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Gamble   Listen
noun
Gamble  n.  An act of gambling; a transaction or proceeding involving gambling; hence, anything involving similar risk or uncertainty. (Colloq.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Gamble" Quotes from Famous Books



... poker; I had a pair of fast horses, and I was guilty of other habits that I sometimes mention at my 'men-only' meetings. After awhile I slid into the hole that is at the foot of every ungodly slope on earth. I was facing ruin. I had only one chance to save myself, and that was to gamble big on wheat. To do it I actually stole some money out of a bank run by a friend of mine. It's awful to think about, but I did it. I was found out. I was accused and arrested. I was tried and found guilty. Lord, Lord, I shall never forget that day! ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben

... sake; he is very tender of her. I have long lost all my colds, and the weather mends a little. I take some steel drops, and my head is pretty well. I walk when I can, but am grown very idle; and, not finishing my thing, I gamble(6) abroad and play at ombre. I shall be more careful in my physic than Mrs. Price: 'tis not a farthing matter her death, I think; and so I say no more to-night, but will read a dull book, and go sleep. ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift

... notice on the front door, and when Hollis dismounted from his pony there were perhaps a dozen interested citizens grouped about the door, reading the notice. There were several of the town's merchants and a number of cowboys—new arrivals and those who had remained overnight to gamble and participate in the festivities that were all-night features of the dives. There were also the usual loafers, who constitute an element never absent in any group of idlers in any street. All, however, gave ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer

... ill became me; that I sat apart and watched with critical eyes the merriment around me? Then let the impression be forever blasted. I am not a virtuous man according to theological standards. I have been a hardened sinner since birth. I gamble. Beer is my favourite drink. It has been flatteringly whispered into my ear that I dance beautifully. I read Cellini and Rabelais and Boccaccio with unfeigned delight. I am enchanted by the music of Charpentier ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright

... kegs and a continual scuffle of fighters over cheating at cards. No marvel the second officer flogged and carved at the knaves like an African slaver. The first night the whole crew set on us with drawn swords because we refused to gamble the doublets from our backs. La Chesnaye laid about with his sword and I with my rapier, till the cook rushed to our rescue with a kettle of lye. After that we escaped to the deck of the ship and locked ourselves inside Ben Gillam's cabin. Here we heard the ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut

... tried the plan of cutting down the money supply and Howard found himself financially embarrassed. But this had not quite the effect desired by the father, for, rendered desperate by his inability to secure funds with which to carry on his sprees, the young man started in to gamble heavily, giving notes for his losses and pocketing the ready money ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow

... all their fashions, even the crudest, they deserve much tenderness. He consults a clergyman (1829) on the practice of prayer meetings in his rooms. His correspondent answers, that as the wicked have their orgies and meet to gamble and to drink, so they that fear the Lord should speak often to one another concerning Him; that prayer meetings are not for the cultivation or exhibition of gifts, nor to enable noisy and forward young men to pose as leaders of a school of prophets; ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... supposition, Lawrence," she answered evenly, "if you obtained my love, wouldn't it then be my game, my risk in the great gamble for deeper life? Wouldn't it be my mistake for having thought ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades

... people don't seem as though they had all that money to gamble with, do they? Look! There must be at least a thousand or fifteen hundred pounds upon ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... not, foolish! Should not all slaves stand together? Body of Bacchus! Did they do so, there would shortly be no slaves! But that is as it must be. As for Nicodemus, know you what place his wine-shop is? A drinking den where violent men gather to brawl and gamble. No fit one, truly, for a maid! Rather, stay you here, and when this unloved comrade of yours arrives, why, I'll hear of it, and ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor

... the man who keeps a licensed gambling-house to abandon a pursuit that is ruining his country. "But I am not violating the laws," he replies, "nor compelling any man to gamble and drink to excess in my house. The whole responsibility, therefore, rests upon those who do it. Expostulate with them. I have a right to ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society

... keep pace with each other, or whether there is discord at home. Business can afford to place responsibility upon the mentally capable, energetic, and tactful man if his marriage relations are harmonious. It cannot afford to gamble with the man who is in trouble at home—not necessarily vicious trouble, but trouble arising from ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various

... Captain-General. "Such an outrage shall never be perpetrated while I govern! To close the schools in order to gamble! Man, man, I'll resign first!" His Excellency was ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal

... crowd of the world on foot went drifting, Standing aside on the trodden grass To chaff as they let the traffic pass. Then back they flooded, singing and cheering, Plodding forward and disappearing, Up to the course to take their places, To lunch and gamble and ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield

... to the fact that it lay on the cattle-trail which led from the prairies of Texas through this no man's land to the railway system, and that it was the first place where the cowboys coming north could find a bed to sleep in, a bar to drink at, and a table to gamble on. For some years they had made of Kiota a hell upon earth. But gradually the land in the neighbourhood was taken up by farmers, emigrants chiefly from New England, who were determined to put an end to the reign of violence. A man named Johnson was their leader ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris

... whipping post in Jonesville. A bull-whip was used for the punishment and it brought the blood from the bare back of the man or woman being whipped. One day a grown slave was given 150 lashes with the bull-whip, for teaching the young boys to gamble. He saw this punishment administered. He had climbed a tree where he could get a better view. He said that several slaves were being whipped that day for various things, and there were several men standing around watching the whipping. He said that he was laughing at the victim, ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... which the Spanish nation suffers great loss of reputation among those pagans. Inasmuch as they are paid there in three yearly installments, the result is that, as soon as they have received their money, most of them gamble it away in their quarters, and then go about barefoot and naked. Many sell their arquebuses to the natives, which is a great evil. They have to go about begging alms and commit innumerable acts of meanness ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various

... territory believed to be very rich in certain minerals. He was going for a group of capitalists who, if he brought back an encouraging report, would obtain large concessions for exploiting the land. It was a gamble; the territory in question was virtually unexplored. That region, moreover, was peopled by a tribe opposed to exploitation, and, for that matter, even to visits from their white-skinned nominal rulers. But ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman

... turning out of St. James's Street, and piqued itself on its outward quietness and sobriety. Why pay for stone-work for other people to look at;—why lay out money in marble pillars and cornices, seeing that you can neither eat such things, nor drink them, nor gamble with them? But the Beargarden had the best wines—or thought that it had—and the easiest chairs, and two billiard-tables than which nothing more perfect had ever been made to stand upon legs. Hither Sir Felix wended on that January afternoon as soon as he ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... whether or not it mattered if he listened, and made the usual two-minds hash of it. Finally we put it to a vote, letting Brown have a voice with the rest of us. He was in favor of anything that offered prospect of a gamble; and we remembered the letter in code we had given the missionary to mail to Monty. We had told him in that that we should make tracks for Elgon, and we all voted the ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... still enjoying it," put in the Comte de Born. "No one wears his clothes with a finer air, nor drives a tandem with a better grace. It is Maxime's gift; he can gamble, eat, and drink more gracefully than any man in the world. He is a judge of horses, hats, and pictures. All the women lose their heads over him. He always spends something like a hundred thousand francs a year, ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac

... when all colors join, To gamble, riot, quarrel, and purloin; When Afric's sooty sons, a race forlorn, Play, swear, and fight, like Christians freely born; And Indians bless our civilizing merit, And get dead drunk with truly Christian spirit; When heroes, skilled in pocket-picking sleights, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... is this tribute of the late Hon. T. H. Benton to his mother's influence:—'My mother asked me never to use tobacco; I have never touched it from that time to the present day. She asked me not to gamble, and I have never gambled. I cannot tell who is losing in games that are being played. She admonished me, too, against liquor-drinking, and whatever capacity for endurance I have at present, and whatever usefulness ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... President of the United States be requested to present a silver medal, with like emblems and devices, to the nearest male relative of Lieutenant Peter Gamble, and of Lieutenant John Stansbury, and to communicate to them the deep regret which Congress feel for the loss of those gallant men, whose names ought to live in the recollection and ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat

... snow melted upon his broad shoulders and trickled in little, hurrying drops down to the nearest jumping-off place. "Come, drownd your sorrer," Bill advised amiably. "Nobody said nothing but Sammy, and I'll gamble he wishes he hadn't, now." If his counsel was vicious, his smile was engaging—which does not, in this instance, mean that it ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower

... and camel owners. There were scattered little plots of better soil where wells were sunk, and the laborious and careful cultivation was and is Dutch in its neatness. Some millets were grown in the autumn and the sandhills yielded melons. The people have now learned that it is worth while to gamble with a spring crop of gram, and this has led to an enormous extension of the cultivated area. But even now in Mianwali this is a comparatively small fraction of the total area. There is a small amount of irrigation from wells and in the ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie

... That's why people gamble—and hope. But the great majority lose." Rick waved at the luxurious casino. "If most people didn't ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin

... had such an advanced design," said Redell, "and I just don't believe it possible—would we gamble on a remote-control system? No such system is perfect. Suppose it went wrong. At that speed, over fifteen thousand miles an hour, your precious missile or strato ship could be halfway around the globe in about forty-five minutes. That is, if the fuel held out. Before ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe

... my lad, because you're a Johnny Newcome. I'll tell you. We've got some of the most blackguardly scum that could be took off the top of the big town sink-holes—men who've come to rob and gamble; but we've got, too, plenty of sturdy fellows like yourselves, who mean work and who trust one another—men who'll help each other at a pinch; and I've heard that there's a sort of lawyer fellow ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn

... it. But to me at that time it was natural enough as a last resort. There was but one debt which my wife ever paid, but one promise she ever kept. It was that made at the gaming-table. I offered, as soon as my father, realizing the hopelessness of the situation, had gone tottering from the room, to gamble with ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green

... for one's character, I mean. And I really have grown quite attached to him. He has charming qualities. His want of self-confidence is really his worst fault—and what a trivial one if you've had experience of the horrid things men can do, gamble, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... has himself felt the hunger for any kind of exhilaration, from angel or devil, cannot know why his butler takes to drink. It is idle to say that a man who has been fascinated with the wild fastidiousness of destiny does not know why stockbrokers gamble, to say that a man who has been knocked into the middle of eternal life by a face in a crowd does not know why the poor marry young; that a man who found his path to all things kindly and pleasant blackened and barred suddenly by the body of a man does not know what ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton

... blind herself to the fact that in order to gamble, most of the girls in the room would go, without the smallest discrimination, to anybody's house; but there were others,—notably Mrs. Alan Hosack, Mrs. Cooper Jekyll and Enid Ouchterlony,—whose pride it was to draw a hard, relentless line between themselves and ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

... said; 'you've allowed gamblin' in this bar—your boss has. You've got no right to let spielers gamble away a man's dog. Is a customer to lose his dog every time he has a doze to suit your boss? I'll go straight across to the police camp and put you away, and I don't care if you lose your licence. I ain't goin' to lose my dog. ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson

... dancing with 'Lord' Bill. Yes, you are right, Lablache does not look very amiable. I think this would be a good opportunity to suggest a little gamble in ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... reign, in idle amusements, lounging about his palace, playing at tennis in the tennis court like a boy, and then weighing himself afterward to see how much he was gaining. In the afternoons and evenings he would loiter in the rooms of his favorites while they were finishing their dressing, gamble at cards, and often would get very much intoxicated at wild midnight carousals. He would ramble in the mall and in the parks, and feed the aquatic birds upon the ponds there, day after day, with all the interest and pleasure of a truant schoolboy. He roamed about thus in the most free and ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott

... happiness of your sweetheart without a qualm. And who knows? It might have been worth it. An hour from now I shall be sure it wasn't; I shall be sure it was all blind, wicked folly. But now I am a little sorry. I wanted to gamble with fate. I wanted us to stake our two lives recklessly upon a kiss—and see what happened. And you couldn't. It wasn't a moment of beauty and terror to you. You didn't want to challenge fate. You just ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell

... gamble. They played swiftly, and in silence. West seemed to take but slight interest in the issue, but he won steadily and surely. Young Bathurst, playing feverishly, lost and lost, and lost again. The fortunes of the other four players varied. But always ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... Gamble was arrested by the police for saying that two officers were killed and it was a pity more were not shot. She was given $25 or ...
— Mob Rule in New Orleans • Ida B. Wells-Barnett

... is the rich, moral, or religious man, who takes another position. He opposes with the declaration "his sons will not gamble: they have such good and moral examples," &c. This is sometimes a want of consideration, that prompts them thus to speak; with others, a secret villany, driving them to such ultra positions, a mere tattered garment to cover their own moral deformity. They must oppose the ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green

... found and killed a seal, and in its stomach, "not too far digested to be still eatable," were thirty-six fish. And what visions of joy for the future. "We never again found a seal with an eatable meal inside him, but we were always hoping to do so, and a kill was, therefore, always a gamble. Whenever a seal was sighted in future, some one said, 'Fish!' and there was always a scramble to search ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... presence of death in the thrill of the great gamble he was projecting. And Keith, whose heart was pounding like an excited fist, saw in a flash the amazing audacity of the thing that was in Conniston's mind, and felt the responsive thrill of its possibilities. No one down there would ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood

... said, denied this marriage, and continued to live and go and come, like a bachelor. If the marriage ever occurred, it was kept, for some reason, very much under the rose. Be this as it may, Percy was always provided with money from some source. He used to gamble sometimes, but was not an habitual gamester. Philip said he was too much of a sybarite and ladies' man to be wedded ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch

... was better in her life," the Trainer answered, proudly. Then he added, to ease the troubled look that was in the gray eyes of his master, "She'll win next time out, sir—I'll gamble ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser

... GAGE said that allusion had been made in the address to the popular sentiment, that men are what their mothers made them. She repelled this sentiment as an indignity to her sex. What mother, she asked, ever taught her son to drink rum, gamble, swear, smoke, and chew tobacco? The truth was, that the boy was virtually taught to regard his mother as inferior, and that it was not manly to follow her instructions. When he left the hearth-stone he was beyond her reach. He found men, and those, too, in ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... he altogether pleases me," said James Grey. "He is not as obedient and observant of my wishes as he should be. For example, he went to Alton yesterday without permission, and lost all his money on hand by gaming. I hope you never gamble, Gilbert." ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger

... not. It's stone. [He shakes it with all his might, then makes signs.] What do we care? Come, let's have a game. [He starts to gamble as hard as ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka

... yet you utter a jargon as mysterious as theirs. I neither gamble nor quarrel; why, then, should ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... feeding, gambling and theatricals, at the same or at different times without hurry. We patronised the gambling corner—gave the principal high priest who did the honours of the place to us five rupees to gamble with for us—he was a fine big man with a potent expression—he lost and won a good deal, then lost the lot and two or three more rupees, and went on playing with his own money. It was delightful to see the hearty way these gamblers laughed when they lost, and chuckled when they won: I ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... knew that Cass had correctly concluded that in no other way was he likely to be reimbursed. And, at best, it was only a hazard, a wild gamble. In fact, it was a last desperate chance. Moreover, stock was always available; while ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... for the outcome of Tom's bold gamble. Soon they saw the result. The pursuing planes suddenly peeled off and sped away in the direction from which ...
— Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X • Victor Appleton

... miss, you gamble on that and the lightnin's a fool to us!" shouted Dollops in reply. "Let her have it, guv'ner! Bust the bloomin' tank. Give her her head; give her her feet; give her her blessed merry-thought if she ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew

... We never really gamble!" The fluttering little hands deprecated the very idea. "We have just a tiny stake—to —why, only to make us play a better game. ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells

... gamble!" he said. "He was betting upon certainties, but he won. Will you tell him from me, when you see him, that although I have not the money in my pocket at the moment, I shall pay my debts. Tell him that we are as careful to do that in France as we are ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... Maybe not," admitted the elder. "Though I wouldn't gamble strong on some of 'em. But they've ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... roof pulled Charley to their side. Flat roofs were great institutions they decided as they crawled cautiously towards the other side. This roof was of hard, sun-baked adobe, over two feet thick, and they did not care if their friends shot up on a gamble. ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford

... he has done Rastignac, that great manipulator of elections, who is, I think, his compatriot, several signal services as an amateur; Rastignac, in return, gives him information, obtained through Nucingen, which enables him to gamble at the Bourse." ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac

... whenever he goes to Rockville—the town I mean—and Jasniff and Merwell will get him to drink and smoke, and maybe gamble, and worse. Nat is easily ...
— Dave Porter and His Rivals - or, The Chums and Foes of Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer

... this man's hope, to make him believe that if he would only "hold out" he would pass the crisis successfully. But no physician could say that his patient could stand it for one week, a month or a year more. The doctor would have to gamble upon that man's nerves. He would have to stimulate him daily, ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman

... decision will be in your favor. And you and Grimes are planning to gamble on it, and to make a great ...
— The Machine • Upton Sinclair

... captain's knife between his shoulder-blades. And the go-fever which is more real than many doctors' diseases, waked and raged, urging him who loved Maisie beyond anything in the world, to go away and taste the old hot, unregenerate life again,—to scuffle, swear, gamble, and love light loves with his fellows; to take ship and know the sea once more, and by her beget pictures; to talk to Binat among the sands of Port Said while Yellow Tina mixed the drinks; to hear the crackle of musketry, and see the smoke roll outward, thin ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... service in the West, Nolan knew more about fortifications, embrasures, ravelins, stockades, and all that, than any of them did; and he worked with a right goodwill in fixing that battery all right. I have always thought it was a pity Porter did not leave him in command there with Gamble. That would have settled all the question about his punishment. We should have kept the islands, and at this moment we should have one station in the Pacific Ocean. Our French friends, too, when they wanted this little watering-place, would have ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... laughed the Pleasant-Faced Lion, "the children are retreating. Carry-on-Merry, Gamble, Grin, and Grub, I believe you are the champion snowballers of the world. I think myself you must have acquired the gift from some unusually impish urchins whose methods you have closely observed round Westminster way. I consider your skill quite ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton

... to be done, anything which was not desirable for the child to do either in public or private. Why should any man who walks upright, with his head pointing to the stars, be permitted to profane the name of Deity, to stagger under the influence of liquor, to puff at a cigar, to gamble, to run a disorderly resort or show, to enrich himself through the manufacture and sale of poisons, or to do anything else that corrupts the community and destroys her children? Surely in our feeble attempts at free government, the right hand ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall

... nature of the background, [Professor Gamble writes] so is the mixture of the pigments compounded so as to form a close reproduction both of its colour and its pattern. A sweep of the shrimp net detaches a battalion of these sleeping prawns, and if we turn the motley into a dish and give a choice ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson

... fourteen-year-old irrepressibility. "Does anybody know where Vadnie is? If we could spring 'em on her and make her believe they're on the warpath—say, I'll gamble she'd ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower

... mean to come over to your side, no. My life wouldn't be worth a snap of the thumb. You know something about Dick Cunningham. I know him well. The truth is, Mr. Cleigh, we're off on a big gamble, and if we win out ten thousand wouldn't interest me. Life on board will be exactly as it was before you put into Shanghai. More I am not at ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath

... am firm," exclaimed Mrs. Attray; "I am more than firm—I am farseeing. I've done everything I can think of to prevent Ronnie from playing for money. I've stopped his allowance for the rest of the year, so he can't even gamble on credit, and I've subscribed a lump sum to the church offertory in his name instead of giving him instalments of small silver to put in the bag on Sundays. I wouldn't even let him have the money to tip the hunt servants with, but sent it by postal order. He was furiously sulky ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki

... scornfully. "If she'd bin hit she'd ha' bin black an' dead. Why, she—she ain't even brown. She's white as white." His voice became softer, and he was no longer addressing the ex-Churchman. "Did y' ever see sech skin—so soft an' white? An' that ha'r, my word! I'd gamble a dollar her eyes is blue—ef ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum

... agreed that it was quite possible. "Our poor have a great many wrong and lustful ideas," she acknowledged; "they tell lies and beat their wives and gamble. The higher classes too, the mandarins and princes, use the people for their own security and rob them. Sometimes the law is not honest, and a man with gold gets free when a laborer is ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer

... last game of poker in St. Paul that week, for he was soon to die at Northfield, and in the quarter of a century that has passed since such a change has come over me that I not only have no desire to play cards, but it disgusts me even to see boys gamble with ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger

... lovers and friends may deceive you, while some witnesses' idea of the truth in the law courts hasn't that semblance of reality possessed by the Medium's description of life in the world beyond. That is what makes matrimony often such a gamble with loaded dice, and holidays so often more tedious than work. To be in the company of one's lover for one ecstatic hour tells one nothing of what he will be when, day after day, one has to live with him in deadly intimacy until death doth part ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King

... fish. Altogether they landed some five hundred men, who held up the few saloons for two or three days. As a result subsequently only one crew selling fish to the island was allowed ashore at one time. The very gamble of their occupation made them do things hard. Thus it was a dangerous task to throw out a small boat in half a gale of wind, fill her up with heavy boxes of fish, and send her to put these over the rail of a steamer wallowing in the ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... measured in their particular class, hard-working for meagre wages and scorning the sale of self for easier ways, nervously desirous for some small pinch of happiness in the desert of existence, and facing a future that was a gamble between the ugliness of unending toil and the black pit of more terrible wretchedness, the way whereto ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... we be. Which one of the heathen do you think is Jimmie? If he had an inch or so more of upper lip, I'd gamble on that critter with the pink nighty and the baskets on his feet. He has a kind of familiar chicken-stealin' look in his eye. Oh, come down on the wharves, Jonadab, and ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln

... land paying as it does—that is, not paying. We shall be having to gamble in the City ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... horseflies clustering round them, and the smell of new-mown grass wafting to them from where, a field or two away, came the rattle of Rupert Gunning's mowing-machine. "A crabbing beast! It was just like my luck that he should come up at that moment and have the supreme joy of seeing Gamble—" Gamble was the filly's rarely-used name—"wallowing in the ditch! That's the second time he's scored off me. I pity poor little Maudie Spicer for having ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross

... said he. "They've begun killing!" And Pete Gamble was a ranchman well known to them all, both Indian and white. "If they would kill him," said he, "they ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King

... hath prohibited all gambling and sharping, things more prevalent there than in any other part of the world. In doing this, he said: "I have conquered you by force of arms, and all that you have is mine; if, therefore, you gamble away your property, it is in fact my property that you are gambling away." Not that he took anything from ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... us, to-day, are disturbed and alarmed by the point of view and the behavior of people about us—especially the younger generation. Girls of good family are seen on all sides, who smoke and gamble and drink and paint their faces and laugh with scorn at the traditions and conventions which their grand-parents regarded with almost sacred reverence. The young men are worse, if anything, and as for the married people of the new era, what they are doing to the sanctity of the ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)

... well last night. But he could not overcome with nerve what he had lacked in capital. Five cards and many dollars oft will beat a better hand. But his dollars had been few. So had he tested again a time-tried truth, and proved it. A man should not gamble at all; that is, not when he needs to win. For then he was sure to lose. That was why they called ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans

... bad," Ricardo said, with indifference. "It's my opinion that men will gamble as long as they have anything to put on a card. Gamble? That's nature. What's life itself? You never know what may turn up. The worst of it is that you never can tell exactly what sort of cards you are holding yourself. What's trumps?—that is the question. ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad

... up. Kingsfrere made a short effort, but it wasn't conspicuously successful; I imagine it rather worse than failed. God knows what's getting into these young women, Howat—Eliza and the rest of 'em—it's a gamble they don't. All right, Kingsfrere." Jannan lingered with a dark mutter, but the other unceremoniously drove ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... of yellow lights. Life had changed for me during the last few weeks. The old, placid days of content were over; already I was in a new world, a world of bigger things, where the great game was being played, with the tense desperateness of those who gamble with life and death. I had not sought the change! Rather it had been forced upon me. I had no ambitions to gratify; the old life had pleased me very well. I had quitted it simply upon compulsion. And here I was with unfamiliar ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... lane! But there was still the Wolf to reckon with! The Wolf had only to run through the kitchen and out by the back entrance—the shorter distance of the two. But the Wolf had already lost a few seconds so that now the race was a gamble. Could he, Jimmie Dale, get there first! He could not run in the other direction—that would take him into the courtyard, and the courtyard now, as evidenced by the yells and shouting, was filled with an excited crowd emptying ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... to spend; to grow a crop, you have to plant the seed. Here's where you plunge—it is a gamble, a bet on the seed versus the eternal cussedness of things. It's you against the chances of a crop. If the drought comes, or the flood, or the chinch-bug, or the brown-tailed moth, you may find yourself floundering ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard

... 'You don't gamble, you're not even very hard up.... It's a woman, of course,' said Lord Selsey, 'and you want to marry, I suppose, or you wouldn't come to me about it.... ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson

... Algonquin is changing," he added sadly. "Perhaps because it is growing rapidly. I am afraid there is a rather fast set of young men being developed here. It makes my heart ache to see fine young fellows like Fred Hamilton and Walter Armstrong learning to gamble, and yet that is just what is happening. There's a great work here for a strong young man with just your upbringing, my boy. We must save these lads from themselves—'Who knoweth,'" he added with a smile, "'but thou hast come to the ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith

... simply, "that was only part. It did not seem right that Gregory should go against Wyllard's wishes, and gamble the Range away ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss

... an indefinable air of manliness, which indicated that it would not do to go too far with him. There was a point, as all his friends knew, where his forbearance gave way and he sternly asserted his rights. He was not so popular in camp as some, because he declined to drink or gamble, and, despite the rough circumstances in which he found himself placed, was resolved ...
— The Young Explorer • Horatio Alger

... Her heart seemed straining with the effort of the living, who heard nothing, thought nothing, in the crux of their effort. War's own mesmerism had made her forget Feller and everything except the gamble, the turn of the card, while the gray figures kept stumbling on over their fallen. Then her heart leaped, a cry in a gust of short breaths broke from her lips as the Browns let go a rasping, explosive, demoniacal cheer. The first attack had ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... intention. I made sure of scooping; and, for that matter, I make sure of it still. But whatever you do, don't begin to preach about the evils of gambling—not now, Collins; not till after we get news of these events. Doesn't everybody gamble, from the Governor downward—bar you, and a couple or three more sanctimonious old hypocrites, with one foot in the grave, and the other in the devil's mouth? Why, Nosey Alf is the only fellow on this station that has no interest in the sweep, besides ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... beads, vermilion, and other stuff for Indian traffic; but the most are thriftless, and all are living in concubinage or marriage with squaws, and surrounded by troops of unwashed, screeching half-breeds. Once in from three to six years, they will make a journey to St. Louis, and gamble away so much of their savings since the last visit as has escaped being wasted over greasy card-tables during the long winter-evenings among the mountains. The Indian tribes along the way are numerous and formidable, the road passing through country ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various

... want of success in literature stimulated the strong mind of his son to seek occupation of more certain profit; and those who feel interest in the whereabouts of celebrated men, may think upon the days when William Hogarth wrought in silver, as the apprentice of Ellis Gamble, in Cranbourne Street, and speculate upon the change of circumstances, wrought by his own exertions, when, as a great painter, in after time, he occupied the house, now known as the Sabloniere Hotel, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... a gasp of hot breath in his face as Ross called upon the last few rags of his strength, tearing loose from the other's slackened hold. He scrambled to one knee. Ennar was also on his knees, crouching like a four-legged beast ready to spring. Ross risked everything on a last gamble. Clasping his hands together, he raised them as high as he could and brought them down on the nape of the other's neck. Ennar sprawled forward face-down in the dust where ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton

... exquisite little girl of six say to a little boy, 'Go away; I can't dance with you, because my mamma says your mamma only keeps a maid to answer the doorbell.' When they get home from the dancing-class, tutors in poker and bridge are waiting to teach them how to gamble for each other's little dimes. I saw a little boy in knickerbockers and a wide collar ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister

... was the deuce of a place To drink and to fight, and to gamble and race; The height of choice spirits from near and from far Were ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson

... military advance had long ago changed into a tragic retreat. The bourgeois press madly libelled the army. Whereas, on the eve of the advance, the ruling parties told us that we were an insignificant gang and that the army had never heard of us and would not have anything to do with us, now, when the gamble of the drive had ended so disastrously, these same persons and parties laid the whole blame for its failure on our shoulders. The prisons were crowded with revolutionary workers and soldiers. All the old legal bloodhounds of Czarism were employed in investigating the July 3-5 affair. Under these ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky

... they never did. They used to threaten em and take 'em out in cars and beat 'em up, just for disputin' their word or not paying 'em and de lack. The white man has cheated a heap because we was ignorant and black. They gamble on the cotton and take might' near all of it for the cheap grub they let out to make de crop on. Conditions are better but a heap of the young black and white too deblish lazy to work. Some of dem get killed out goin' on at ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration

... don't mean that. There isn't a man on the force in whom I have greater confidence than you. But, if I was to gamble, I'd wager ten to one that you'd lose out if I sent you up to ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood

... was good. As to the clothing, they said that many of the prisoners had such a propensity for gaming that, notwithstanding every precaution, they sold their clothes, bedding, and even their food before it was due, to raise a trifle to gamble with. ...
— The French Prisoners of Norman Cross - A Tale • Arthur Brown

... cargo of zinc ore there may be as much as fifty tons left in her after she's supposed to be discharged; and, of course, thereafter she'll carry that much less cargo than she did before. Besides, the consignees are liable to send you a bill for the shortage; you can gamble your head they'll deduct it from the ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... it," retorted Arkwright, with a smile. "I never gamble on palpable uncertainties, except for a chance throw or two, as I gave a minute ago. Your movements are altogether too erratic, and too far-reaching, for ordinary ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter

... uncle's follies, and a' your cousin's pliskies, were naething to this! Drink clean cap out, like Sir Hildebrand; begin the blessed morning with brandy sops, like Squire Percy; swagger, like Squire Thorncliff; rin wud amang the lasses, like Squire John; gamble, like Richard; win souls to the Pope and the deevil, like Rashleigh; rive, rant, break the Sabbath, and do the Pope's bidding, like them a' put thegither—But, merciful Providence! take care o' your young bluid, and gang nae ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... your point of view," he retorted. "In any case, marriage is a great gamble and it's best ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi

... associates and under the new influences began to drink and gamble. With his companions on Saturday and Sunday he would ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan

... inaudible, the still, small voice can be. A moment comes when one ceases to think—one wills, and if one is able and the will is sufficiently determined, the purpose is carried into effect. Temptations to steal, to lie, to deceive, to gamble, to excess in drink and the like cannot approach a certain order of mind. But the craving for knowledge and a fuller life—either in a spiritual or the human way—is implanted ineradicably in every soul, and ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes

... him. She had a good-looking, confidential maid who had lived with her for years. In one of her fits she told this maid that she would give half of what she possessed if her nephew were like other young men. 'I don't want him to be a sot or to gamble away my money,' she cried, 'but there's not much else I should mind if he ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford

... will tell you where. You see, when I found mother was dead, and nobody cared whether I went up or down in the world, that I turned downwards. I got with a bad set,—learned to drink and gamble. One night, in the streets of Boston, I got into a quarrel with a young man, a stranger. We were both drunk. I don't remember doing it, but they told me afterwards that I stabbed him. This sobered us both. He was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various

... recover the purchase price. If luck is with him, he may get a good ship and cargo cheap, but if fortune frowns and a storm breaks her up before he can save the cargo, then he suffers a heavy loss. It's a good business, but a big gamble." ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... Middle, and especially in the latter Middle, Ages it was otherwise. The great religious houses not only tended to accumulate wealth and to perpetuate it in the same hands (they could not gamble it away nor disperse it in luxury; they could hardly waste it by mismanagement), but they were also permanently fixed ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc

... gamble," murmured Stirling. Two of the five long boys overheard this, and grinned at each other, which Stirling noted; and he loved them. It was curious to mark the two shores: the feathered multitude and its yells and its fifty yards of rifles that fronted a small spot of white ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister

... matters stood it was evident that I could not be true either to Phyllis or Gretchen, since I did not know positively which I loved. I knew that I loved one. So much was gained. I wanted to throw up a coin, heads for Phyllis, tails for Gretchen, but I couldn't bring myself to gamble on the matter. I threw a stick at his squirrelship, and he scurried into the hole in the crotch of the tree. A moment later he peered at me, and, seeing that nothing was going to follow the stick, crept out on the limb again, his tail ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath

... She had only to sit beside him on the sofa, let her hand drop down beside his. But she positively and ungratefully didn't want to marry Henry and listen to his hawking and his grumbling for the rest of her life. Sooner or later one of The Boys might propose. But in a small town it was all a gamble. There weren't so very many desirable young men—most of the energetic ones went off to Philadelphia and New York. True that Jennie McTevish had been married at thirty-one, when everybody had thought she was hopelessly an old maid. ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis

... subject of gambling since the day they had gone up to the Dents de Loup together. She wondered if he had spoken deliberately, intending to remind her of the fact that, since she had refused to marry him, he was perfectly free to gamble if he chose. Yet he had spoken so casually, apparently quite without arriere pensee that it almost appeared as though the memory of that day upon the mountain had been wiped out of his mind. He seemed ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler

... life in the steel caves of a Dreadnought would mean pasty complexions and flabby muscles. For a year the crews had been prisoners of that readiness which must not lose a minute in putting to sea if von Tirpitz should ever try the desperate gamble ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... rejoice in the days of their youth. They gamble, yacht, race, enjoy prize-fights and cock-fights, the one openly, the other in secret; they establish luxurious clubs; they break themselves over horse-flesh and other things, and they are instant in a quarrel. At twenty they are experienced in business, embark in vast enterprises, take ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling

... encourage the gambling spirit, because the gambling spirit is already amongst us. Having listened to a good deal of this sort of argument on both sides, I thought it would be well to look up the word "gamble" in my dictionary. I found it next to "gamboge," and I can now tell ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne

... use tryin' to dodge Rifle-Eye," he said. "You stand about as good a chance as if you was tryin' to sidestep a blizzard or parryin' the charge from a Gatlin' gun. If he asks a question you can gamble every chip in your pile that you're elected, and you've got to ante up with the answer whether it suits your hand ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... on the strange actions of Marufa the more he was persuaded that that wily colleague was acting upon sound information, and the tangle of his affairs made him so desperate that he decided to gamble upon that assumption: for magician Bakahenzie began to realize that Marufa had somehow scored a point and that now was approaching the crux which would determine whether he won back or lost for ever that which was the essence ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle

... He 'll be down after us all right, as soon as he gits his second wind, an' Winston here is a-goin' ter git plugged for this night's shindy, if Farnham ever fair gits the drop on him. He ain't got no more mercy 'n a tiger. Yer kin gamble on that, boys. He 'll git ther whole parcel o' us if he kin, 'cause he knows now his little game is up if he does n't; but he 'll aim ter git Winston, anyhow. Did ye make any tracin's ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish

... in constant fear of this death. They work very hard and the air is bad; they come up to sleep, to eat and to gamble. The air they sleep in cannot be much better than that in the mine, for they are laid out in close huts on shelves, like rolls of stuff in a draper's shop. They hardly know the difference between youth and age, between spring and autumn. They scarcely get a glimpse of the landscape except on Saturdays ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones

... unprincipled as he was, his merriment, off-hand and daring, lent him a certain fascination and popularity among us. He was very witty, his laugh was rich and constant, he sang well, and played in a dashing way the violin. Every night he found some one to gamble with him. Every night he drank a pint of whisky, and kept the ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston

... she could, with the remnant of those revenues which former Emperors had set aside for their support—their public bread, public pork, public oil, public wine, public baths,—and leaving them to gamble and quarrel, and listen to the lawyers in rags and rascality, and to rise and murder ruler after ruler, benefactor after benefactor, out of base jealousy and fear of any one less base than themselves. And so 'the smoke of her ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley

... his tailor and bootmaker. "Be prudent; remember not to play beyond that sum; and don't let yourself get tipsy, either with play or libations. Saperlotte! a second clerk is already a man of weight, and shouldn't gamble on notes, or go beyond a certain limit in anything. His business is to get himself admitted to the bar. Therefore don't drink too much, don't play too long, and maintain a proper dignity,—that's your ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac

... Hill passionately, "it's time t' show our hand. We've been hounded long enough. Th' men from Last's will be with us, we can gamble on that." ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe



Words linked to "Gamble" :   luck through, try, take a chance, seek, venture, go for broke, gambler, run a risk, adventure, wager, play, raise, long shot, take chances, peril, attempt, stakes, dice, speculation, hazard, gambling, chance, risk, assay, luck it, essay, shoot craps



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