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Volume I

The Gaming Table by Andrew Steinmetz, Volume II

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Anecdotes Of The Passions And Vicissitudes Of Gamesters

Although all the motives of human action have long been known--
although psychology, or the science of soul and sentiment, has
ceased to present us with any new facts--it is quite certain that
our edifice of Morals is not quite built up. We may rest assured
that as long as intellectual man exists the problem will be
considered unsolved, and the question will be agitated. Future
generations will destroy what we establish, and will fashion a
something according to their advancement, and so on; for if there
be a term which, of all others, should be expunged from the
dictionaries of all human beings, it seems to be Lord Russell's
word FINALITY. Something NEW will always be wanted. 'Sensation'
is the very life of humanity; it is motion--the reverse of
'death'--which we all abhor.

The gamester lives only for the 'sensation' of gaming. Menage
tells us of a gamester who declared that he had never seen any
luminary above the horizon but the moon. Saint Evremond, writing
to the Count de Grammont, says--'You play from morning to night,
or rather from night to morning. All the rays of the gamester's
existence terminate in play; it is on this centre that his very
existence depends. He enjoys not an hour of calm or serenity.
During the day he longs for night, and during the night he dreads
the return of day.'

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