"Gambler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... confidence; the implied warnings of the maid passed unheeded from his mind; indeed, he had scarcely listened to them. Amid stronger passions, he felt the excitement of the subtile game he and the free baron were playing; the blind conviction of a gambler that he should yet win seized him, dissipating in a measure ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... merchant-provost; quartermaster of the Sixth regiment of the line, in 1808, then chief of battalion in the Imperial Guard; retired with this rank on account of a rather severe wound received in Germany; afterwards an administrator and business man; excessive gambler. Husband of Juana Mancini who had been the mistress of Captain Montefiore, Diard's most intimate friend. In 1823, at Bordeaux, Diard killed and robbed Montefiore, whom he met by accident. Upon his return home ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... but in the Eighteenth Century courage was seldom wanting. To the common citizen a violent death was (and is) the worst of horrors; to the ancient highwayman it was the odd trick lost in the game of life. And the highwayman endured the rope, as the practised gambler loses his estate, without blenching. One there was, who felt his leg tremble in his own despite: wherefore he stamped it upon the ground so violently, that in other circumstances he would have roared with pain, and he left the world without a tremor. In this spirit Cranmer burnt his recreant ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... Alas! and alas! Before two years were gone, poor Lord Sandston was lying one foggy November morning on Hampstead Heath, with a bullet through his heart. Shot down at the commencement of a noble and useful career by a brainless gambler—a man who did all things ill, save billiards and pistol-shooting; his beauty and his strength hurried to corruption, and his wealth to the senseless DEBAUCHEE who hounded on his murderer to insult him. But ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... the Holy Pink-Toed Prophet, if ever a boy won a bet and was entitled to it, you're that young man. In-fer-nal young scoundrel! Keep it and split fifty-fifty with your wife. You won a straight bet from a crooked gambler, and if I haven't had a million dollars' worth of fun out of this transaction I hope I may marry a hula-hula woman—and I've passed my three score and ten and ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... in the market," Howard answered, and his air implied that a lack of knowledge of Mr. Brent was ignorance indeed; "a daring gambler. He cornered cotton once, and raked in over a million. He's a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the Finance Minister of the time was a man to whom, in years gone by, Mr. Gould had, unfortunately, declined to grant some small pecuniary assistance, basing his refusal on the ground that the applicant was a notorious gambler and cheat, besides being more than half suspected of a robbery with violence on a wealthy ranchero in a remote country district, where he was actually exercising the function of a judge. Now, after reaching his ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... idea when they cooked it up amongst 'em that she was to come with us. But I SWEAR I don't know how to go about it. I can't seem to make up my mouth to speak to folks first; and then you can't tell whether a man ain't a gambler, or on for the horse-races anyway. So we've been here a week now, and you're the first ones we've spoken to besides ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... The woman who was paraded as a victim of violence was of bad character; her husband was a drunkard and a gambler. ...
— Southern Horrors - Lynch Law in All Its Phases • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... making no attempt at conversation. Soft music bubbled up around them. He thought about his brother. So Steve was a gambler! And doing poorly at it, Hawkes said. He wondered if Steve would want to go back on the ship. He wondered also how it would be if Steve did agree to ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... prominence to an interview with a "distinguished citizen of Colorado," who gave a highly unfavorable account of the workings of woman suffrage there. The "distinguished citizen" in question was a prize-fighter who had killed three men—a gambler driven out by woman suffrage; and he naturally said that woman suffrage was a failure.... The great Woman's Club of Denver is a power for good in the city; it is carrying on schools in "the bottoms," night schools, kitchen gardens, traveling libraries; it secured ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... that Sam had been an inveterate gambler—that he had won a great deal of money from the soldiers, particularly one, who had that very day threatened to kill him, accusing the Chinaman of having cheated. The soldier probably had no intention of doing anything of the kind, but said it ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... was suggested by my having frequently heard Fitzgerald mentioned as a noted gambler, and sometimes even as a blackleg. O'Connor seemed, I thought, slightly ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... 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 did ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... company. I would by no means recommend playing at cards as a part of your study, lest you should grow too fond of it, and the consequences prove bad. It were better not to know a diamond from a club, than to become a gambler; but, as custom has introduced innocent card playing at most friendly meetings, it marks the gentleman to handle them genteelly, and play them well; and as I hope you will play only for small sums, should you lose your ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... regret in a drunkard; a gambler, a man who beats you, and a black-leg, who will one day ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... a family distinguished at the bar, Bigot, prior to coming to Canada had occupied the high post of Intendant in Louisiana. In stature, he was small—but well formed;—active—full of pluck— fond of display and pleasure—an inveterate gambler. Had he confined his operations merely to trading, his commercial ventures would have excited little blame, trading having been a practice indulged in by several other high colonial officials. His salary was totally inadequate to the importance ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... the leadership to Nick Undrell, a man of blemished reputation, a drunkard, a desperate gambler, and a convicted thief, but a magnificent horseman, a capable scout, and the hero ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... 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 ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... Spencer Stark, late Captain in His Majesty's Black Hussars, gambler, penniless, always well dressed, and always well fed—Terrible. Just as beetles are beetles, whether dressed in tropical splendour or the funereal black of the English type, so are detrimentals detrimentals. Jones ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... got it out of my wife that the rest was owing to different friends for bridge and racing debts. Of course I had forgotten that my little Irish wife was a born horse-lover, and, I'm sorry to say, gambler; and I ought not to have been surprised. But I was. And I'm afraid I was a bit brutal. You see I couldn't help thinking it was rather hard that the money I'd worked for was to be squandered; and I spoke rather sharply ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... explains, for example, the fact that he was the first gambler on a large scale in modern times. Pictures of future wealth and enjoyment rose in such lifelike colors before his eyes, that he was ready to hazard everything to reach them. The Mohammedan nations would doubtless have anticipated him in this respect, had ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... mail coach to obtain money for her if he has not sufficient for her whims. He will commit a crime if so he may be great and noble in the eyes of some woman or of his special public; such is the nature of the man. Such a lover is like a gambler who would be dishonored in his own eyes if he did not repay the sum he borrowed from a waiter in a gaming house; but will shrink from no crime, will leave his wife and children without a penny, and rob and murder, if so ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... was no gambler,—your immensely wealthy man rarely is,—but it gave him pleasure to watch the primitive emotions which gambling generally brings to the human surface, and so he spent at what he called "The Wash" a good ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... will lead you to strain a power which none but weak men fear; yours has been boundless from the day I knew you first. My love is the only accomplice in my disaster. I have felt, as my ruin progressed, the delirious joys of a gambler; as the money diminished, so my enjoyment grew. Each fragment of my fortune turned into some little pleasure for you gave me untold happiness. I could have wished that you had more caprices that I might gratify them all. I knew ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... there are men who have come there to escape restraint. Cutter was one of the "fast set" of Black Hawk business men. He was an inveterate gambler, though a poor loser. When we saw a light burning in his office late at night, we knew that a game of poker was going on. Cutter boasted that he never drank anything stronger than sherry, and he said he got his start in life by saving the money that other young men spent for ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... of the interruption; and, when he gave the boy twopence and bade him begone, half hoped that he would insist on remaining. But though an obdurate boy on most occasions, he proved complaisant on this, and withdrew to the high road, where he made over one of his pennies to a phantom gambler, and tossed with him until recalled from his dual state by the ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... 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 ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... "what would become of the 'Three Tuns?'" (for I wished to give him a lesson). "If your Ma, who took you every Sunday to meeting, should know that her boy was paying attention to married women;—if Drench, Glauber and Co., your employers, were to know that their confidential agent was a gambler, and unfit to be trusted with their money, how long do you think your connection would last with them, and who ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Knust is different. It is called "A Journey of Our Saviour on Earth," and is, in substance, as follows: A father whose son is a gambler, makes him become a soldier. The son deserts during a stormy night and takes refuge in an inn. There he meets a man who seems acquainted with his whole life and whose name is Salvatore (Saviour). He knows that ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... conscious that his eyes were on her, and also that in them lurked an expression of keen interest. His freckled mask of a face gave no clue to his thoughts; it never did, so far as she had ever observed. Fyfe had a gambler's immobility of countenance. He chucked the butt of his cigar in the stove and sat with hands clasped over one knee for some time after Katy John appeared and began setting the dining room table with a ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Berry, the partner 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 make it plain that the partnership was ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... determined to expose him, and save your sister. During the past few months I have been making this investigation, to find that the supposed immaculate Harper Elliston is known in Gotham in certain circles as a gambler and villain of the deepest dye. He has committed some crimes that are worse than murder. Now, as to the wart: It was soon after I had heard of the murder on the express train, that while riding in the smoking car of an emigrant train ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... eighty-third year. You know the manner of my life up until this meeting. I have had absolutely nothing to do with religion. As you know I have lived a life of great wickedness. I have been a drunkard, a gambler—a mighty sinner. For fifty-three years I had not gone near a church service until this meeting began. I have been thoroughly put out with the type of Christianity exhibited in this community these past years. But when through sheer curiosity I came into ...
— The Deacon of Dobbinsville - A Story Based on Actual Happenings • John A. Morrison
... study the rules for 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 ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... jeering laughter, and above it all the sweet pleading of a little girl begging for a father's life. And the quick blood came into his fair German face, and he felt that he could not save this Norman Anderson from the toils of the gambler, though he might, if provoked, pitch him over the guard of the boat. For was not Andrew's letter, which described the mob, in his pocket, and burning a hole in his pocket as it had been ever since ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... she admitted. "I was not made for domesticity. Sometimes I think that I was not made to be wife to any man. I am a gambler at heart. I love the fierce draughts of life. ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... That brow was the brow of the public Charles Fox, the thinker, the philanthropist, the man who rallied and led the Liberal party during the twenty most hazardous years of its existence. That jaw was the jaw of the private Charles Fox, the gambler, the libertine, the drunkard. Yet to his sins he never added the crowning one of hypocrisy. His vices were as open as his virtues. In some quaint freak of Nature, two spirits seemed to have been joined in one body, and the same frame to contain ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Experience offers proof on every hand that vigorous mental life may be but one side of a personality, of which the other is moral barbarism. A man may be a fine archaeologist, and yet have no sympathy with human ideals. The historian, the biographer, even the poet, may be a money-market gambler, a social toady, a clamorous Chauvinist, or an unscrupulous wire-puller. As for "leaders of science," what optimist will dare to proclaim them on the side of the gentle virtues? And if one must needs think in this ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... another really big fire here?" rejoined Mr. Hurd, almost contemptuously; but under the surface Charlie believed that his attitude of contempt was more or less assumed. He believed he had made a distinct impression, and it was therefore almost with a gambler's instinct that he brought forth his ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... hospitality, by carrying disgrace and infamy into every domestic circle to which they can by any means obtain admittance. It ought to be a source of pride to my countrymen, that they are more of a marrying people than the English or French, and do not regard women in the same degraded light as a gambler does a pack of cards, that are to be shuffled and played with for a while, and then thrown away. Our naval and military officers are rather remarkable for their readiness to form matrimonial connexions; while on the other hand, our young men who are educated to the law, physic, or ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... mad, mentally irresponsible. It certainly seems so to me now. Possibly I had the fever of a gambler playing for high stakes. At all events, I plunged to the limit—and the market went against me. I tried to extricate myself, but too late. It was impossible. All the capital at my command was lost, and ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... be to him lackey and serving-man and all, without any wage beyond his expenses paid. Angiolieri answered that he would nowise take him, not but he knew him to be right well sufficient unto every manner of service, but for that he was a gambler and bytimes a drunkard, to boot. But the other replied that he would without fail keep himself from both of these defaults and affirmed it unto him with oaths galore, adding so many prayers that Angiolieri was prevailed upon and said that he ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... Cameron called "one of those damned literary fellows" and Thomas Carlyle less profanely described as "a leeterary celeebrity." But some malign fate always sat upon my ambitions in this regard. It was easy to become The National Gambler in Nast's cartoons, and yet easier The National Drunkard through the medium of the everlasting mint-julep joke; but the phantom of the laurel crown would never linger upon my ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... a player's fingers stumble more than once before he could turn over the momentous slip of pasteboard. As the Prince's turn drew nearer, he was conscious of a growing and almost suffocating excitement; but he had somewhat of the gambler's nature, and recognised almost with astonishment that there was a degree of pleasure in his sensations. The nine of clubs fell to his lot; the three of spades was dealt to Geraldine; and the queen of hearts to Mr. Malthus, who ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Sopo, a gambler, next appeared and tossed handfuls of coins into a blanket. He stated that if heads came up, the people won and would have good health, but if they lost, their lives were his. As soon as he threw, the people rushed up, and if they saw any tails they were quickly turned, ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... hurried downstairs to greet them. He was pale, but quite composed. All the nervous uncertainty of the previous day had vanished. He was armed and willing for the fray. If, as was by no means unlikely, Wong Li Fu staked everything on a gambler's throw and led his cohort in a daylight raid on the house, the Manchu leader would meet ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... 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 ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... he entered upon his 'profession,' that of a wit, gambler, club-lounger, and man about town; for these many characters are all mixed in the one which is generally called 'a wit.' Let us remember that he was good-hearted, and not ill-intentioned, though imbued with the false ideas of his day. ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... and richness of incident. The suicide of the gambler is a startling effect; worthy of the imagination and ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... don't. I know your uncle's address: yes! you may well turn pale, and gnaw your lip—other people can plot and scheme as well as yourself: if I'm not paid before I leave this place, and that will be by to-night's mail, your uncle shall be told that his nephew is an insolvent gambler; and the old tutor, the Rev. Dr. Mildman, shall have a hint that his head pupil is little better ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... read by Mr. H. but not so many present on account of the cold—again in the evening with a sermon from Mr. G. from John, 14th chap., 15th verse, "If ye love me keep my commandments." Captain K. said he did not consider himself a gambler though he had lost 1, 2, 3 or L400 a night; once at Paris he lost a good deal. Since then he had made it a rule not to give checks, but merely stake what he had with him; when he lost the large sums they were out of his winnings. Talked of some ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... Barrett, for trustee or executor; he was such a solid, respectable, square-toed man, the personification of integrity. And he died, suddenly, and then it was found that he'd led a double life, and had an establishment here in London, and was a gambler and a speculator, and Heaven knows what, and all the money that had been intrusted to him was nowhere, and he'd systematically forged, and cooked accounts, and embezzled corporation money—and he'd no doubt have gone on doing it for many a year longer if he hadn't had ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... listening intently. From the last vessel of the line came the sound of low voices, accompanied at intervals by the click of the oblong bone dice with which the men were gambling. This was a boon, for when the Indian, a born gambler, is engaged in one of his games of chance, he is oblivious of all else around him. But on Angria's gallivat there was no sound. Rising to a crouching position, so that his form could not be seen if any of the gamblers chanced to look in his direction, Desmond slowly crept aft, halting ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... had made short trips on the river was one composed of two men. Phil Foote was a gambler, stage robber, and bad man in general. He had broken out of jail in Salt Lake City and, accompanied by another of similar character, stole a boat at Green River, Utah, and proceeded down the river. Soon after entering Cataract Canyon, they lost their boat and provisions. Finding a tent which had ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... certain. A hundred dollars was better than nothing. It would take him to Chicago, and enable him to live in comfort for a while. Besides, he might multiply it many times at the gaming table, for Tom Burns had been a gambler in his day. He certainly did not propose to disdain the sum which fortune had placed in his way simply because it was so small. Oh, no, Tom Burns was not that sort of ...
— The Young Bank Messenger • Horatio Alger
... speak, who find in the contrasts of life the mockery of death. I looked upon that frivolous idea, if it was serious and not a simple antithesis made in pleasantry, as the conceit of a heart that has known no real experience. The gambler who leaves the table at break of day, his eyes burning and hands empty, may feel that he is at war with nature like the torch at some hideous vigil; but what can the budding leaves say to a child who mourns a lost father? The ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... him. A heat-ray cylinder—that was legitimate. But we found a small battery and eavesdropping microphone similar to the one Venza had mentioned that Shac the gambler was carrying. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... you think, Miss Newville, that everybody of noble birth or high position is a gambler, but every one who plays, of course, wants a stake ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... go again. Profane language and bettin' on horses! WHAT'LL come next? My own brother a gambler and a prodigate! Has it come ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... suit wide open. A lot of them are big, and a lot of them are fast. Once we were inside, we'd have no maneuverability to speak of. If the termites didn't get to us before we got inside. Suits won't do it here." He was a gambler, and a gambler doesn't ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... say," growled the gambler, bringing forth a new pack. "Chance and luck are then twin companions. Will ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... you," I replied, "seeing is believing." "Whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will," cried a large, spotted bird. "That," thought I, "is a prize fighter." "Cheat, cheat!" urged a pious-looking cardinal, who evidently mistook me for a gambler. "Don't," roared a bullfrog, who was seated on a log and winked his eye at me. "There is an honest man," I thought. "Shake, good sir." In consternation and surprise, I instantly released his hand. "HOW is it possible to be both honest and slippery at the same time! This ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... more than a year ago few men of his age—he had then been sixty, he was now sixty-one—enjoyed a pleasanter and, from his own point of view, a better filled life than James Tapster. How he had scorned the gambler, the spendthrift, the adulterer—in a word, all those whose actions bring about their own inevitable punishment! He had always been self-respecting and conscientious—not a prig, mind you, but inclined rather to the serious than to the flippant side ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... she distrusted, took out his watch. He had a horse ranch some distance off, and the farmers called him a sport. As a matter of fact, he was a successful petty gambler, but generally lost his winnings by speculating in real-estate ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... and horse-racing. When a man backs a worthless horse against the field, money probably is transferred from the stupider to the shrewder party. The philosopher may say that the sooner a prodigal and his money are parted the better; but the broken gambler remains a burden and a threat to honest society. Gambling, lotteries, and speculation cause embezzlement, crime, unhappy homes, and wrecked lives.[6] Here are to be found with difficulty the true boundaries between ethics and expediency. A busybody despotism may protect the fool, but it thereby ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... of ex-Governor Roberts, of Iowa, and leaves a wife and two children to mourn his untimely end. As for Graham, nothing certain is known of his antecedents. It is said that he was engaged in the late robbery of Wells & Fargo's express at Grizzly Bend, and that he was an habitual gambler. Only one thing about him is certainly well known: he was a lieutenant in the Confederate army, and served under General Price and the outlaw Quantrell. He was a man originally of fine education, plausible manners ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... luck man has no glimmer of prescience. Day by day we rattle the box, throw the dice; but of how these will fall we have no knowledge. We only hope with the gambler's feverishness; and it is this very hazard that keeps us crowding and pushing to hold our place at the tables where fortune spins. Grow we sick of the game, sour with our luck, weary of the hazard, and relinquish we ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... it is to such men a thing absolutely good in itself. But such a one was not Sir Thomas Underwood. And there are men who love work, who revel in that, who attack it daily with renewed energy, almost wallowing in it, greedy of work, who go to it almost as the drunkard goes to his bottle, or the gambler to his gaming-table. These are not unhappy men, though they are perhaps apt to make those around them unhappy. But such a one was not Sir Thomas Underwood. And again there are men, fewer in number, who will work ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... dryly, "I am, I hope, a Christian man, but it would be difficult to convince me that the gambler, cattle-thief, and whisky-runner who ruined every man and woman who trusted him will be admitted to the same place as clean-lived English gentlemen. There are, my dear, plenty ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... 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 of that had brought him back ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... to be so, his debts grew daily greater, and in society one talked of nothing but his lavish expenditure and his creditors. I know that the purses of forty women were at his disposal. I know, moreover, that he used to gamble like a prince, and I would never marry my waiting-maid to a gambler ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... was 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 which should dazzle ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... than Shiva; and he has kept a sample of each incarnation, and fused it into his constitution. In the course of his evolutionary promotions, his sublime march toward ultimate perfection, he has been a gambler, a low comedian, a dissolute priest, a fussy woman, a blackguard, a scoffer, a liar, a thief, a spy, an informer, a trading politician, a swindler, a professional hypocrite, a patriot for cash, a reformer, a lecturer, a lawyer, a conspirator, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Nucingen would lap up all the mud between the Rue Saint-Lazare and the Rue de Crenelle to gain admission to my salon." What the duchesse did not reveal was that Anastasie had a lover, Count Maxime de Trailles, a gambler and a duellist. To pay the gambling losses of this unscrupulous lover, to the extent of two hundred thousand francs, the Countess de Restaud induced Old Goriot to sell out of the funds nearly all that remained of his great fortune, and give ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... lookout for a fare. Francis had sometimes accepted the offer, because it was an amusement to see where the passenger wished to go—to guess whether he was a lover hastening to keep an appointment, a gambler on a visit to some quiet locality, where high play went on unknown to the authorities, or simply one who had by some error missed his own gondola, and was anxious to return home. It made no difference to him which way he rowed. It was always possible that some adventure was to ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... they're up to," said the little telegraph boy to himself. "I know one of them fellers is a gambler. Wonder who that feller with him is? Them ...
— Helping Himself • Horatio Alger
... an inveterate gambler, and in Paraguari two at least of the houses are devoted to public play. They are crowded nightly, and often the stakes amount to five hundred or a thousand francs. Quarrels frequently arise over the play, and then the knife is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... Many worthy parents have been ruined by the sons whom they had sent thither to be made scholars of; but who have learnt only to be "gentlemen" in the popular acceptation of the word. To be a "gentleman" nowadays, is to be a gambler, a horse-racer, a card-player, a dancer, a hunter, a roue,—or all combined. The "gentleman" lives fast, spends fast, drinks fast, dies fast. The old style of gentleman has degenerated into a "gent" and a "fast" man. "Gentleman" has become ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... gathered a more and more unsavoury reputation until its like was not to be found outside a penitentiary. The crux of his career in his own country was reached during a midnight quarrel in Chicago when he shot a negro gambler. After that, the negro having recovered and the matter being somehow arranged so that the prosecution was dropped, Harman's wife left him, and the papers recorded her application for a divorce. She was George Ward's second cousin, the daughter of a Baltimore ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... arrange that Mrs. Beaudesart should overhear you discussing some horrible scandal in connection with me. And mind, she would have to believe it, or you would be a ruined man for the rest of your life—you would be a defaulting gambler, a byword, a hissing, an astonishment, with the curse of Cain upon your brow. Then she would spurn me with contumely, and I would be my own man again. I would be in sanctuary, so to speak; inviolable by reason of my disgrace. Metaphorically, you could lay the blast, and fire it at your leisure, ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... cabinet. Guildford had recommended Sir Thomas Meres, who, like himself, ranked among the Trimmers. Jeffreys, who missed no opportunity of crossing the Lord Keeper, had pressed the claims of Sir John Trevor. Trevor had been bred half a pettifogger and half a gambler, had brought to political life sentiments and principles worthy of both his callings, had become a parasite of the Chief Justice, and could, on occasion, imitate, not unsuccessfully, the vituperative style of his patron. The minion of Jeffreys was, as might ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Bostonian, out of his modest pile was tempted to stake an ounce of gold-dust. Though his head was hardly in a condition to follow the game intelligently, he won, or at least Bill and Jack told him he had, and for the first time Lawrence felt the rapture of the successful gambler, as he ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... at Lyons. She died in 1804, and he never recovered 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, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... snow-shoes, In the play of quoits and ball-play; Skilled was he in games of hazard, In all games of skill and hazard, Pugasaing, the Bowl and Counters, Kuntassoo, the Game of Plum-stones. Though the warriors called him Faint-Heart, Called him coward, Shaugodaya, Idler, gambler, Yenadizze, Little heeded he their jesting, Little cared he for their insults, For the women and the ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... there came well-authenticated stories of his being not only a professed gambler, but also very dissipated in his habits. To this last charge Agnes could testify, as his breath had frequently betrayed him. He was accordingly dismissed. Still he perseveringly pursued her, always managing, if possible, to get ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... vigorously, but when Ward came, asking me to take my money back and showing all the best side of his nature, he gave me more to think about than I wanted. An entirely different man had appeared, acknowledging himself a gambler, and not pretending to be sorry—for which I liked him—but with qualities which I had ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... identity," Sir Roland whispered. "I recognize the portrait in that locket; I couldn't possibly mistake it seeing that years ago I knew the original well. It's a miniature of Lady Logan, who died some years ago. Her husband, Lord Logan, was a gambler, a spendthrift, and a drunkard, and he treated her with abominable cruelty. They had one child, a son. I remember the son sitting on my knee when he was quite a little chap—he couldn't at that time have been more ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... Jim Kershaw, the gambler, waits,—white his hands and slim. Bill whispers, "Belle, you know it well; it is me or him. Jim Kershaw, so help me God, if you dance with Belle It is either you or me must travel down to hell." Jim put his arm around her waist, her graceful waist ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... returned from a scouting expedition, he took a hand in a game of poker, and in the course of the game he became involved in a quarrel with Dave Tutt, a professional gambler, about a watch which he had won from Tutt, who would not give ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... nothing to say. With a long whispered whistle, he drops into the wicker chair and stares before him like a beggared gambler. But a cunning look soon comes into his face. He leans over towards her on his right elbow, and speaks in ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... who seemed most disturbed by the departure, and tried to hinder it by every means in his power, was Friar Robert. Immersed in his political schemes, bending over his mysterious plans with all the eagerness of a gambler who is on the point of gaining, the Dominican, who thought himself on the eve of a tremendous event, who by cunning, patience, and labour hoped to scatter his enemies and to reign as absolute autocrat, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... show that this news meant anything to him. It was promotion—better pay, a better chance for advancement, an easier life. But Jack Roberts had learned to take good and ill fortune with the impassive face of a gambler. ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... great hall was fifty-three by forty-five feet, the ball-room seventy-five by twenty-seven. This abode was furnished in a style of the most lavish splendor, and Mr. Wellesley-Pole's income was more than adequate to maintain it in befitting style. But no income is adequate to meet the expenses of a gambler and spendthrift, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... these images are as various as the stars; and, like them, differ one from another in magnitude. It is the quality of the aspiration that determines the true success or failure of a life. A man may aspire to be the best billiard-player, the best coachman, the best wardroom politician, the best gambler, or the most cunning cheat. He may rise to be eminent in his calling; but, compared with other men, his greatest height will be below the level of the failure of him who chooses an honest profession. No jugglery ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... 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, and so would ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... can never rest. "Desire for action grows with us;" and in action of some sort, be it politics or science, life (if it is to be life at all) must be passed by each of us. Even the gambler must ply the dice-box, and the man of pleasure seek excitement in society. But in the true life of action, still the ruling principle ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... She had the gambler's instinct; her whole life had been a gamble, now winning, now losing, even to that moment when her lover had ridden up to the hotel and solved her doubts about the rich suitor. In Colorado she had known men whose fortunes came over night, "millions ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... for—they don't speak my language. You are what they call a manipulator of stocks. That means that you are living on the weaknesses of other people, and it almost means that you get your daily bread—yes—and your cake and your wine, too, from the sweat and toil of others. You're a safe gambler, a 'gambler under cover.' Show me a man who's dealing bank; he's free and above board. But you—you can figure the percentage against you, and then if you buck the tiger and get stung, you do it with your eyes open. With you Wall Street men, the game is crooked twelve months of the year. ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... feelings of suppressed scorn and resentment, which a sense of lost station and slighted importance engendered. Mr. Marston's early habits had, unhappily, been of a kind to aggravate, rather than alleviate, the annoyances incidental to reduced means. He had been a gay man, a voluptuary, and a gambler. His vicious tastes had survived the means of their gratification. His love for his wife had been nothing more than one of those vehement and headstrong fancies, which, in self-indulgent men, sometimes result in marriage, and which seldom ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... a gambler and a spendthrift. A year or two in town established you as an amiable, undisguised debauchee. The ...
— The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith • Arthur Wing Pinero
... 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 our gin-palaces; ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... a moment they are as wet as shipwrecked sailors. They cannot see out of their eyes for the drift, and the water churns and gurgles in their boots. They leave the track and try across country with a gambler's desperation, for it seems as if it were impossible to make the situation worse; and, for the next hour, go scrambling from boulder to boulder, or plod along paths that are now no more than rivulets, and across waste clearings where the scattered shells and broken ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... His lie was doubtless a bold device to put mademoiselle into his power, and to get entrance to my company. It was a last resource, it was just as likely to bring death as to bring success, but he had taken a gambler's chances. They had gone against him, and he had ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... fellow-courtiers, with knotted muscles which could fell an ox or crush a horse-shoe with the closing of a hand, Gregory Orloff was reputed the bravest man in Russia, as he was the idol of his soldiers. He was also a notorious gambler and drinker and the hero ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... get rich by trading in lots, went back to his plow and his chores, a sadder and wiser, although generally poorer, man. Many hundreds of thousands of dollars changed hands during the boom. Exactly who "beat the game," to use the gambler's expression, has never been known. Certain it is, that for every man in Kansas who admits that he made money out of the excitement and inflation, there are at least fifty who say that the ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... success of that adventurer Sacco, that schemer and gambler who had always fished in troubled waters, was an abomination, the beginning of the end. His son Luigi certainly distressed him; but it was even worse to think that—whilst Luigi, with his great intelligence and many remaining fine qualities, was nothing at all—Sacco, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... also pursued by Sir Merlin, and finally weds her in despite of his father, brother and the beldame. But Sir Rowland shortly relents and even forgives his eldest son, who has married Diana, the cast off mistress of a gambler, whilst Lady Youthly is left to the tender consolations ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... money in my pocket, to come to a certain house in two hours' time, binding me by an oath not to mention the circumstance to any one. I went at the time agreed on, and was shown by a servant into a room, where, soon afterwards, I was joined by a young officer, whom I knew to be a gambler and a man of ruined fortune. I therefore guessed that he wanted me to perform some desperate piece of work or other for him. 'Well, what is it you want of me?' I asked, in rather a sulky mood, for somehow ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... thump on the table, and Bill, unlucky gambler, rose with an oath that would have been savage if ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... Man Higher Up. Higginbotham was his agent. This man, one of the wealthiest realty operators in New York, was a born gambler. He could never resist the impulse to engage in a venture that would bring him big returns on his investment. In his realty operations, this quality had earned him the name of ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... two players, who, their cards concealed in their hands, watched each other with sharp glances. Hermann Heideck, who had stepped behind Irwin, noticed on the right hand of the Captain a magnificent diamond ring. But he also perceived, by the way the bright sparkle of the stone quivered, how the gambler's fingers trembled. ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... at it—never mind the bough,—it's only smashed your tile! Now we're with them. See, they're tailing, from the fierceness of the pace, Up the hedgerow, o'er the meadow, 'cross the stubble see them race: Governor—by Belvoir Gambler,—he's the hound to "run to head," Tracing back to Rallywood, that fifty years ago was bred; Close behind comes Arrogant, by Acrobat; and Artful too; Rosy, bred by Pytchley Rockwood; Crusty, likewise staunch ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... failings, and soon our brief passion had burnt itself out. Ah, me! with what regret I used to look back to this quiet town, and the stately calm of Oaklands, after one of our vulgar quarrels. I learned too soon that my husband was a gambler, and that my fortune had been a more coveted prize than myself; but fortunately, neither of us could touch anything but the interest until my eldest child should come of age. So often in my free-hearted days we had made merry over my father's ridiculous will! Now how I thanked him for his ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... you, Dave, the movement is on now, and before long it'll hit us like a tidal wave. I've been a bit of a gambler all my life, but this is the biggest jack-pot ever was, and I'm going to sit ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... him as a gambler loves his cards, or as the fire loves the coals. He idealised him; he dreamt about him; he liked to breathe the air that Eberhard breathed; he saw a chosen being in him; he imputed all manner of heroic deeds to him, and was immeasurably ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... Or there is the ring-dropping trick, it is as old as the hills. Or there is the sham sailor—now very rarely met with. When we have another war he will come to the front again. We have still the cheating gambler, but he has always been with us. In King Charles the Second's time he was called a Ruffler, a Huff, or a Shabbaroon. The woman who now begs along the streets singing a hymn and leading borrowed children, did the same thing two hundred years ago and was called a clapperdozen. The man who pretends ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... one frank word. There was in his look the prayer of a desperate gambler who watches a card poised between the dealer's fingers. Jacqueline had one answer only. But exactly how to express it, lest she be ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... 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
... 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 down beside ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... he was watching her with calculating eyes. He was a gambler with life, and he rather suspected that he had ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... gambler after all," she declared. "If you do not redeem the ranch, he will get odds of two and a half to one on his million-dollar bet and clean up in a year. With water on the lands of the San Gregorio, Okada's people will pay five hundred dollars an ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... affectionate distrust inspired by those who are prone to fits and starts of work and play, conviviality and loneliness. To women, he was almost universally attractive. But if he had scorched his wings a little once or twice, he had kept heart-free on the whole. He was, it must be confessed, a bit of a gambler, the sort of gambler who gets in deep, and then, by a plucky, lucky plunge, gets out again, until some day perhaps—he stays there. His father, a diplomatist, had been dead fifteen years; his mother was well known in the semi-intellectual circles of society. He had no brothers, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... upright—laid on Alda's wrist a long bony burning hand, whose clasp she did not forget for weeks, and forcing her to look at him, said, 'Did you allow it to be believed that your brother Felix was a gambler?' ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... active service in the Philippines. But Aguinaldo's surrender put a quietus on this project, and he entered a broker's office in Wall Street Here, in the maelstrom of frenzied finance, his pent up energies found an outlet. He went into the stock gambling game with the feverish energy of a born gambler. Months of excitement followed, luck being usually with him. He was successful. He doubled and tripled his capital, after which he had good sense enough to stop, withdrawing from the fray before the tide turned. But he could not give up the life entirely. ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... 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 ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... admiration and respect, and congratulations upon his present position. This was an unanswerable denial; and so he sent the letter to Baltimore. This story, fabricated out of nothing but malice, was meant to injure in two ways, by proving him a gambler, and also pusillanimous. The slanderous officer will probably cease to be one, as I believe falsehood is not considered ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... intervening countryside, and taking a gambler's chance, took the Rolls Royce up the hill. He knew exactly what he was about, and he knew that the powerful engine would eat up the slope ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... the penitent. The first object was to drive no person out of the pale of the Church. Since there were bad people, it was better that they should be bad Catholics than bad Protestants. If a person was so unfortunate as to be a bravo, a libertine, or a gambler, that was no reason for making him ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... deck, every pleasant day, a large, well-dressed man, attended by his valet, generously opened a barrel of fresh oysters for the passengers. This benevolent gentleman proved to be a famous Saratoga gambler. In this way he made many acquaintances and friends, and each day he increased his winnings at cards and in bets on the vessel's run, till finally, not he, but the guileless passengers paid for ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... show some 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, as you should ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... that I learned something about the couple who had preceded us in the use of these rooms. They were of middle age and of great personal elegance but uncertain pay, the husband being nothing more nor less than a professional gambler. Their name ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... Netta. Then you do not hate me, although they have done their best to make you do so, by calling me gambler, spendthrift, drunkard, and ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... his new capital, Indra-prastha, to Hastina-pura the capital of Duryodhan, with his mother and brothers and Draupadi. And as Yudhishthir lost game after game, he was stung with his losses, and with the recklessness of a gambler still went on with the fatal game. His wealth and hoarded gold and jewels, his steeds, elephants and cars, his slaves male and female, his empire and possessions, were all ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... himself to be repulsed. It seemed to him that his future, his honor, his whole life hung upon this moment. He felt like a gambler who has staked his last hope upon one throw of the dice. If this fails, all hope is gone; no future, no life is left, nothing but the grave awaits him. With impetuous violence he seized the hand of the rich Itzig. ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... flow of capital into certain forms of investment, and, to some small extent, the commercial crises incidental thereto, it does not explain the vital problem, the source of capitalist income. The chances of gain, as a premium for the risks involved, explain satisfactorily enough the action of the gambler when he enters into a game of roulette or faro. It cannot be said, however, that the aggregate wealth of the gamblers is increased by playing roulette or faro. Then, too, the risks of the laborers are vastly more vital than those of the capitalist. Yet the premium for their risks of health and life ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... dealt in a hasty fashion with one or two horse-thieves," he continued. "Also with a gambler who was put ashore here from a river packet and subsequently became involved in a dispute with a late citizen of this place touching the number of aces in a pack of cards. It is not for me to criticize! What I may term the spontaneous love of justice ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... 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 ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... the municipal government. To put down the nuisance Swift took a characteristic method. Ebenezer Elliston had, about this time, been executed for street robbery. Although given a good education by his parents, he forsook his trade of a silk weaver, and became a gambler and burglar. He was well known to the other gangs which infested Dublin, but his death did not act as a deterrent. Swift, in composing Elliston's pretended dying speech, gave it the flavour and character of authenticity in order to impose on the ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... confirmed Blake. "Cut it out, though. A gambler is a fool. More fun in a nickel earned than a dollar made ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... I confess? My sins? They are too many. As for that money, I hoped to return it as any son might hope to reimburse his father for money advanced to pay a gambler's debt. I said I meant to work. My first money earned shall ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... mind. Another sky, other customs, another language, grave responsibilities, a novel and difficult undertaking of uncertain outcome—I was willing to risk all simply to distract my attention and to forget. I have never in my life been a gambler, but that time I staked my artistic reputation upon a single card. Failure would have been a new emotion, severe and grievous, it is true, but still different from that which filled my mind. I played, ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... repeated, his eyes glistening with anger. "Do men like you believe men like me? I have a past, you know, of antecedents, as you would say. The past! They throw that in my face, as if, the future depended on the past. Well, yes; it's true, I'm a debauchee, a gambler, a drunkard, an idler, but what of it? It's true I have been before the police court, and condemned for night poaching—what does that prove? I have wasted my life, but whom have I wronged if not myself? My past! Have I not sufficiently ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... feeling against Tennessee had grown up on the Bar. He was known to be a gambler; he was suspected to be a thief. In these suspicions Tennessee's Partner was equally compromised; his continued intimacy with Tennessee after the affair above quoted could only be accounted for on the hypothesis of a copartnership of crime. At last Tennessee's guilt ...
— Tennessee's Partner • Bret Harte
... believe in preparing thoroughly before an attack, but they are ready at times to take a gambler's chance if the moment seems opportune to win by striking the enemy a sudden ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... Prince Vasili in his monotonous voice. "I never could understand how Nataly made up her mind to marry that unlicked bear! A perfectly absurd and stupid fellow, and a gambler ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... a gambler who fell at the table in a fit of apoplexy, and his companions began to bet upon his chances of recovery. When the physician came they refused to let him bleed the man because they said it would affect the bet. When President Garfield was ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... be more fatal still, and the Polish state might conceivably disappear before military aid from the Allied governments could reach it. Why should the safety of Poland and to some extent the security of Europe be made to depend upon what is at best a gambler's throw? ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... as if he were going to weep, and in a quivering voice he asked if I could help him. He was going home to marry a maiden in Kent whom he described as "a pure good girl." He felt unworthy, for he was a gambler and a periodical drunkard, and he thought that if a man like Creedan could be ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... was perpetrated a crime of violence no worse than many hundreds which had preceded it, but occurring at a psychological time. A gambler named Charles Cora shot and killed William Richardson, a United States marshal. The shooting was cold-blooded and without danger to the murderer, for at the time Richardson was unarmed. Cora was at once hustled to jail, not so much for confinement as for safety against ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... character and habits of life were generally known, yet the laxity of feeling with respect to property prevented his being looked on with the abhorrence with which he must have been regarded in a more civilized country. He was considered, among his more peaceable neighbours, pretty much as a gambler, cock-fighter, or horse-jockey would be regarded at the present day; a person, of course, whose habits were to be condemned, and his society, in general, avoided, yet who could not be considered as marked with the indelible ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... who was anxious for his reputation, endeavored to keep him within the bounds of decency. But Milo's mind was fastened on the province which was to redeem his fortunes, and he flung into bribery what was left of his wrecked credit with the desperation of a gambler. He had not been praetor, and thus was not legally eligible for the consulate. This, however, was forgiven. He had been aedile in 54, and as aedile he had already been magnificent in prodigality. But to secure the larger prize, he gave ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... 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 ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... she proposed—the impertinence of it! It was a bargain she proposed—the value of it! In that shape ran Harry Wethermill's thoughts. He was in desperate straits, though to the world's eye he was a man of wealth. A gambler, with no inexpensive tastes, he had been always in need of money. The rights in his patent he had mortgaged long ago. He was not an idler; he was no sham foisted as a great man on an ignorant public. He had really some touch of genius, and he cultivated it assiduously. But the harder he worked, ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... of the drunkards take their first drink? Where did the gambler play his first card? Where did three-fourths of the women, who are to-day living a life of shame, have a man's arm about them for the ...
— From the Ball-Room to Hell • T. A. Faulkner
... I never said nothing about what I'd got afore, and he never seemed to care to ask me. But it were all his deepness. One night he pulls out a pack of cards, and says, 'Let's have a game. Only for love,' says he, when he saw me look a little shyly at him. 'I'm not a gambler,' says he; 'I never plays for money.' So we has a game and a pipe together, and he pulls out a little flask of spirits, and we got very cheerful. But I was careful not to take too much that night. However, the rum set my tongue loose, and I let out something about ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson |
