched ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... daughter of Sergay Nikolaevitch Loktev, notorious for his personal beauty, his speculations, and his gambling propensities, who after cutting a figure and making a sensation for fifteen years in Petersburg and Moscow, finished by ruining himself completely at cards, and was forced to retire to the country, ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

... characterises the Polish nobleman by the following precious mosaic of adjectives: "hospitable, proud, courageous, supple, false (this little yellow stone must not be lacking), irritable, enthusiastic, given to gambling, pleasure-loving, generous, and overbearing." Whether Heine was not mistaken as to the presence of the little yellow stone is a question that may have to be discussed in another part of this work. The observer who, in enumerating the most striking qualities of the Polish character, added "MISTRUSTFULNESS ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... but the Colonel always bets, and, as I have said, it keeps him poor. It's the gambling that she hates, and not the horses. Every year he plans to keep away from all horse-racing for her sake; every year he tries to ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey

... to disgrace religion with whoremongers and ward-heelers; not united merely to protest and pass resolutions, but united to stop the ravages of consumption among the Negro people, united to keep black boys from loafing, gambling and crime; united to guard the purity of black women and to reduce the vast army of black prostitutes that is today marching to hell; and united in serious organizations, to determine by careful conference and thoughtful interchange of opinion the broad lines of policy ...
— The Conservation of Races • W.E. Burghardt Du Bois

... a father sat frantic, amidst the speaking looks of mute hungry children, without a single farthing of his late immense wealth, wherewith to buy even sufficient to satisfy their present craving. Yet he took no money from the gambling table; but immediately lost, to the ruiner of many, the last gilder he had just snatched from the convulsive grasp of the innocent: this might but be the result of a certain degree of knowledge, which was not, however, capable of combating the cunning of the more experienced. Aubrey often ...
— The Vampyre; A Tale • John William Polidori

... was allowable in the frigate, all kinds of gambling were strictly interdicted, under the penalty of the gangway; nor were cards or dice tolerated in any way whatever. This regulation was indispensable, for, of all human beings, man-of-war's-men are perhaps the most inclined to gambling. The ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... a thriving, though sleepy, town, as it was the gateway to all Chihuahua. A well-beaten trail left it southward for El Paso, and its main street was lined with cantinas—saloons where mescal and tequila ran like water. There were gambling houses of ill repute, an open court for cockfighting, and other pastimes. The few gringos who were there looked, for the most part, like outlaws ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens

... variant spelling has been preserved as printed, where reference to the alternate spelling could be established from other sources, e.g. the Frith of Forth, gambling-hells, feed referring to the paying of a fee. If alternate spelling of proper nouns could not be established, it has been made consistent within the text. The spelling of other words and phrases in languages other than English ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... pot horse-racing and stock gambling; and I guess this has just been my way of working off some of my nature in another fashion. There's a good many like me, too; not out for office or contracts, nor anything that you can put your finger on in particular—nothing except the game. ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington

... me, I assure you, nor has he given me the slightest intimation. It is my firm belief that he does not know. But I am rather fond of gambling, and this is such a desperate throw, that it will be all the more exciting. I never tried my luck at buying slaves running, and I have rather a fancy for experimenting in that game of chance. And I confess my curiosity has been so ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child

... the object was almost always in motion, while the hunter himself was often upon the back of a pony at full gallop. Therefore, it was the off-hand shot that the Indian boy sought to master. There was another game with arrows that was characterized by gambling, and was generally ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... comrade of whom he had often spoken, Count Hector de Tremorel. The count intended to remain but a short time at Valfeuillu; but weeks passed and then months, and he still remained. It was not surprising. Hector had passed a very stormy youth, full of debauchery, of clubs, of gambling, and of amours. He had thrown to the winds of his caprices an immense fortune; the relatively calm life of Valfeuillu was a relief. At first people said to him, 'You will soon have enough of the country.' He smiled, but said nothing. It was then thought, and rightly, perhaps, that having become ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau

... his adventures, and endeavored to convince him that it was unbecoming a gentleman to risk his property upon the hazards of an hour; but, as continued success emboldened him more and more, the passion for gambling made him deaf to all my appeals, ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience



Words linked to "Gambling" :   recreation, sporting life, game of chance, throw, bet, vice, diversion, wager, gamble



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