"There was once a man with a beard,Who said, 'It is just as I feared:Two Owls and a Hen,Four Larks and a WrenHave all built their nests in my beard!'"
"There was once a man with a beard,Who said, 'It is just as I feared:Two Owls and a Hen,Four Larks and a WrenHave all built their nests in my beard!'"
"There was once a man with a beard,Who said, 'It is just as I feared:Two Owls and a Hen,Four Larks and a WrenHave all built their nests in my beard!'"
"There was once a man with a beard,
Who said, 'It is just as I feared:
Two Owls and a Hen,
Four Larks and a Wren
Have all built their nests in my beard!'"
There has been some scientific inquiry as to why woman was made beardless, but the question was never satisfactorily settled until the poets became interested in the problem, and the result was as follows:
"How wisely Nature, ordering all below,Forbade a beard on woman's chin to grow;For, how could she be shaved—whate'ver the skill—Whose tongue would never let her chin be still."
"How wisely Nature, ordering all below,Forbade a beard on woman's chin to grow;For, how could she be shaved—whate'ver the skill—Whose tongue would never let her chin be still."
"How wisely Nature, ordering all below,Forbade a beard on woman's chin to grow;For, how could she be shaved—whate'ver the skill—Whose tongue would never let her chin be still."
"How wisely Nature, ordering all below,
Forbade a beard on woman's chin to grow;
For, how could she be shaved—whate'ver the skill—
Whose tongue would never let her chin be still."
In 1890, a reformed gambler named John Philip Quinn, wrote a book, "Fools of Fortune," which I read with interest when it first came out. Later I met this man and saw him expose numerous tricks of gamblers. The book comprehends a history of the vice in ancient and modern times, and in both hemispheres, and is an exposition of its alarming prevalence and destructive effects, with an unreserved and exhaustive disclosure of such frauds, tricks and devices as are practised by professional gambler, confidence man and bunko steerers; and the book was given to the world with the hope that it might extenuate the author's twenty-five years of gaming and systematic deception of his fellow men.
I wish every boy and every public official could read that book. Its pages are twice the size of these, and there are no less than 640 of them—a big and a valuable book. It would do more good in the world than a great manyso-called religious books that I could mention; and, if I am ever rich, I would like to have it reprinted and sold for ten cents a copy so that everybody could get one.
Alongside of this book in my library is another, entitled, "What's the Odds," by Joe Ullman, the famous (or infamous) bookmaker. What a contrast! This book tells many "interesting" stories of the turf, of the pool-room and of the card-room, and it tends to cast a luring glamor around racing and all sorts of gaming.
By the side of this book in my library is another, entitled "Gambling: or Fortuna, Her Temple and Shrine. The True Philosophy and Ethics of Gambling," by James Harold Romain, which is an able defense of gambling. How much harm these two last-mentioned books may have done, no man may say. Certainly they have done no good. If ever a book should be suppressed by law, these two books should come first.
Mr. Romain says, "The keepers of gambling resorts are denounced, as though they were responsible for the gambling propensity in mankind. Resorts for gambling do not cause the passion. It is a tendency to which all men are prone, more or less. The essential fact is the existence of this passion. There can never begreat difficulty in obtaining the means for its gratification."
Now, it is quite true that gambling is a tendency to which most people are prone, more or less, but that is no argument for increasing the temptation, nor for encouraging the vice. Men are prone to steal, to drink, to be dishonest, to lie, to cheat, to be immoral; but these tendencies must be checked and suppressed, not encouraged. Because some men will steal, should we license them and furnish them with ways and means to carry out their brutal instincts? Civilization is striving to eliminate man's brute passions. Thousands of institutions such as the law and the church, the prisons and reformatories, the libraries and the schools, are constantly combating man's animal tendencies. Shall we stop all this and let man's passions have full sway? Mr. Romain says, yes. He says, "In the name of liberty and equality, a brave battle has been fought for individuality. Unjust and unwise interference by the state has been ably resisted. It is demanded that private judgment be released from the embrace of authority. The truth is, one man has no natural right to make laws for another. True, he may repel another, when his own rights are infringed, but he has no right to govern him." Of course, this is anarchy. Thedoctrine of "no laws" is an exploded theory. By common consent, the world has come to an understanding that the majority of the people shall make laws to govern the whole, and there is no other way. What is detrimental to the community must be suppressed, and the law is the best suppressor.
While Fortuna may proudly enumerate her great votaries in America, including Aaron Burr, Edgar Allen Poe, William Wirt, Luther Martin, Gouverneur Morris, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, General Hayne, Sam Houston, Andrew Jackson, Generals Burnett, Sickles, Kearney, Steedman, Hooker, Hurlbut, Sheridan, Kilpatrick, Grant, George D. Prentiss, Sargeant S. Prentiss, Albert Pike, A. P. Hill, Beauregard, Early, Ben Hill, Robert Toombs, George H. Pendleton, Thaddeus Stevens, Green of Missouri, Herbert and Fitch of California, Jerry McKibben, James A. Bayard, Benjamin F. Wade, Broderick, John C. Fremont, Judge Magowan, Charles Spencer, Fernando Wood and his brother Benjamin, Colonel McClure, Senator Wolcott, Senator Pettigrew, Senator Farwell, Matthew Carpenter, Thomas Scott, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Hutchinson of Chicago, and Pierre Lorillard; think of the long list of greater men who were not addicted to gambling.This list is fairly complete, yet it is by no means representative. If these men had the passion, they no doubt felt sorry for it and they would be the first to warn others of the vice. Some of them were ruined by it. It is a folly to be ashamed of, not to be proud of. It is a weakness, and all great men have their weaknesses. Think of the great men who were inveterate smokers and drinkers; yet we would not hold them up as examples for the young simply because they acquired these bad habits. Are we to emulate the faults of the great, or their virtues?
Of all the passions that have enslaved mankind, none can reckon so many victims as gambling. In the wrecking of homes, in the destroying of character, in the encouragement of dishonesty, in the dissolving of fortunes, gambling has only one rival—drink. The two are brothers. They walk hand in hand. One seldom exists without the other. If drink comes first, gambling follows shortly; if gambling gets hold of its victim first, drink soon joins his brother. And with these two terrible, fascinating, insidious habits firmly entrenched in a man's system, all the other vices are invited in to keep the others company. Smoking, a lesser evil, usually accompanies the rest, in fact usually comes first; but it is hardly to be classed as a vice, since it initself has no immoral effects, and is simply a bad and an expensive habit, although it is one that many enjoy without harm or danger, even with profit. Gambling appeals to a latent instinct, and hence is all the more alluring. It is a disease that, when it once gets hold, seldom lets go. The victim may shake it off, for a time, but it will surely show its fangs again, and it will require a struggle and many of them, throughout life, to conquer it. It will crop out in divers ways and its influence will be felt in all transactions. True, all life and business is a gamble, in one sense—that is, a chance, but that is no reason why we should make gambling King. Our efforts should be directed to dethroning it, not to crowning it.
If you have a boy growing up, remember that he has a latent instinct to gamble. Remember that unless you show him the dangers of the vice, he will surely get the fever. It is just as sure as it is that he will be tempted to steal and to lie. You will observe him shooting marbles for gain. Then, craps. Then he will be playing cards for money. Then he will get interested in the penny-slot devices that are to be found in the cigar and candy stores. He will keep a sharp lookout for prize packages. He will take a chance in every lottery that he hears of, including those that areusually conducted in church fairs. Next, he will hear of faro, roulette and other games of chance, and soon he will find his way into a regular gambling den. He will probably lose, the first time, and then he will save up, and go again to recover his losses. If he loses again he will have all the more reason to go again, to get square. If he should win the first time, he will get the fever anyway, and he will at once see visions of an easy fortune ahead. Either way, he will stick to it, and to stick to it means ruin. He will need more money than you will give him, and he will be tempted to get money by dishonest means. If he does not steal, he will perhaps take something from the house and sell it in order to get money with which to gamble. If he cannot get that something in your home, he may be tempted to get it from some other home. He will sell his toys. He will go without shoes and spend the money at gambling. If he cannot get money, he will run away and earn it. He will forget all your teachings and do anything to get money. And, when once he gets into one of those gilded palaces of the devil, where big stakes are played for, where everything is bright, elegant and alluring, where one man is seen to make a fortune in a night, which sometimes happens, and where sumptuous tables are spread with all the luxuriesand dainties of the season for the delight of the patrons, where wine and cigars are freely given to both winner and loser—then bid goodbye to your boy, for he is lost. The chances are that he will never get over it. The fascination will be too much for him. He will surely go again. Win or lose, he will look forward to the day when he can try his luck with the great Goddess of Chance. The yawning jaws of the tiger are ever open for fresh victims such as he, and if he gives them a chance they will inevitably close down on him. If he loses at first, he will begin to study "systems" to beat the game. He will spend sleepless nights studying how to win out. If he finds that, with all his studying, he still cannot retrieve his losses, he will try other forms of gambling, such as horse racing, but all with the same result. He is bound to lose in the end. But, the strange thing is, that you cannot make him believe this. Every man seems to have an inborn notion that he is different from everybody else; that he is, by some freak of nature, a marked man to win; that if he keeps it up long enough luck must change; that he above all others has been picked out by Dame Fortune to win; that it is only a question of time when luck will again smile upon him. So, he keeps it up, chasing the will o' the wisp, followingthe rainbow to find the proverbial pots of gold that are said to lie at the other end. History proves all this. The road to ruin is straight and clear. It is easy to follow. Walking is good. It is well lighted. The mirage of Fortune looms up big at the other end which seems just a little farther on. He may get weary and discouraged, at times, but Hope and Promise beckon him on. He sees his possessions vanishing, as he plods on, he sees his reputation and character leaving him, but he believes that these can easily be restored when he arrives at his destination. But he never arrives. He falls by the wayside. He dies, mourned by few, shunned by many, discouraged, desolate, homeless, friendless, forsaken—a worthless wreck.
Among the hundreds of thousands of gamblers, you can count the few prosperous ones on your fingers. Whether it be stock-market gamblers, race track gamblers, card gamblers, or what-not, the universal law is that they all must lose in the end. Every once in a while you read of some famous once-rich gambler who has just died poor and forsaken, fortune gone. The few successful ones are successful only for a short time. And the chances of your boy being one of the successful ones is about equal to his chances of becoming the king of England. The oddsare all against it. In playing against the dealer, or bookmaker, or "house," the percentage is large against him. If by chance he should win, there are two chances to one that the gambler will get it all back and more too, at the next sitting. People say, "I will try it once more, and I am sure to win this time, and if I do I will quit the game forever." But the forever never comes. If they win, they will soon come to an understanding with themselves that they will try it just once more, to win just a little more, then stop. If they lose, they soon agree with themselves that they will try it just once more to get back what they lost. In either case they are bound to get back to the gaming table, and the gamblers all know this. Hence, when the professional gambler sees a winner leave his place, he does not frown; he only smiles, because he knows that the winner will soon be back to drop his winnings plus a little more.
And what are we to do with this common enemy of mankind? Are we to sit down and sigh, and say, "Well, people will gamble anyway, and if they are fools enough to throw away their money that way, let them do it"; or are we to bend our energies to suppress it? Are we to allow gambling houses to exist in our midst, thus inviting our young men to become victims? Arewe to allow lotteries and petty gambling devices everywhere as we do now? Are our churches to encourage the vice at their fairs in order to make money toredeemthe world? No, we must stamp it out wherever we find it.
Wedlock, indeed, hath oft compared beenTo public feasts, where meet a public rout,Where they that are without would fain go in,And they that are within would fain go out.Sir John Davies.
Wedlock, indeed, hath oft compared beenTo public feasts, where meet a public rout,Where they that are without would fain go in,And they that are within would fain go out.Sir John Davies.
Wedlock, indeed, hath oft compared beenTo public feasts, where meet a public rout,Where they that are without would fain go in,And they that are within would fain go out.Sir John Davies.
Wedlock, indeed, hath oft compared been
To public feasts, where meet a public rout,
Where they that are without would fain go in,
And they that are within would fain go out.
Sir John Davies.
Let us listen, for a moment, to the merry jingle of the wedding bells, as they echo through the corridors of the Hall of Time. What is a wedding, and a marriage, and why? What object was sought, in the beginning, when custom demanded a marriage ceremony before cohabitation? Why has that ancient custom followed man to every far corner of the globe, and why do all peoples resent any effort to destroy that custom? Why so many different forms of ceremony, what do they mean, and why do they differ so?
Bolingbroke says that marriage was instituted because it was necessary that parents should know their own respective offspring; and that, as the mother can have no doubt that she is the mother, so a man should have all the assurance possible that he is the father: hence the marriagecontract, and the various moral and civil rights, duties and obligations which follow as corollaries.
Monogamy was the original law of marriage, but in Genesis we are told that Lamech took unto himself two wives. The Jews, in common with other Oriental peoples, married when they were very young, but the Talmudists forbade marriage by a male under thirteen years and a day. There was not much ceremony, in the early days, except the removal of the bride from her father's house to that of the bridegroom, called "taking a wife," and in primitive ages this was done by seizure and force. The only "ceremony" took place on the preceding day, when the marriage had been agreed upon in advance, and consisted of a formal elaborate bath by the bride in the presence of her female companions. In later times, marriage ceremonies gradually became very elaborate, and have generally remained so and became more so ever since, in all parts of the world. Abraham appears to have the honor of having secured the first divorce in history, for we are told he sent Hagar and her child away from him. In Deuteronomy XXIV, it is stated that a man had the power to dispose of a faithless wife by writing her bill of divorcement, giving it into her hand and sending her outof his house. When a man died, without issue, his brother had first claim upon the widow, and she could not marry another till the brother had formally rejected her. One peculiarity of the ancients was, that they assumed that the impending wedding of a couple had a very depressing effect, and it was consequently the custom for all friends and neighbors to take means to cheer up the doomed ones by all sorts of boisterous amusements. Married life was looked upon as a business, and perhaps a perilous one.
Cecrops seems to have been the first to introduce among the Athenians the formal marriage ceremony with all its solemn and binding obligations. The ancient Greeks early decided that marriage was a private as well as a public necessity, and the Spartans treated celibacy as a crime. Lycurgus made laws so that those who married too late, or unsuitably, or not at all, could be treated like ordinary criminals, and not only was it unrespectable to be a bachelor, but it was dangerous. Plato preached that a man should consider the welfare of his country rather than his own pleasure, and that if he did not marry before he was thirty-five he should be punished severely. The Spartans advocated marriage for the reason that they wanted more children born to the state, and when a married woman gavebirth to no children she was made to cohabit with another man. The Spartan King, Archidamus, fell in love with and married a very little woman, which so incensed the people that they fined him: they did not believe in marriage for love, but in marriage for big, sturdy offspring. Often, fathers would choose brides for their sons, and husbands for their daughters, who had never seen each other, and compel them to marry. In Greece, until Aristotle put a stop to it, the custom of buying wives was common.
By the Romans, as well as by the Jews and Greeks, marriage was deemed an imperative duty; and parents were reprehended if they did not obtain husbands for their daughters by the time they were twenty-five. The Roman law recognized monogamy only, and polygamy was prohibited in the whole empire. Hence, the former became practically the rule in all Christiandom, and was introduced into the canon law of the Eastern and Western churches. During the time of Augustus, bachelorhood became fashionable, and to check the evil, as well as to lessen the alarming number of divorces, which were also getting fashionable, Augustus imposed a wife tax on all who persisted in the luxury of celibacy.
The superstition that some days and monthsare unlucky or lucky for weddings seems to have originated with the Romans, May and February being thought unpropitious, while June was particularly favorable to happy marriages. These beliefs were based on things which cannot possibly concern people of other climes and religions, and, like all superstitions, are unfounded and absurd.
We know very little of the marriage affairs of the ancient Egyptians, but we do know that they were not restricted to any number of wives. In modern Egypt, a woman can never be seen by her future husband till after she has been married, and she is always veiled. A similar custom prevailed in ancient Morocco, the bride being first painted and stained, and then carried to the house of her husband-to-be, where she was formally introduced to him. He was satisfied, however, that she would suit him, for he had previously sent some of his female relatives to inspect her at the bath. The Mahomedans of Barbary do not buy their wives, like the Turks, but have portions with them. They retain in their marriage rites many ceremonies in use by the ancient Goths and Vandals. The married women must not show their faces, even to their fathers. The Moors of West Barbary have practically the same customs as the Mahomedans and theMoroccoans the groom never seeing the bride till he is introduced to her in the bridal chamber. The modern Arabians, since they have conformed to the Koran, marry as many wives as they please, and buy them as they do slaves. Among the Bedouins, polygamy is allowed, but generally a Bedouin has only one wife, who is often taken for an agreed term, usually short,—which sounds something like the "trial marriage" plan recently suggested by a now-famous American lady. The wedding consists in the cutting of the throat of a young lamb, by the bridegroom, the ceremony being completed the moment the blood falls upon the ground. Among the Medes, reciprocal polygamy was in use, and a man was not respectable unless he had at least seven wives, nor a woman unless she had five husbands. In Persia, living people were sometimes married to the dead, and often to their nearest relations. In the seventeenth century, the nobility might have as many wives as they pleased, but the poor commonality were limited to seven: and they might part with them at discretion.
Trial marriages were also in vogue in Persia, and seldom was a marriage contract made for life. A new wife was a common luxury. Persian etiquette demands that before the master ofthe house no person must pronounce the name of the wife, but rather refer to her as "How is the daughter of (naming her mother or father)?"
The Chinese believe that marriages are decreed by heaven, and that those who have been connected in a previous existence become united in this. Men are allowed to keep several concubines, but they are entirely dependent on the legitimate wife, who is always reckoned the most honorable. The Chinese marry their children when they are very young, sometimes as soon as they are born.
In Japan, polygamy and fornication are allowed, and fathers sell or hire out their daughters with legal formalities for limited terms. In Finland it was the custom for a young woman to wear suspended at her girdle the sheath of a knife, as a sign that she was single and wanted a husband. Any young man who was enamored of her, obtained a knife in the shape of the sheath, and slyly slipped it in the latter, and if the maiden favored the proposal, she would keep the knife, otherwise she would return it.
In another part of Finland, a young couple were allowed to sleep together, partly, if not completely dressed, for two weeks, which custom, called bundling or tarrying, was common in Wales and the New England States, and issupposed not to have resulted in immoral consequences.
In Scotland, the custom has long prevailed of lifting the bride over the threshold of her new home, which custom is probably derived from the Romans. The threshold, in many countries, is thought to be a sacred limit or boundary, and is the subject of much superstition. In the Isle of Man, a superstition prevails that it is very lucky to carry salt in the pocket, and the natives always do so when they marry. They also have the international custom of throwing an old shoe after the bridegroom as he left his home, and also one or more after the bride as she left her home. In Wales the old-time weddings were characterized by several curious customs, such as Bundlings, Chainings, Sandings, Huntings and Tithings. In Britain, before Caesar's invasion, an indiscriminate (or but slightly restricted) intermixture of the sexes was the practice, and polygamy prevailed; and it was not uncommon for several brothers to have only one wife among them, paternity being determined by resemblance.
The foregoing facts and customs do not show the evolution of marriage, because in some countries the same forms and customs prevail to-day that prevailed six thousand years ago. Ascivilization advances, however, we find that the tendency is toward a more rigid enforcement of the marriage contract, and strictly against polygamy. The sanctity of the home and respect for marriage vows have not only passed into the statute law of civilized nations, but they have become proverbial with most all of the enlightened people. It must also be observed, however, that at the present time there seems to be a tendency in this country to make marriage more difficult and divorce more easy.