It generates
often improper feelings. It gives birth to uneasiness and impatience,
while the contest is in doubt, and not unfrequently to anger and
resentment, when it is over.
But the passions, which are thus excited among youth, are excited also,
but worked up to greater mischief, where grown up persons follow these
amusements imprudently, than where children are concerned. For though
avarice, and impatience, and anger, are called forth among children,
they subside sooner. A boy, though he loses his all when he loses his
stake, suffers nothing from the idea of having impaired the means of his
future comfort, and independence. His next week's allowance, or the next
little gift, will set him right again. But when a grown up person, who
is settled in the world, is led on by these fascinating amusements, so
as to lose that which would be of importance to his present comfort,
but more particularly to the happiness of his future life, the case is
materially altered. The same passions, which harass the one, will harass
the other, but the effects will be widely different. I have been told
that persons have been so agitated before the playing of the card, that
was to decide their destiny, that large drops of sweat have fallen from
their faces, though they were under no bodily exertions.
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