"Gambler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Asa Skinner, shouting of the mercy and vengeance of God, and in his eyes shone a terrible earnestness, an almost prophetic flame. Asa was a converted train gambler who used to run between Omaha and Denver. He was a man made for the extremes of life; from the most debauched of men he had become the most ascetic. His was a bestial face, a face that bore the stamp of Nature's ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... the game. The hand had just finished, and he saw one of the men rake in a small pot of "ante's" without a challenge. While the fresh dealer was shuffling the cards he caught Will's eye. He read there the anxiety of a gambler whose luck is out. He glanced at his attenuated pile of ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... was as proud and wilful as himself; with more personal ambition however, and less of that easy, sensuous recklessness, that gambler's spirit, which had led his father into such quagmires. Duggy had shown up well these last weeks. He was not a boy to talk, but in acts ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of despairing rage Suffering Creek was unable to even surmise at the identity of the authors of the outrage. Then Wild Bill, the gambler, demanded an accounting for every man of the camp on the day of the tragedy. In a very short time this was done, and the process turned attention upon Lord James. Where was he? The question remained unanswered. Suspicions grew into swift conviction. Men asked each other who ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... "Society ladies to-day often get into scrapes of which their husbands know nothing," he remarked. "You didn't know before that Antoinette Moulton, like many of her friends in the smart set, was a gambler—and loser—did you?" ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... though he wondered how any man in the North could know her name. He glanced coolly from face to face to note any vagrant signs of the game that was being played upon him, but beyond a healthy curiosity the faces betrayed nothing. Then he turned to the gambler and said in cold, ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... the end of the time matters were with him very much as they had been at the beginning; save that Tom himself had grown more reckless an defiant, most lustful of gold, and less scrupulous how he obtained it, as is always the way with the true gambler, whether he is aware of it ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... best-known operators 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
... Towering head and shoulders over most of his 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 of ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... according to the temper of 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 ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to bite are concerned; so that there was not more than an even chance for him to catch a single fish. The result was doubtful enough to make the game exciting; and Leopold felt very much as an unprofessional gambler does when he goes to the table to risk his money. It seemed to be altogether a ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... passionate devotion, and haunted with a fearful dread lest she should be left to a life of poverty and want, when he should be called to leave her. This fear so overmastered him that it led him to the gaming-table, and—for her sake—he became a professional gambler, hoping to lay by a vast fortune for her future use. But he lost heavily and constantly, until his slender resources were exhausted, and he was obliged to borrow money from the rich little dwarf money-lender, Quilp, pledging his stock as ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... an exposition of the crimes of the political opposition in Pedro County. Their candidate, MacDougall, had come to the state as a "tin-horn gambler," yet now he was going around making speeches in churches, and talking about the moral sentiment of the community. "And him with a district chairman keeping three families in Pedro!" ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... Lower down the globes along the drives were becoming a pale lemon color. "Yes, I don't see why anybody wants to marry an artist, anyhow. I remember Ray Kennedy used to say he didn't see how any woman could marry a gambler, for she would only be marrying what the game left." She shook her shoulders impatiently. "Who marries who is a small matter, after all. But I hope I can bring back your interest in my work. You've cared longer and more than anybody else, and I'd like to have somebody human to make a report ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... 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
... the question: what is leisure? I discover (he said) that most men do something: (10) for instance, the dice player, (11) the gambler, the buffoon, do something, but these have leisure; they can, if they like, turn and do something better; but nobody has leisure to turn from the better to the worse, and if he does so turn, when he has no leisure, he ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... and each son sets up for himself, a proceeding which is forbidden by the Penal Code during the parents' lifetime. Meanwhile, any member of the family who should disgrace himself in any way, as by becoming an inveterate gambler and permanently neglecting his work, or by developing the opium vice to great excess, would be formally cast out, his name being struck off the ancestral register. Men of this stamp generally sink lower and lower, until they swell the ranks of professional beggars, to die perhaps in a ditch; but ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... Father Somazzo took his hat and walking-stick and went to the city to consult Mr. Black, an English lawyer. To him he stated the case assuring the learned gentleman that the father would not willingly have placed his child under the guardianship of this younger brother, who was a gambler and a spendthrift, and asked if there was any way of getting the boy a way from him. Mr. Black said that according to law the uncle, as next of kin, could claim the guardianship of his brother's children, and unless sufficient proof that he was not a fit person to have such guardianship ...
— The Shipwreck - A Story for the Young • Joseph Spillman
... a basely-destroyed life, that had been worthy of a better fate, appeared before Henrica and Wilhelm. Fear, anxiety and torturing doubt had from the first saddened Anna's existence with the unprincipled adventurer and gambler, who had succeeded in beguiling her young, experienced heart. A short period of intoxication was followed by an unexampled awakening. She was clasping her first child to her breast, when the unprecedented outrage occurred—Don Luis ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... "You bet," the gambler, who was a new arrival at Pine-tree Gulch, replied; and picking up an empty glass, he hurled it at Red George. The by-standers sprang aside, and in a moment the two men were facing each other with outstretched pistols. The two reports rung ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... say that that's the very place for such men. Why, that country is full of high-class chaps—University grads, Lords, Dukes, and such, as well as the professional gambler, and other highly technical experts. The Superintendent declared to-night he wouldn't have any but high-class men hence, Lloyd!" and Brown waved his hand ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... 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 was unable to suppress a sob of relief. The young man ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... by the strain, and his hand and tongue showed a disposition to tremble. Only Big Jack exhibited the perfect control of the born gambler. His steely blue eyes sparkled with a ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... hardly have mistaken his calling in those days, unless you might have suspected him of being a gambler. In which you would ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... 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 ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... known as "Cattalo Charley" because he once formed a joint-stock company which was to make a fortune interbreeding buffalo and range-cattle, the product of that happy union being known, I believe, as "cattalo." Duncan calls him a "promoter," but my earlier impression of him as a born gambler has been confirmed by the report that he's interested in a lignite briquetting company, that he's fathering a scheme, not only to raise stock-yard reindeer in the sub-Arctics but also to grow karakule sheep in the valleylands of the Coast, that he once sold mummy wheat at forty dollars ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... hopelessness of their mission more and more deeply into DeWitt's brain. It seemed impossible except by the merest chance to find trace of another human in a waste so vast. It seemed to him that it was not skill but the gambler's instinct for luck that guided Carlos ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... poor sainted mother was still alive, she would tell you the anxiety and anguish I felt on being made the master of riches which were not mine. I trembled lest I should yield to their seductions; I was afraid of myself. I felt as a gambler might feel who had the winnings of others confided to his care; as a drunkard might feel who had been placed in charge of a quantity of the most ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... always given; 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 Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... swift and eager footsteps, has trod many a pioneer viking of the West. Quick to resent an insult real or fancied, inflamed by unaccustomed drink, the ready pistol always at his side, the tricks of the professional gambler to provoke his sense of fair play, and finally his own wild recklessness to urge him on,—all these combined forces sometimes brought him into tragic conflict with another spirit equally heedless and daring. Not nearly so often, however, ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... shameless inheritance-chaser, despoiler of pupillary funds, gambler at the bourse, who whines like a whipped dog when ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... 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 Alley, and ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... was playing a gambling game with one of the Sioux warriors. He was an expert gambler, and won everything from the Indian. At a certain point a dispute arose. The Indian was very angry, for he discovered that his fellow-player had deliberately cheated him. The Indians were strictly honest in those ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... part in a personal hazard accounts for the growth of betting at games. The effort to gain adds to the interest, i. e., excitement. That it adds tension as well and may result in fatigue and further boredom is not reckoned with by the bettor or gambler. To follow the middle of the road in anything is difficult, and nowhere is it more beset with danger than in the seeking ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... John Oakhurst, gambler, stepped into the main street of Poker Flat on the morning of the 23d of November, 1850, he was conscious of a change in its moral atmosphere since the preceding night. Two or three men, conversing earnestly ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... change at Washington, into the belief that he could safely corner gold without interference from the Government. He took a number of precautions, which he admitted; and he spent a large sum of money, as he also testified, to obtain assurances which were not sufficient to have satisfied so astute a gambler; yet he made the venture. Any criminal lawyer must have begun investigation by insisting, rigorously, that no such man, in such a position, could be permitted to plead that he had taken, and pursued, such a course, ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... Kid. "He'll open around 3 to 1 and stay there whether there's a dollar bet on him or not. False odds? Certainly, but they're taking no chances on you. They figure you won't be trying at that price. And another thing: This same Squeaking Henry, this marked-card gambler, has gone to work for Goldmark. Three dollars a day for what he can find out. Is this information ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... chance events are by definition chance. They can turn out favorable or not. When a preponderance of chance events has occurred unfavorably, you've got bad luck. It's a fancy name for a lot of chance results that didn't go your way. But the gambler defines it differently. For him, luck refers to the future, and you've got bad luck when future chance events won't go your way. Scientific investigations into this have been inconclusive, but everyone knows that ...
— Accidental Death • Peter Baily
... known a more simple, kind-hearted, agreeable, and lovable gentleman than this broken-down sporting man and gambler. I loved him as a brother; and though he has passed out of my life, I still love the memory of his genial face, his courtesy, his unselfish friendship, more than words can express. A tender heart and a gentle spirit found strange housing in a body given over to reckless prodigality. ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... Shall I to woman be a friend? I deal with man, and when I can Reclaim with interest all I lend. Who but a witless gambler plays For farthing stakes these golden days? No, woman—woman—woman— Must only ...
— Twenty • Stella Benson
... farm there now came something of the joy of the gambler to Ishmael, who never sowed without feeling that it might be for the last time. Curiously enough, it never occurred to him as possible that he could die before what he had sown was grown and reaped. Every threshing over, he wondered if he should live to see another; every sowing he told himself ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... end of my resources, and that I was ready for any adventure, however desperate, which would put a few honest sovereigns into my pocket. The man fears to fail who has to pay for his failure, but there was no penalty which Fortune could exact from me. I was like the gambler with empty pockets, who is still allowed to try ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and the kingdoms on the frontiers—was hardly ever used productively. It never returned to the region whence it came, to be used in developing its resources; the idea of using it even in Italy for industrial undertakings was absent from the mind of the gambler. Those numberless villas, of which we shall speak in another chapter, were homes of luxury and magnificence, not centres of agricultural industry. There are indeed some signs that in this very generation the revival of Italian agriculture was beginning, and more especially the cultivation ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... portion of that army, and a strong fleet, to attack the principality. One of the generals of the land forces was Prosuch, a Turkish officer in high favor with his father. Raymond of Antioch was no longer the idle gambler he had shown himself in the camp of the emperor John; but though he was now distinguished by his courage and skill in arms, he was completely defeated, and the imperial army carried its ravages up to the very walls of Antioch, while the fleet laid ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... patient herself gave, after recovery, the onset as follows: When she married she knew her husband was not what he should be, but not that he was so bad as he proved to be. He was a gambler, did not support her, and this caused her much worry. When she became pregnant, eight months after marriage, this increased her worry, and throughout the pregnancy she spoke much to a neighbor about her worries, ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... of Massena, the sixty millions of Le Clerc, the forty millions of Murat, and the thirty-six millions of Augereau; not to mention the hundred millions of Bonaparte. It is also true that Jourdan is a gambler and a debauchee, fond of cards, dice, and women; and that in Italy, except two hours in twenty-four allotted to business, he passed the remainder of his time either at the gaming-tables, or in the boudoirs of his seraglio—I say seraglio, because he kept, in the extensive ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... growled the gambler, bringing forth a new pack. "Chance and luck are then twin companions. ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... about Newmarket,—as to which place she found he had a taste. And, joined to all the rest, there came a conviction that his real tastes did take that direction. She had never before heard that he had a passion for the turf; but if it should turn out that he was a gambler! Had any of her friends mentioned such an idea to her a week ago, how she would have rebuked that friend! But now she added this to her other grievances, and began to tell herself that she had become engaged to a man whom she did not know ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... person 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, now falling suddenly from the edifice of his dream, stiffened himself by a mighty ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... on the plaza. Bands of music were interspersed through the line. The orator and distinguished citizens were in carriages, every vehicle in town being brought into requisition. There was a large cavalcade of horsemen. I rode in a handsome buggy, with the principal gambler of the town, and many hundred footmen followed, the Chinamen bringing up the rear. It was a beautiful day, the sun shining brightly. The procession moved off majestically down a back street, off the main thoroughfare, and then turned into the ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... described as 'fast.' They were quite sober and decently-behaved young follows, but they were very decidedly addicted to gambling in a small way, and they soon infected me. Before long I was the keenest gambler of them all. Cards, billiards, pool, and various forms of betting began to be the chief pleasures of my life, and not only was the bulk of my scanty salary often consumed in the inevitable losses, but presently I found myself considerably in debt, without any visible means of discharging my liabilities. ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... which he drew an income, and since he had never been known in the entire history of his young life to do a single stroke of productive work of any kind, the bitter truth was that Ronicky Doone was no better and no worse than a common gambler. ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... will never consent," cried Angus, with a resoluteness through which his first eager sense of relief was clearly discernible. Truly, there was coming upon him, with this mania of speculation, the same desperation which causes the gambler to clutch money from the starving hands of those who even yet ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... voce, as he intercepted a bright matutinal smile that the fair Alicia sent as a morning greeting to Girard, who had just entered and taken his seat at a distance. "We know nothing under heaven about his people, and he himself has the repute of being a desperate gambler." ...
— The Lost Guidon - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... unfriended ill-fortune—the sanctuary to which a thousand victims fly from the fiends of want and starvation. The broken-down tradesman, the artisan out of work, the decayed gentleman, the ruined gambler, the starving scholar—each and all we have indubitably seen brooming the muddy ways for the chance of a half-penny or a penny. It is not very long since we were addressed in Water Street, Blackfriars, by a middle-aged man in a garb of seedy black, who ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... a gambler against whom nobody seemed to be able to cope, for he invariably won. It had been said that he was not a straight gambler, but those who said it did so only once, as they were incapable of saying it twice, for by that ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... warning to beware of him. One day, just before the betrothal of the young people, an anonymous letter was delivered at the grange. The writer, who called himself an old friend, entreated the farmer to prevent his dear child from becoming the wife of one who was suspected of being a gambler. The farmer was of an easy-going, indulgent nature, shunning care and anxiety as a very plague. Accordingly, no sooner had he read the anonymous missive than he handed it to his daughter, as though its contents ...
— A Ghetto Violet - From "Christian and Leah" • Leopold Kompert
... more than twelve, the auspicious number of the months of the year. Similarly seven was perhaps lucky or sacred as being the number of the planets which gave their names to the days of the week, and three because it represented the sun, moon and earth. When a gambler stakes his money on a number such as the date of his birth or marriage, he acts on the supposition that a number which has been propitious to him once will be so again, and this appears to be a survival of the belief in the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... the murderer, the thief, the robber, the perjured person. It is right that we should do so. The welfare of society demands it. But do we punish the man who lives in adultery, in drunkenness, in sensuality? Do we punish the man who is a swearer, a gambler, a blasphemer, who habitually neglects the sanctuary of the Lord, and does his own pleasure on the sabbath-day? Human laws take no cognizance of these crimes. They are, however, as dishonourable to God as others which are punished by man. ...
— The Church of England Magazine - Volume 10, No. 263, January 9, 1841 • Various
... a man of evil repute, as a wild debauchee, a gambler, and seducer; and Arvina had observed him more than once in company ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... might happen even that it would be more and more compromised. For, once more, the stockholder is the beast of burden, the exploitable material of the company: not for him is this society formed. In order that association may be real, he who participates in it must do so, not as a gambler, but as an active factor; he must have a deliberative voice in the council; his name must be expressed or implied in the title of the society; everything regarding him, in short, should be regulated in accordance with equality. But these conditions are precisely ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... distributing the people at the table before him into elements favorable or unfavorable to his plans, and in his mind he shuffled them and their values for him or against him as a gambler arranges and rearranges the cards in his hand. He saw himself plainly as his own highest card, and Barrat and Erhaupt as willing but mediocre accomplices. In Father Paul and Kalonay he recognized his most powerful allies or most dangerous foes. ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis
... The fingers handled the cards as if they loved them, as if they had been accustomed to them from the cradle. The tips turned back a good deal, and the nails hooked a little forward. There were little bulbs of tact at every tip, the hands were made for a gambler, and could by no possibility have belonged to ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... Mr Russell of the 'Times' for holding him up to fame as a "gambler"—a story which he understood Mr Russell had learnt from Mr Charles Sumner at Washington. But even supposing that this was really the case, Mr Benjamin was of opinion that such a revelation of his private life was in extremely bad taste, after Mr Russell had ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... all 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 ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... father's friend rather than his father's plaything; as a {143} lad he was his father's travelling companion, and learned from that father the pleasant art of sowing wild oats not with the hand but with the whole sack. He returned to England a proficient gambler, a finished rake, the dear friend of famous men, the darling of beautiful women, to enter, before he was of age, upon that political career in which it seemed certain that if he would follow in his father's steps ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... play backgammon, the chemist's mind was never present; during most of the time this man, so great in intellect, seemed simply stupid. Shorn of his expectations, ashamed of having squandered three fortunes, a gambler without money, he bent beneath the weight of ruin, beneath the burden of hopes that were betrayed rather than annihilated. This man of genius, gagged by dire necessity and upbraiding himself, was a tragic spectacle, fit to ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... man now,' whispers Tunicu. I glance in the direction indicated by my companion, and observe that the gambler's right hand, which for some minutes past had been concealed beneath his shirt-front, is drawn with ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... the potency of truth—the overthrow of prejudice by the power of love—and the abolition of slavery by the spirit of repentance." As to our characters they are before the world. You would probably look in vain through our ranks for a horse-racer, a gambler, a profane person, a rum-drinker, or a duellist. More than nine-tenths of us deny the rightfulness of offensive, and a large majority, even that of defensive national wars. A still larger majority believe, that deadly weapons should not be used in cases of individual strife. And, if you should ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... 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 members of other gangs, and so successful was ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... the gaunt shepherd with his starving flocks and herds, the free selector on an arid patch, the drink shanty where the rouseabouts and shearers knock down their cheques, the race meeting where high and low, rich and poor, are filled with the gambler's ill luck—fill the foreground of the picture of Australian life. These reflections led me to a protest, in the form of a sonnet published in The Register some ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... hand or brain, nor by giving an equivalent, nor by receiving it as the free-will loving gift of one who gladly does us a kindness. What this fascination may lead to is to be seen in that terrible paradise of the gambler, Monaco, on the shore of the lovely Mediterranean. I have lately heard a most thrilling account of what is to be seen in that fearfully attractive palace of despair. Lovely gardens are there, ravishing music, an exquisite salon where the entranced players meet to ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... would very likely be killed if someone didn't do something about it besides shout. He weighed the chances, in an infinitesimal fraction of a second, and decided they were such that any good gambler could scarcely ignore. So he bunched his muscles ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... woman. "Oh, I was married on the Continent when quite a girl, and I dared not tell of it, for my husband was a gambler and a villain; but he was handsome and fascinating, and so he won me. Herod, this son of mine, was born just the day before his father was killed in a duel. Oh, spare him ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... falsehood upon falsehood; and had ended by making a full confession, after receiving his cousin's promise not to prosecute. The sums made away with by him amounted to some thousands. Gilbert found that he had been leading a life of reckless extravagance, and was a notorious gambler. So there came an evening when after a prolonged investigation of affairs, Astley Fenton put on his hat, and left his cousin's office for ever. When Gilbert heard of him next, he was clerk ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... love through sorrow only, and she was dying of it. Among young girls every man, scoundrel though he be, is still a lover. Passion is the one thing absolutely real in the things of life, and it insists on its supremacy. Charles d'Estourny, gambler, criminal, and debauchee, remained in the memory of the sisters, the elegant Parisian of the fetes of Havre, the admired of the womenkind. Bettina believed she had carried him off from the coquettish Madame Vilquin, and to Modeste he was her sister's happy lover. Such adoration ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... the young man, shaking the gambler's hand again, "it is all right. I have always been sorry I had to act against you. Everything is all right! Stay and bore to Corea if you like. Did ever you see ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... and told Flynn I reckoned you were one of those chaps who came back from the mines dead broke. And he up and bought your things for you—like a square man. That's Flynn's style, if he is a gambler." ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... for reasons of state and exigencies of party, has been led to believe that a pretty wife, with a certain amount of natural astuteness, might advance his interests, and tend to his promotion in public life; and with his old instincts as a gambler, he is actually ready to risk his fortunes on a single card, and I, the portionless Greek girl, with about the same advantages of family as of fortune—I am to be that queen of trumps on which he stands to win. And now, ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... cover his vices, but to gain credit for virtue. The cheat and impostor endeavor to make something out of those they may deceive. The cheat is the inferior and more mercenary, as the thimble-rig gambler; the impostor may aspire to a fortune or a ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... of medium height with clear blue eyes, particularly striking among all these drunken voices by its sober ring, cried from the window: "Come here; part the bets!" This was Dolokhov, an officer of the Semenov regiment, a notorious gambler and duelist, who was living with Anatole. Pierre ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... unconsciously to the point of their mutual confession. Whatever the truth was, she did not hesitate to recognize a new voice in her private counsels from that hour, urging her in one way or another to bring matters to an end. It was a strong instinct; looking at the facts, she saw it was the gambler's. When she tried to think of the ethical considerations involved she saw only the chances. The air seemed to throb with them all night; she had to count them finally to ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... was the Rue Trousse-vache, and one of the shops in it was adorned with an enormous sign of a red cow, with her tail sticking up in the air and her head reared in rampant sauciness. A notorious gambler, Thibault-au-de, well known for his skill in loading dice, gave his name to one of these narrow veins of the town: Aubry, a wealthy butcher, is still immortalized in another: and the Rue du Petit Hurleur probably commemorated some wicked youngster, whose shouts were ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... man are congenital; the arts and industries are acquired by the race and must be learned by the individual after birth. We have seen why the instinctive activities are pleasurable and the acquired habits irksome. The gambler represents a class of men who have not been weaned from their instincts. There are in every species biological "sports" and reversions, and there are individuals of this kind among sporting men who are not reached by ordinary social suggestion and stimuli. But granting that ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... the ravines of the mountains is as much a gambler as his fellow in the saloons of San Francisco. What difference does it make, whether you shake dirt or shake dice? If you win, society is the loser. The gold-digger is the enemy of the honest laborer, whatever checks and compensations there may be. It is not enough ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... as if the thought had never occurred to him before. "I want her to have it, but you'd better keep it for her. That man will get it away from her. You don't know him as I do. You don't know what he'd do on a pinch. I tell you he is a gambler for life. I have seen him sit at the board and stake sums that would have made me rich for life. Besides," he added, as if he needed some other reason for giving it up, "I am afraid if he knew I had it he'd get it ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... bank. How did he lose it? By taking a partner, who "played it in"—that is, the partner conspired with an outside player, or "patron" of the house. Why did not our man begin over again? He was disheartened—tired of the business. Besides, it gives a gambler a bad name to be robbed—it is ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... Lorne," he began, "rode with Prince Rupert of the Rhine. He was a notorious gambler, a loose liver, and a cynic. And he even threw the family Luck across the ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... son of a 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 ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... creation, right prostrate, wrong triumphant,—a mad, crazy world. The incident of the murdered Swede is just part of the backwash of it all, but it is an illuminating fragment. The Swede was slain, not by the gambler whose knife pierced his thick hide: he was the victim of a condition for which he was no more to blame than the man who stabbed him. Stephen Crane thus speaks through the lips of ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... 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 and good family, but strong drink seems early ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... her father was driven to a gambler's grave and that her mother died of a broken heart, and that the man who caused all this wishes to break the heart of the ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... O'Hara had said, there did not seem to be any very desperate peril to face, but Stewart was afraid with the gambler's unreasoning, half-superstitious fear, and that is the worst fear of all. He realized that he had been afraid of Ste. Marie from the beginning, and that, of course, was why he had tried to draw him into partnership with himself in his own official and wholly mythical ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... himself seemly in Court, and Circuit Court at that—he may; but I 'll let you know, I'm not goin' to do it. I don't mean the Judge to think my husband's a thing like that. I mean to set him right. And I 'll tell him you are nothing but an old gambler who spends your time ruinin' young men, and braggin' as ...
— The Sheriffs Bluff - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... had ever been married to the Count whose widow she assumed to be. It was doubtful whether the man who accompanied her in her travels (under the name of Baron Rivar, and in the character of her brother) was her brother at all. Report pointed to the Baron as a gambler at every 'table' on the Continent. Report whispered that his so-called sister had narrowly escaped being implicated in a famous trial for poisoning at Vienna—that she had been known at Milan as a ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... already made the English music-halls come to terms by means of a wholesale strike. Others observed that it was a private theater, one of those theaters run, for the fun of it, by some prosperous gambler or lucky bookmaker; a sort of harem theater, with almost empty houses, but with swells on the stage, among the swarm of half-naked women; and no one responsible, the old boy ruined, the treasury empty, bankruptcy; couldn't be helped; take in ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... snapped the little gambler. "No, no, no! It is that M. le Duc, impoverish', somewhat in a bad odor as he is, yet command the entree ...
— Monsieur Beaucaire • Booth Tarkington
... age, throwing away the superstitions of a lifetime, the accumulated merit of years of toilsome and expensive worship, and when almost on the brink of the grave, venturing all upon a new-preached faith and a new-found Saviour. We have seen the abandoned gambler become a faithful and zealous preacher of the gospel. We have seen the poor giving out of their poverty help to others, poorer still. We see many Chinese Christians who were once narrow and avaricious, giving out of their ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... quoits and ball-play; Skilled was he in games of hazard, In all games of skill and hazard, Pugasaing, the Bowl and Counters, 65 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, 70 Little cared he for their insults, For the women and the maidens ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... him. He had looked at the side of the mountain and suddenly felt, without any reason or volition on his part, that he was impelled to search that mountainside for gold-bearing ore. He had never fallen into the habit of using his reason. He was a wonderful gambler, playing with singular abandon, and usually winning. It mattered not what he held in ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... war reports to talk about Brown, an American merchant who had left the club a moment before, after a Bourbon straight alone at the bar. McHenry was a trader, mariner, adventurer, gambler, and boaster. Rough and ready, witty, profane, and obscene, he bubbled over with tales of reef and sea, of women and men he had met, of lawless tricks on natives, of storm and starvation, and of his claimed illicit loves. Loud-mouthed, bullet-headed, beady-eyed, a chunk ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... there remained scarcely anything of the personal prestige which Napoleon had once enjoyed in so rich a measure. He was no longer in the eyes of Europe or of his own country the profound, self-contained statesman in whose brain lay the secret of coming events; he was rather the gambler whom fortune was preparing to desert, the usurper trembling for the future of his dynasty and his crown. Premature old age and a harassing bodily ailment began to incapacitate him for personal exertion. He sought to loosen the reins in which his despotism ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... romantic dreaminess that had led him upon lonely rambles among the hills rather eccentric in a boy of seventeen; Edgar Poe, the quiet, the gentlemanly, the immaculately neat, the scholarly, the poetic, had been a spendthrift and a reckless gambler. His debts, for a boy of his age, were astounding. No one was more amazed at the sum of them than Edgar himself. He had always had the lordly indifference to money, and the contempt for keeping account of it, that was the natural result of being used to have what seemed to ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... 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 honor ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... think he's a gambler. I know he was always wanting to make bets on the games around here, but no one paid much attention to him. You don't ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... hold in high value such men as he is; because on account of Christ's work he was at death's very door,[11] playing as it were the gambler with his life,[12] that he might (lit., "may") supply your lack, do the service which you could not do, and so complete your loving purposes, in regard of the ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... life what it is. Anyway, this woman had a husband who turned out bad. He was a grafter and a gambler, a drunkard and a brute. He beat her and their five children horribly, and finally she divorced him. The law gave her her freedom in five minutes and there was no fuss about it, because she was poor, and the newspapers have no room for poor folks' marriage troubles—unless they ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... hackney coach standing at the corner of Frascati's waiting for some gambler; he awoke the driver, was driven home, went to bed, and slept the sleep of the dissipated, which for some queer reason—of which no rhymer has yet taken advantage—is as profound as that of innocence. Perhaps it is an instance of the proverbial ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... should return, or in some way Fairchild could raise the necessary five thousand dollars to furnish a cash bond and again recover the deeds of the Blue Poppy, he was no better off than before the strike was made. Long he thought, finally to come to his conclusion, and then, with the air of a gambler who has placed his last bet to win or lose, he went ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... remarks, in the course of which he said he had been troubled with stomach ache for six hours on the previous day, and that just before his last visit to Preston he had an attack of illness in the very same place, a lengthy allusion was made to his past history. He said that he had been "a villain, a gambler, a drunkard, and a Sabbath breaker"—we expected hearing him say, as many of his class do, that he had often abused his mother, thrashed his wife, and punished his children, but he did not utter a word on the subject. The remainder of his discourse ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... felony—became impossible under the eyes of the Bench. And this more especially because one of the Judges of Assize who tried the case acquired an interest in Maisie analogous to the one King David took in the wife of Uriah the Hittite, and perceived the advantages he would derive if this forger and gambler was packed off to a life far worse than the death the astute monarch schemed for the great-hearted soldier who was serving him. Whether the two were lawfully man and wife made no difference to this Judge. ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... virtue of beneficence becomes a vice of theft. So it is with gambling. It is giving the natural tendency to chance, to risk an illegitimate play. The person who is afraid to risk anything accomplishes but little in any way, is seldom a speculator, and never a gambler. Usually the gambler is the man who is naturally full of hazard, who loves to run risks, to take chances. Nor will one find a more practical and useful tendency in one's make-up than this. See the discoverer of America and his brave crew for days and days sailing across ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... appreciation of the necessity for grammatical construction, for times have changed in San Pasqual, since it is no longer encumbered with the incubus that made this story possible—Harley P. Hennage, the town gambler and the worst man ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... but ah! I cannot benefit by his wealth; I could not conscientiously appropriate one dollar; and even if I could do so, I could not trust in its continuance; the money is ill-gotten and evanescent; it is the money of a gambler, who is a prince one hour and a pauper ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... gambler, and spent a part of almost every night at Hall & Pemberton's Faro Palace on Pennsylvania Avenue, a place noted for its famous restaurant. It was here that he met Colonel Howle and learned to like him. He was a man of talent, cool and audacious, and a liar of such singular fluency ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... vernacular spelling than he found him,—Haillot,[15]) and in the character of Rainault, that Otway is borne out by authority. The last-mentioned person is described by the French ambassador as a sot, a gambler, and a sharper, whose rogueries are well known to all the world; in a word, therefore, as a fit leader of a revolutionary crew wrought up, "without the least remorse, with fire and sword t' exterminate" all who bore the stamp of nobility; and not as the most fitting depository in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 559, July 28, 1832 • Various
... body relaxed. Now that the table was set, the cards all dealt, and the first play about to be made, the giant shed his tenseness. Even his grim face softened a trifle. He seemed to regard the affair with a certain amount of humor, coupled with the zest of a gambler who loves the game whether the stakes are for death ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... sent him by the press-cutting agency would prove this portrait incomplete. He noticed with a vague astonishment that the flimsy scraps of paper were trembling in his fingers like banknotes in the hands of a gambler, and he laid them down on the breakfast-table in disgust of the feminine weakness. This unmistakable proof that he had written a book, a real book, made him at once happy and uneasy. These fragments of smudged prints were his passport into a new and delightful world; they were, ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... vigorous, more alert. Occasionally a strange sense of subterranean peril made itself felt in the upper regions of the mind, caused by something she never stopped to analyze. It was not without kinship with the feeling of the gambler who has been lucky too long, and knows that the next stroke may—probably will—end it, and bring down the poised ruin. But it made no difference whatever to the gradual forging of her plan and the clearness ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in the balance, Mayne," he said, "and God forgive me if I am going wrong, for I cannot help myself. The gold is very heavy in the scale, and bears down the beam. I cannot, gambler though I may be, give up now. Look here, Mayne, my lad, here is my decision. I am going to try and get a couple of good fellows from down below to come in as partners. So as soon as it is light you had better get ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... would answer. "She's been flirting around with a certain young man, a Wall Street gambler, and her mother wouldn't have it and told her so. That's the real trouble, my ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... of the Polish Lancers, of the carts and wagons wherein are crowded the soldiers of the Old Guard, and Napoleon himself, the great gambler, sitting in his coach gazing out through the open windows at the fair land of France, the peaceful valley on his left, the chain of ice-covered lakes and the turbulent Drac; on his right beyond the hills frowning Taillefer, snow-capped and pine-clad, and far ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... day. Another appellation borne by them formerly was "Swines' bread," and they were supposed to be engendered by thunderbolts. In Northern France they were first popularised four hundred and fifty years ago, by John, Duke of Berry, a reprobate gambler, third son of John the Good. The Perigord Truffle has a dark skin, and smells of violets. Piedmontese truffles suggest garlic: those of Burgundy are a little resinous: the Neapolitan specimens are redolent of ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... Pendleton's resort, a luxurious establishment down town, was regarded as quite a la mode, and I have heard it said that he had able assistance from social ranks. I have often wondered why a man who indulged in this sport was called a gambler, as the term "gamester," used many years ago, seems decidedly more appropriate. I own two volumes of a very old book, published in the eighteenth century, entitled "The Gamesters," in which the heroes are professional gamblers. I have seen Mrs. Pendleton's costly equipage, drawn by horses ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... sat the woman alone by the gangway. Roused by the fall of feet, she turned, and, beholding her master, Greeted him with a smile that was more like a wife's than another's, Rose to meet him fondly, and then, with the dread apprehension Always haunting the slave, fell her eye on the face of the gambler,— Dark and lustful and fierce and full of merciless cunning. Something was spoken so low that I could not hear what the words were; Only the woman started, and looked from one to the other, With imploring eyes, bewildered hands, ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... Gulch knew the colonel well, and made it a rule never to be astonished at anything he did; but they made an exception to the rule when the colonel canvassed the principal bar-rooms for men who wished to purchase a horse; and when a gambler, who was flush, obtained Tipsie in exchange for twenty slugs—only a thousand dollars, when the colonel had always said that there wasn't gold enough on top of the ground to buy her—Mud ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... half closed, as if in languid indifference, effectually veiling their keenness. The expression of his mouth was lost in the dark moustache, and in the beard combed from the center. The visible part of his face would have made a gambler's fortune; and, save for its warm color, it might have been carved out of ice. Without ever a hint of harshness or loudness, his voice was one to command attention; though it came out soft and velvety, it was with the half assurance that ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... more art than he appears to be to superficial observers. On my first acquaintance with him, I mistook him for a frank, fearless but well-meaning sailor, who loved hazardous voyages and desperate speculation—a sort of innocent gambler; but I have learned to know better. His means are pretty much reduced to his brig, and she is getting old, and can do but little more service. His projects are plain enough, now. By getting you into his power, he hoped to compel a marriage, in which ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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 ...
— The Young Miner - or Tom Nelson in California • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... recollection of these first winnings is sure to lure you back to the gaming-table again. You go back, you lose, you try to recover your money, and that's the end of it—you become a gambler." ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... Ambassador, his most trusted mentor. We can hardly suppose that the Austrian Minister shut his eyes altogether to the possibility of a struggle with the Slav world. Having Germany as his partner, however, he determined, with the self-possession of a fearless gambler, to ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... was from the South—though a South very different from this. He had the warm blood of Virginia in his veins, and just so much of the gambler's spirit as cannot be divided from a certain recklessness in a man with a temperament. He had seen plenty of life in his own country, in the nine years since he was twenty, and he knew all about roulette and trente et quarante, among other ...
— Rosemary - A Christmas story • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... conduct' have been spotted with deeds that causes a blush upon the face of a virtuous patriot; so you must be contented with your lot, while crime, cowardice, cupidity or low cunning have handed you down from the high tower of a statesman to the black hole of a gambler . . . . Crape the heavens with weeds of woe; gird the earth with sackcloth, and let hell mutter one melody in commemoration of fallen splendor! For the glory of America has departed, and God will set a flaming sword to guard the tree of liberty, while ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... rushed to her startled husband, pointed to her son-in-law, who still held his wife in a close embrace, and in a half-stifled voice commanded Herr Casper to strike down the gambler, robber, spendthrift, and kidnapper of children, or drive him out of the house like some savage, dangerous beast. Then she ordered Isabella to leave the profligate who wanted to drag her down to ruin; and when her daughter ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... this gallant gentleman to Mr. Hinckley, who informed us that he was Pete Fryer, the most noted gambler of the Pacific coast, whose unrivalled success and universal popularity were in a great degree owing to his sobriety, his elegant presence and ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... bets; swiftly to drag in or pay out losings and winnings without an error. His face was without a wrinkle, clean-shaven, every slick black hair in place, the flesh wax-like. He held a record—whispered, not attested—of having more than once beaten a protesting gambler to the draw and then subscribing to the funeral. As he came to the last turn, with three cards left in the box, he paused, waiting for bets to be made. His eyes met Sandy's and he nodded. Three men named the order of the last three cards. None of them guessed the right one of the ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... saintly prostitute, that of Nastasia Philipovna in The Idiot is the most lifelike and astounding. The career of this half-mad girl is sinister and tragic; she is half-sister in her temperamental traits to Paulina in the same master's admirable story The Gambler. Grushenka in The Brothers Karamazov is another woman of the demoniac type to which Nastasia belongs. Then there are high-spirited, hysterical girls such as Katarina in Karamazov, Aglaia Epanchin in The Idiot, or Liza in The Possessed ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... The Asiatic gambler is desperate. When all other property is played away, he scruples not to stake his wife, his child, on the cast of a die or on the courage of the martial bird before mentioned. Nay more, if still unsuccessful, the last venture he makes is that of his limbs—his ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... was lamenting to me. "Ran you right into a trap. We had a gambler's chance in the street, but in here there is no chance at all. It's all over but the shouting. Vive ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... gambler (we use the word "gambler" to refer to a man who operates ignorantly) is watching a large number of extremely speculative stocks and suddenly notices one that takes a big jump in price. Then he says to himself, ...
— Successful Stock Speculation • John James Butler
... scathing. His Duchess survived him a score of years—unhappy years of solitude and neglect, a Princess only in name—harassed and shamed by her eldest sister, Elizabeth, a woman of coarse tastes and language, a confirmed gambler and cheat, whose failings, which she tried in vain to conceal, brought shame on ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... in patience. He is a haughty, surly, abusive man; he is the torment of his relations and workmen, and constantly out of humour. Last Sunday I asked him in an amiable way, 'Brother, let us go to Pahomovo for the Mass!' but he said 'I am not going; the priest there is a gambler;' and he would not come here to-day because, he said, the priest from Vedenyapino smokes and drinks vodka. He doesn't like the clergy! He reads Mass himself and the Hours and the Vespers, while his sister acts as sacristan; he says, 'Let us pray unto the Lord'! and she, in ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... I saw Mr. Killigrew's face—that had been page to Charles the First, and came back to be page to his son—for his grotesque and yet fine face was unmistakable; the profligate fop Sir George Etheredge, gambler and lampooner, with drink and the devil all over him; solemn Thomas Thynne, murdered two years afterwards, for a woman's sake, by Count Conigsmark, who was hanged for it and lay in great state in a satin coffin; and last, my Lord Dover, with his great head and little ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... self-abnegation; proof of how well he had disguised himself, but it smacked unpleasantly to him. His humourous intimacy with men's minds likened the source of this distaste to the gallant all-or-nothing of the gambler, who hates the little when he cannot have the much, and would rather stalk from the tables clean-picked than suffer ruin to be tickled by driblets of the glorious fortune he has played for and lost. If we are not to be beloved, spare us the small coin of compliments ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the heart of Yaeethl heavy within him, but not so heavy as his face said, for it is not the way of the Raven to eat quickly of discouragement, though he turned and left the well and its guardian like a gambler who has lost ...
— In the Time That Was • James Frederic Thorne
... little pile of winnings had disappeared. And now he had forgotten the face of Joe Pollard, forgotten the room, forgotten everything except the thick thumb that snapped the coin into the air. The cold, quiet passion of the gambler grew in him. He was losing steadily. Out of his wallet came in a steady stream the last of his winnings at Pedro's. And still he played. Suddenly the wallet squeezed flat between ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... Cambridge point to the school in which they have learnt their manners. 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 disreputable; and when it is now employed, ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... table, and Bill, unlucky gambler, rose with an oath that would have been savage if it hadn't ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... who had a troop in Lord Macclesfield's regiment of the Horse Guards, rode this campaign with the duke. He had sunk by this time to the very worst reputation; he had had another fatal duel in Spain; he had married, and forsaken his wife; he was a gambler, a profligate, and debauchee. He joined just before Oudenarde; and, as Esmond feared, as soon as Frank Castlewood heard of his arrival, Frank was for seeking him out, and killing him. The wound my lord got at Oudenarde prevented their meeting, but that was nearly healed, and Mr. ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... like Solomon in all his glory than to be taken for a Levantine gambler,' he answered. 'In the days when I was simple-minded, a foreigner in a fur coat and an eyeglass once stopped me in the Boulevard des Italiens and asked if I could give him the address of any house where ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... remember, I was living then in that little house in Jardines Street, near Montera Street. I had just come, at that late hour, a bitter, cold wind blowing at the time, out of a sort of a gambling-house—I tell you this, although I know it will surprise you. You know that I am not a gambler. I went into the place, deceived by an alleged friend. But the fact was, that as people began to drop in about midnight, coming from receptions or the theatre, the play began to be very heavy, and one saw the gleam of gold in plenty. Then came bank-bills and notes of hand. Little by ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various |
