"Gambler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wandering and excitement such only as the desperate gambler can know whose life depends upon the stake for which he plays, I succeeded in getting a shot into a whole flight of roosting and snoring black cockatoos, and one fell. I pounced in triumph on it and received a bite which, famishing ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... not answer, Yes!" thought she, with the harrowing emotions of the gambler who is about to stake his all upon one card. And what a game for Mlle. Gilberte, ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... green curtain of her bonnet over her pretty face, and leaned back in her seat, to nod and dream over japonicas and jumbles, pantalettes and poetry; the old gentleman, proprietor of the Bardolph 'nose,' looked out at the 'corduroy' and swashes; the gambler fell off into a doze, and the circus covey followed suit, leaving the preacher and me vis-a-vis and saying nothing to nobody. 'Indiany,' he stuck his mug out at the window and criticized the cattle we now and then passed. I was wishing ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... from banquets with the vulture shared, The blood still dripping from his amber beard, Quitting their mad Berserker dance to hear The dull, meek droning of a drab-coat seer; Leaving the sport of Presidents and Kings, Where men for dice each titled gambler flings, To meet alternate on the Seine and Thames, For tea and gossip, like old country dames No! let the cravens plead the weakling's cant, Let Cobden cipher, and let Vincent rant, Let Sturge preach peace to democratic throngs, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... 2d, Napoleon treating him with generosity. This first Italian campaign was perhaps the most skilful of all those of Napoleon. Everything was done accurately and rapidly, and without throwing away chances. Some of his later campaigns, though equally brilliant, show him acting more with the gambler's spirit, running unnecessary risks with almost a blind reliance upon his star, in the hope of obtaining results which should dazzle ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... long heavy sleep. It was now dark; lights streamed from the open windows of the gambling-rooms; the voices of the croupiers, the stir and hum of the players and jingling of money were distinctly heard in the street without. I have already told you I am no gambler, not from scruple, but choice. Nevertheless, I used often to stroll up to the Cursaal for an hour of in evening, when the play was at the highest, to look on and chat with any acquaintances I met. Mechanically, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... up. His sobriquet was no idle One. He lived for poker—he loved it. And Lablache knew it. Old John turned to the others. His right cheek twitched as he waited the decision. "Doc" Abbot smiled approval; "Lord" Bill shrugged indifferently. The old gambler ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... 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, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... Habitual Gambler.—His Family sharing in the Degradation, and becoming the suffering Victims of his Vices.—The Sudden Resolve to be a Man again, and remove to an unsettled Country, to begin Life anew ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... day of her marriage young Mrs. Ashton had written to her father, asking him to give her his good wishes and pardon. He refused both. As she had feared, he did not consider that for a bank clerk a gambler made a desirable son-in-law; and the letters he wrote his daughter were so bitter that in reply she informed him he had forced her to choose between her family and her husband, and that she chose her husband. In consequence, when she found herself deserted she felt she could not return to ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... 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 from ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... favour, he had won back some of his lost possessions. But he was too often in that fluctuating state of alternating excitement and depression which is the invariable accompaniment, in a greater or less degree, of the gambler's sin, whether carried on in the depths of the Arctic wilderness, the well-named "hells" of London, or ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... watched the barbaric sport with an interest as keen as if he had been born and bred an Indian instead of native to the far-away dales of Devonshire. Nay, he bet on the chances of the game with as reckless a nerve as a Cherokee,—always the perfect presentment of the gambler,—despite the thrift which characterized his transactions at the trading-house, where he was wont to drive a close bargain, and look with the discerning scrupulousness of an expert into the values of the dressing of a deerskin ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... unscrupulous as to means so the end was attained. It was, therefore, an easy matter to conform, in outward appearance, to the society he was in. This he never failed to do. When with the Waltons, he was a pattern of generosity, and a pitying angel. When with the gambler, or the roue, he was equally at home—a debauchee, or a handler ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison
... northward to that modest house tucked in lovingly under the ample shelter of the millionnaires on the Lake Shore Drive. I fancy there has always been the gambler in your nerves; that you have sacrificed your principle to getting a rapid return on your money. And you have dominated your family: you sent your two brothers to Harvard, and filled them with ambitions akin to yours. Now you are impatient ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... 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 ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... Here, for example, is a course that I am quite sure, if I pursue it, will land me in evil. Does the drunkard take a glass the less, because he knows that if he goes on he will have a drunkard's liver and die a miserable death? Does the gambler ever take away his hand from the pack of cards or the dice-box, because he knows that play means, in the long run, poverty and disgrace? When a man sets his will upon a certain course, he is like a bull that has started in its rage. Down goes the head, and, with eyes ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... give an air of restless anxiety to every pedestrian. The exceptions to this rule are apt to go to the other extreme, and wear a defiant, obtrusive kind of indolence which suggests quite as much inward disquiet and unrest. The shiftless lassitude of a gambler can never be mistaken for the lounge of a gentleman. Even the brokers who loiter upon Montgomery Street at high noon are not loungers. Look at them closely and you will see a feverishness and anxiety under the mask of listlessness. They do not lounge—they lie in wait. No surer ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... estates she managed herself and she knew to a sesterce the value of every piece of property, the justifiable expenses of maintaining each, and the income each should yield. Self-indulgent as she was and moreover an inveterate gambler, she ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... the facts at all. Stock-gambler as I am, and in almost desperate straits, I require nothing of the kind. Knowing you as I do, I advise you to accept Arnault at once; but I do not demand it; I do not even urge it. If you loved me, if you would say, 'Give up this feverish life of risk; I will help you ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... lay a high pile of chips. He played with the nonchalant air of one who was there merely to pass away a vacant hour, but his stakes were high and he played every shot. His calm, impassioned countenance bore the unmistakable stamp of the professional gambler, and, serene as a quiet mill-pond, he bore his losses or pocketed his winnings with the enviable sang froid which results from a long and intimate ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... feet, standing over her. "Bullard!" he exclaimed at last, "Bullard! Good Lord, Doris! Had that fat successful gambler actually the impudence to ask ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... will make your brother a receiver-general. Now swear to me, before I say more, that you will never repeat what I tell you." (Sylvie made an affirmative sign.) "In the first place, the brave colonel is a gambler—" ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... having been French, Welsh, Scotch, and Dutch, many of them being guiltless of the English language, and many of them also of the English middle-class morality. The impartial old Wraxall, the memorialist of the times of George III, having described a noble as a gambler, a drunkard, a smuggler, an appropriator of public money, who always cheated his tradesmen, who was one and sometimes all of them together, and a profligate generally, commonly adds, "But he was a perfect gentleman." And yet there has always been a standard ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... faithless, to be banished As light-of-love and gambler, from your life, Because without a farewell word, you vanished And never will ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... pistol aimed at his head, ejaculated "Jesus bless us! are these devils or what are they?" While this was going on others of the pirates had hurried to the gun-room, seized the arms, killing every Spaniard who withstood them. Pierre knew, as scarcely any other successful pirate or gambler ever did, the right moment to stop. He at once put ashore all the prisoners he did not want for working the ship, and sailed straight back to France; where he lived the rest of his life in comfortable obscurity, and never again ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... England read by Mr. H. but not so many present on account of the cold—again in the evening with a sermon from Mr. G. from John, 14th chap., 15th verse, "If ye love me keep my commandments." Captain K. said he did not consider himself a gambler though he had lost 1, 2, 3 or L400 a night; once at Paris he lost a good deal. Since then he had made it a rule not to give checks, but merely stake what he had with him; when he lost the large sums they were out of his winnings. Talked of some wines that would not do for sea, port for instance; ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... them all, has collected about him those whom he thought friends, to celebrate his wished majority; they had now kept it up, night after night, hard upon a week; and, as well became such friends—the gambler, the duellist, the man of pleasure, and the fool of Fashion—they never yet had separated for their day-light beds, without a climax to their orgie, something like the ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... 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 to tell me that you worked hard ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... ain't that," another 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 way ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... Brandes, always the gambler, always wary and reticent by nature, did all the listening before he came to conclusions that relaxed the stiffness of his attitude and the immobility of his ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... one-pair window; and as I was not yet abreast of his house, I judged it was more wise to answer. This was not the first time I had had to stake my fortunes on the goodness of my accent in a foreign tongue; and I have always found the moment inspiriting, as a gambler should. Pulling around me a sort of great-coat I had made of my blanket, to cover my ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... nearly the whole of his income. His secret, well guarded as it was, need be no secret to the reader. Mr. White, who had never touched a playing-card in his life and who grew apoplectic at the sin and shame of playing the races, was an inveterate gambler. His passion was for Sunken Treasure Syndicates, formed to recover golden ingots from ships of the Spanish Armada; for companies that set forth to harness the horse-power of the sea to the services of commerce; for optimistic companies that discovered radium mines in the Ural Mountains—anything ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... highest and proudest personages of the Russian Court, including the Grand Duke Staniolanus, generally believed to be the heart and soul of the War Party. His imperial highness was well-known to be a desperate gambler, up to the neck in debts contracted at the card-table, and bent on recouping himself out of the wealth of Korea ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... had its place, the work-table of the gentleman who never works, there were a dozen letters lying beside three newspapers of different opinions. With a single touch of the finger he exposed to view all these letters, like a gambler giving the choice of a card; and he scanned the handwriting, a thing he did each morning before tearing ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... such a man should be in the power, to a great extent, of such people as Squire Wurley and Farmer Tester; that, because he happened to be poor, he should be turned out of the cottage where his family had lived for a hundred years, at a week's notice, through the caprice of a drunken gambler; that because he had stood up for his rights, and had thereby offended the worst farmer in the parish, he should be a marked man, and unable to get work—these things appeared so monstrous to Tom, and made him so angry, that he was obliged to ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... genteelly, if you would be thought to have kept good company. I would by no means recommend playing at cards as a part of your study, lest you should grow too fond of it, and the consequences prove bad. It were better not to know a diamond from a club, than to become a gambler; but, as custom has introduced innocent card playing at most friendly meetings, it marks the gentleman to handle them genteelly, and play them well; and as I hope you will play only for small sums, should you lose your money ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... recovered from the blow. In the same year he was appointed professor of mathematics at the lycee of Lyons. His small treatise, Considerations sur la theorie mathematique du jeu, which demonstrated that the chances of play are decidedly against the habitual gambler, published in 1802, brought him under the notice of J. B. J. Delambre, whose recommendation obtained for him the Lyons appointment, and afterwards (1804) a subordinate position in the polytechnic school at Paris, where he was elected ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... of his speech was very funny, and he poured forth his resonant periods as though I had been standing at a distance of twenty yards. As the gin stirred his sluggish blood he became more and more declamatory, and when at last he fairly yelled, "I am a gambler. I could not brook life if I had no excitement. It is my very blood. Yet, think not my words are false as dicers' oaths," and waved his right hand with a lordly gesture, I thought, "An old actor, for certain." So long as his senses remained he talked shrewdly about betting, ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... of the room, behind a roulette wheel, a man who looked more like a country parson than a gambler sat reading a thumbed copy of Taine's "English Literature." Three faro layouts stretched themselves in line as if watching for newcomers, and in the rear a man was lighting the coal-oil lamps of the dance hall. It was separated from the front part ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... ball-play; Skilled was he in games of hazard, In all games of skill and hazard, Pugasaing, the Bowl and Counters, Kuntassoo, the Game of Plum-stones. Though the warriors called him Faint-Heart, Called him coward, Shaugodaya, Idler, gambler, Yenadizze, Little heeded he their jesting, Little cared he for their insults, For the women and the maidens Loved the ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... the age of foolishness and nonsense, there lived a poor gambler. He was all alone in the world: he had no parents, relatives, wife, or children. What little money he had he spent on cards or cock-fighting. Every time he played, he lost. So he would often pass whole days without eating. He would then go around the town begging ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... gambler loses!" Mr. Broad proclaimed to the world. "The eye is quicker than the hand, and the dealer's moans is music to the stranger's ear." With practised touch he rearranged the three worn walnut-shells which constituted his stock in ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... trial applied in this clear case, and after every quibble and perversion of law which ingenuity could devise had been tried, the lame and impotent conclusion arrived at of a verdict of manslaughter, and a sentence for a short period to the State Prison. They saw a gambler, while quietly conversing with the United States Marshal in the doorway of a store on Clay Street, draw a revolver from his pocket and slay him upon the spot. They heard that gamblers and other notorious characters, his associates and friends, ...
— A Sketch of the Causes, Operations and Results of the San Francisco Vigilance Committee of 1856 • Stephen Palfrey Webb
... to an interview with a "distinguished citizen of Colorado," who gave a highly unfavorable account of the workings of woman suffrage there. The "distinguished citizen" in question was a prize-fighter who had killed three men—a gambler driven out by woman suffrage; and he naturally said that woman suffrage was a failure.... The great Woman's Club of Denver is a power for good in the city; it is carrying on schools in "the bottoms," night schools, kitchen gardens, traveling libraries; it secured the establishment of the State ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... rivalry between Disraeli and Gladstone did in later years. They had some mystified idea that those political gentlemen were ever thirsting for each others' blood. They had gathered from some gossipy source that Mr Fox was a hopeless gambler, and that Pitt was exclusively responsible for the Napoleonic wars, and that Palmerston was a mischief-maker who set his impudence up to everybody, and his rashness either ended in war or coming near to do so. It was the latter that was accused in forecastle circles of ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... the Colonel dryly, "I am, I hope, a Christian man, but it would be difficult to convince me that the gambler, cattle-thief, and whisky-runner who ruined every man and woman who trusted him will be admitted to the same place as clean-lived English gentlemen. There are, my dear, plenty ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... away from a court in appearance so friendly but in reality so treacherous. The 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
... an easy matter to lay snares for Serge. He was a gambler. She could let him have ready money to satisfy his passion. Once in the clutches of the demon of play, he would neglect his wife, and the mother might regain a portion of the ground she had lost. Micheline's fortune once broken into, she would interpose between her daughter ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... neighbouring town. After some difficulty she effected his purchase and married him, despite the fact of his being so far beneath her in the social scale. Not long after this the happy couple went to Bongao on a market-day. The lady, being an inveterate gambler, repaired at once to the cockpit, where she lost so heavily that her remaining funds were inadequate for the return trip to Balambing. Then a happy idea struck her. Why not pawn her husband, awaiting her next visit to Bongao, ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... for you. You see, I spotted you from the first, 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
... cheerful conversation, but it was very discouraging. Even when we dined at the fashionable open air restaurant in the Cascine, with no less a person than Ouida, in a fluff of grey hair and black lace, at the next table, and the most distinguished gambler of the Italian aristocracy presenting a narrow back to us from the other side, he permitted poppa to compare the quality of the beef fillets unfavourably with those of New York in silence, and drank his Chianti with ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... way. By dint of a good deal of persuasion, I got it out of my wife that the rest was owing to different friends for bridge and racing debts. Of course I had forgotten that my little Irish wife was a born horse-lover, and, I'm sorry to say, gambler; and I ought not to have been surprised. But I was. And I'm afraid I was a bit brutal. You see I couldn't help thinking it was rather hard that the money I'd worked for was to be squandered; and I spoke rather sharply to the ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... married secretly a waitress employed in one of the "sporty" restaurants in New Haven, and to make the mesalliance worse, the girl was not even of respectable parents. Her father, Billy Delmore, the pool-room king, was a notorious gambler and had died in convict stripes. Fine sensation that for the yellow press. "Banker's Son Weds Convict's Daughter." So ran the "scare heads" in the newspapers. That was the last straw for Mr. Jeffries, Sr. He sternly told his son that he ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... fatal still, and the Polish state might conceivably disappear before military aid from the Allied governments could reach it. Why should the safety of Poland and to some extent the security of Europe be made to depend upon what is at best a gambler's throw? ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... think he's so winnin' of purty women no more! He's bad, that man, gamblin' an' shootin' craps an' workin' the banks. Served him right, yes, indeedy. But he'd shore hate to know a parson hearn him cussin' an' swearin' around. Hit don't bring a gambler any luck, bein' heard ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... one of those kind of men who never look you full in the face while speaking, and if indeed you caught his eye, it was only for the sixteenth part of a second, and by accident at that. He had the name of being a desperate gambler, and once Mr. Brown had called our attention to him, and remarked that he had lost more money at card playing than he made honestly, and wondered if ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... 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 ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... future 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 some people are lucky and others aren't. All we've got are hints ...
— Accidental Death • Peter Baily
... 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
... here your last letter in which you speak to me of Madame Rosalie and of Seraphita. Relative to your aunt, I confess that I am ignorant by what law it is that persons so well bred can believe such calumnies. I, a gambler! Can your aunt neither reason, calculate nor combine anything except whist? I, who work, even here, sixteen hours a day, how should I go to a gambling-house that takes whole nights? It is as absurd as it is crazy. . . . Your letter was sad; I felt it was written under the ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... the ensuing year. These things he knew in the strange concrete arithmetical manner of the routine bookkeeper. Other men saw a desperate phase of firm rivalry; he saw a struggle to the uttermost. Other men cheered a rescue: he thrilled over the magnificent gesture of the Gambler scattering his stake ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... fortune hoarded up with so much care by my parents, and yet was ashamed on account of my origin to be called by my name. Happily for me, she was fond of visiting and amusements. Otherwise, to escape from her, I might have become a gambler, or worse; but, to avoid meeting her, I remained at home—for there she seldom was. At first from ennui, but afterward from real delight in the occupation, I gave myself up to study. Reading formed my mind and heart. I became a changed ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... amusement. In fine weather they crowded the forward and lower deck aft, not being permitted to infringe upon the cabin-passengers' deck. They squatted in picturesque groups round the hatchways much of the time, playing cards and dominoes for very small stakes of money. John is by nature a gambler, and cannot resist its fascination. The dull noxious smell that permeated their quarters at all times, in spite of enforced ventilation and the well-observed rules of the ship, was often wafted unpleasantly towards our cabins ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... that you and me mightn't cotton to," said her husband. "This man is Jack Hamlin." As his wife's remote and introspective black eyes returned only vacancy, he added quickly. "The noted gambler!" ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... many a Theodore Roosevelt carryin' bricks! In their off hours and in the privacy of their homes, them fellers is doin' for nothin', what Chaplin, Roosevelt, Dempsey and so forth got paid off on! If a man's a gambler, for instance, and he bets on a race horse, the chances are he stays up all night lookin' up the past performances of that horse and seein' just what he can do under all conditions. He studies how the horse finished on a muddy track and where he come in when the track was fast. He ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer
... to close up the gambling establishments in New York. Why didn't they close up Adam? He was the first gambler. Didn't he start ...
— The New Pun Book • Thomas A. Brown and Thomas Joseph Carey
... James, Tennessee's Partner, Jack Hamlin, John Oakhurst, Flynn of Virginia, Abner Dean of Angels, Brown of Calaveras, Yuba Bill, Sandy McGee, the Scheezicks, the Man of No Account, and all the rest. And the California of the gambler and the gold-seeker succeeds the ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... a lawyer like Harmon Whitney Or Kinsey Keene or Garrison Standard, For I tried the rights of property, Although by lamp-light, for thirty years, In that poker room in the opera house. And I say to you that Life's a gambler Head and shoulders above us all. No mayor alive can close the house. And if you lose, you can squeal as you will; You'll not get back your money. He makes the percentage hard to conquer; He stacks the ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... "deadbeat"—the remittance man, 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 ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... upon English grass and roots, and upon maize imported from the New World. I prefer, however, to leave this possibility for the discussion of Mr. Caird and Mr. Clare Read, and to confine myself to the fact that the Western cultivator is far less a farmer than a cattle-jobber or gambler ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... the first step you must take the second. I showed you this that you might find action pleasanter than rest, and you must bear with this man a little longer for my sake, but I will give you an amusement to beguile the time. Long ago you told me that Gilbert was a gambler. I would not believe it then, now I can believe anything, and you can convince the world of this vice of his ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott
... I wanted to do it, too. We all are something of the savage at times. And I think he fully expected to die. He had told me frankly he purposed killing me, and he would not look for mercy, himself. The dice had fallen against him. He had lost. And, like a true gambler, he was ready to pay stakes. To give the fellow his due, he was brave; with the sort of bravery that meets death—when it must—with a smiling ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... eleven he went up to the card-room and dragged Merrihew away. Merrihew gave up his chair reluctantly. He was winning. He would have been just as reluctant, however, had he been losing. The amateur gambler never wants ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... people had been called together to witness the feats of a celebrated juggler and gambler. The name of Colonel Crockett had gone through the nation; and gradually it became noised abroad that Colonel Crockett was in the crowd. "I wish I may be shot," Crockett says, "if I wasn't looked upon as almost as great a sight as Punch ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... eye gleamed like a gambler's, and she bought away like wildfire. In which sport she caught sight of an old gentleman, with little black eyes that ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... tried to be a good wife and tried to console him, and to do the best when he said, 'I have lost half a year's wages, I don't know how we shall pull through.' I have borne with ten thousand times more than I can tell you. The sufferings of a gambler's wife cannot be told. Tell me, what do you think my feelings must have been when one night I heard him calling me out of my sleep, when I heard him say, 'I can't die, Annie, without bidding you good-bye. I can only hope that you will be able to pull through, and I know that the Gaffer ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... above, for that the ould thaif of a rector, and the sub-rector, and the almoner played at cards together, and that the rector won money from the others—the almoner had told him so—and, moreover, that the rector was the thaif of the world, and had been a gambler in his youth, and had once been kicked out of a club-house at Dublin for cheating at cards, and after that circumstance had apparently reformed and lived decently till the time when I came to the religious house with my pack, but that the sight of that had brought him back to his ould gambling. ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... indulgence to one whom he was pleased to consider a brother of the Literate Guild. The under-superintendent—Donnelly by name—treated one with a benevolence quite paternal. The monotony of my solitary confinement was often broken by his rambling chat and reminiscences of a gambler's life in the Far West; for he liked nothing better than lingering in my cell for an hour or so, when his day's work was done. After the prison doors were opened, I lingered for ten minutes within them, to exchange a farewell hand-grip with that quaint, kind old man. There was a stringent curfew-order, ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... society women in a private room), and they put up ten dollars each upon a horse called "Black Beldame," a six to one shot, and won. For a secret like that they would have done a good many sluggings—but the next day Goldberger informed them that the offending gambler had got wind of what was coming to him, and ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... The latter plea has something of unconscious humour in the mouth of a gentleman who had lately lost L500 at faro. With this last echo of the coffee-house of St James's, and of the colonel's financial difficulties, that brave soldier, if somewhat reckless gambler, the Hon. Edmund Fielding vanishes from sight, as far as the life of ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... fugitives from justice, some were criminal, and all were reckless. Physically they exhibited no indication of their past lives and character. The greatest scamp had a Raphael face, with a profusion of blonde hair; Oakhurst, a gambler, had the melancholy air and intellectual abstraction of a Hamlet; the coolest and most courageous man was scarcely over five feet in height, with a soft voice and an embarrassed, timid manner. The term "roughs" applied to them was a ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... the waiter again places on the tray, and politely serves to the denizens, in whose glassy eyes, sallow faces, coarse, unbared arms and shoulders, is written the tale of their misery. The judge drinks with the courtesan, touches glasses with the gambler, bows in compliment to the landlady, who reiterates that she keeps the most respectable house and the choicest wine. The moralist shakes ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... 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 together, ceased as he approached, and exchanged ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... traditional shilling, but even so, some hundreds a year must have been theirs. What then did the poverty of Alathea suggest? That some constant drain must be going on all the time. Could the scapegrace still be a gambler, and that could account for it? This seemed the ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... the emperor Ming Huang of the Tang dynasty was the celebrated Yang Gui Fe. She so enchanted him by her beauty that he did whatever she wished him to do. But she brought her cousin to the court, a gambler and a drinker, and because of him the people began to murmur against the emperor. Finally a revolt broke out, and the emperor was obliged to flee. He fled with his entire court to the land of the ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... to the state of his purse, ready for any tale of distress, true or false. But it was not in dress or feasting, in promiscuous amours or promiscuous charities, that his chief expense lay. He had been from boyhood a gambler, and at once the most sanguine and the most unskilful of gamblers. For a time he put off the day of inevitable ruin by temporary expedients. He obtained advances from booksellers, by promising to execute works which he never began. But at length this source ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... America for what I have received at her hands during my long stay under her flag; and to one of her citizens—a citizen of Hadleyburg—I am especially grateful for a great kindness done me a year or two ago. Two great kindnesses in fact. I will explain. I was a gambler. I say I WAS. I was a ruined gambler. I arrived in this village at night, hungry and without a penny. I asked for help—in the dark; I was ashamed to beg in the light. I begged of the right man. He gave me twenty dollars—that ...
— The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg • Mark Twain
... several rows. Those who had succeeded in pushing their way to the tables were standing with their feet firmly planted, in order to avoid having to give up their places until they should have finished their game (since merely to stand looking on—thus occupying a gambler's place for nothing—was not permitted). True, chairs were provided around the tables, but few players made use of them—more especially if there was a large attendance of the general public; since to stand allowed of a closer approach; ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... me, first, that it was not ordinary, and, secondly, that it was not at all wifely—that Mrs. Johnstone's care of her husband had less of the ministering unselfishness of a woman in love than of the eager concern of a gambler with his stake. The girl (I need not say) did not put it thus, yet this in effect was her report. And she added that this anxiety was fitful to a degree: at times the minister could hardly take a walk without being fussed over and forced to change his socks on his return; ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... not open; he did not dream that he was in the hands of a professed gambler, and, hoping to get back what he had lost, and what he felt he really could not spare from his small amount of funds, ...
— The Runaway - The Adventures of Rodney Roverton • Unknown
... allowances, justified by a very prevailing prejudice, in some weak minds, against the extremity of calling a doctor. I had heard something of Colonel P——; that he was considered to be immensely rich, and known to be a deep gambler, but I never understood that he was a victim of weak or imaginary fears, and I was therefore inclined to doubt the truth of the reason assigned by the unsuspecting invalid, for the scrupulous delicacy of her husband's affection and solicitude. I pondered for a moment, and soon perceived that ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... no gold at Vienna, made away with a very considerable quantity. He felt the loss so acutely, that he vowed to think no more of the philosopher's stone. This wise resolution he kept for two months; but he was miserable. He was in the condition of the gambler, who cannot resist the fascination of the game while he has a coin remaining, but plays on with the hope of retrieving former losses, till hope forsakes him, and he can live no longer. He returned once more to his beloved crucibles, and resolved to prosecute ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... prosperity in his profession. From these misfortunes he had emerged, and, no doubt, had often reflected on what he himself had then said. But we know that the drunkard, though he hates drunkenness, cannot but drink,—that the gambler cannot keep from the dice. Major Tifto still lied about women, and could not keep his tongue from the subject. He would boast, too, about other matters,—much to his own disadvantage. He was, too, very "deep", and some men, ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... does seem absurd. Sometimes when I pass him jogging along to town in his rickety old cart, and look at his pale, cruel face, and know that he is a broken-down gambler and man of the world, and yet considers himself infinitely superior to me a young man in the prime of life, with a good constitution and happy prospects, it makes me turn ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... moral tendency, and calculated to vitiate and enervate the mind. Such publications as pander to a prurient taste find a large circulation with a portion of society who read them for the same reason that the inebriate seeks his bowl, or the gambler the instruments of his vocation—for the excitement they produce. The influence of works of this description is all bad—there is not a single redeeming feature to commend them to the favor or toleration of the ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... 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
... luck then, hardly worse than a gambler's last chip except that the consequences of failure were somewhat more certain. Either way he'd have what he wanted—survival or, in the brief incandescence of friction's heat, ...
— Far from Home • J.A. Taylor
... which only the isolated life they led during those few days could have developed along those particular lines. When Saltash was bored he amused himself with his protege, teaching him picquet and chess, and finding in him an apt and eager pupil. There was a good deal of the gambler's spirit in Toby, and Saltash idly fostered it because it gave him sport. He laughed at his opponent's keenness, supplied stakes for the game, even ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... he labored hard in the office by day—he never for an instant abandoned his ambitions and his plans—and at night he drifted into the land where were warmth and light and lawlessness. He had his duty there, such as it might be, for he was both a gambler and a protector, and, young as he was, callow as he was, within a year he had become one in demand, no trifler at the table, and an object of rivalry among those whose regard means fee of body and of soul. He, himself, at that ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... heads to-day to hang gamblers or burn murderers, they should recollect that in the confusion usually attending such transactions they will be as likely to hang or burn some one who is neither a gambler nor a murderer as one who is, and that, acting upon the example they set, the mob of to-morrow may, and probably will, hang or burn some of them by the very same mistake. And not only so; the innocent, those who have ever set their faces against violations ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... 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 ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... know every girl that has ever kept company with him has been talked about. I don't like him. I can't stand him. He's a bad man, mother—a gambler, a drunkard, and an idler. He doesn't care for the characters he has ruined. He's fast running through the money his mother left him; he's ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... Mall, is kept by B——l, who has been a public and noted gambler for these forty years, and is generally termed the Father of the Houses. He was at one time a poor man, but now, by his honest earnings, is in possession of some tens of thousands. It is said that he was originally a stable-boy, and, in process of time, arose to ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... "Ser Ciappelletto," the hero of the first story in Boccaccio's Decameron, forger, murderer, blasphemer, fornicator, drunkard and gambler, "he was probably the worst man who was ever born," to crown all, he so deceived the priest to whom he confessed ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... looked down, as so many hard characters do, upon a person possessing a different code of ethics. His attitude was one of broad, genial tolerance. He saw nothing out of the way in the fact that he had himself been a road-agent, a professional gambler, and a desperado at different stages of his career. On the other hand, he did not in the least hold it against any one that he had always acted within the law. At the time that I knew him he had become a man of some substance, ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... agriculture in order to get rich by trading in lots, went back to his plow and his chores, a sadder and wiser, although generally poorer, man. Many hundreds of thousands of dollars changed hands during the boom. Exactly who "beat the game," to use the gambler's expression, has never been known. Certain it is, that for every man in Kansas who admits that he made money out of the excitement and inflation, there are at least fifty who say that ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... like that there will generally be found some heart which still retains its tenderness. The young man who had offered to stake him, followed the ruined gambler into ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... receive and pardon a willing unbeliever, a man who has sinned against the clearest light, a gambler, a libertine, an embodiment of selfishness? Can it be that Annie Walton will ever receive even friendship from one so stained, knowing the additional fact that I plotted against her and sought for my own senseless gratification to prove that she was a weak, vain woman, who would ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... the means to be so, his debts grew daily greater, and in society one talked of nothing but his lavish expenditure and his creditors. I know that the purses of forty women were at his disposal. I know, moreover, that he used to gamble like a prince, and I would never marry my waiting-maid to a gambler and ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... to its deck and threw themselves down, again listening intently. From the last vessel of the line came the sound of low voices, accompanied at intervals by the click of the oblong bone dice with which the men were gambling. This was a boon, for when the Indian, a born gambler, is engaged in one of his games of chance, he is oblivious of all else around him. But on Angria's gallivat there was no sound. Rising to a crouching position, so that his form could not be seen if any ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... slowly; but living in San Francisco was so expensive that, ere his health was sufficiently recruited to enable him to return to the gold-fields, his funds were well-nigh exhausted. In order to recruit them he went, in an evil hour, to the gaming-saloons, and soon became an inveterate gambler. ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... containing pocket-knives, razors, soap, perfumery, laces, and other curious wares, and besought our people to purchase. We have not much coin, but were disposed to treat him Christianly, until he did declare that President General Santa Ana, whom may the saints defend! was a thief and gambler, and had gambled away the Province of California to the United States; whereupon we drave him hence, the Ayuntamiento sending a trusty guard to see him two leagues from the borders of the Pueblo. But ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... was attractive on account of its colour and gentle wistful expression, and being the daughter of a man rich in horses she did not want for lovers. In those far-off days the idle, gay, well-dressed young gambler was always a girl's first and often most successful wooer, but at La Tapera the young lovers had to reckon with one who, incredible as it seemed in a gaucho, hated gambling and kept a hostile and rather terrifying eye on their approaches. Eventually Demetria became engaged to a young ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... She had come on board that morning with one Ned Stratton, a brother gambler, but neither a favorite nor intimate of Jack's. From certain indications in the pair, Jack had inferred that she was some foolish or reckless creature whom "Ed" had "got on a string," and was spiriting ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... aunt! And that's all I get for it—a decent and reasonable fellow like me to be called such names just because I distract myself with the only one or two things that can delude one into believing that life is worth living in this rotten country! Drunkard and gambler—fine words to fling ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... 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 ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... this time was too excited to take advice. His cheeks had an angry flush, his hands trembled as he hastily constructed some paper currency of considerable value. The parallel horizontal wrinkles of the gambler were just sketched on his smooth girlish brow as he returned with his paper. The bank had been losing, but not largely. The luck turned again as soon as Martin threw down some of his scrip. Thrice ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... know?" continued the gambler, unfolding a curious lore of flowers. "Those little potty, white things, split up the middle with a green head on top—grow under ferns. Come on. Cards are ready! ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... Raymond, an inveterate gambler, at once acceded to the proposition; Winthrop and one of the soldiers did likewise, and they sat down to play. The ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... I could remember, Berry had had a weakness for Roulette. For Baccarat, Petits Chevaux, and the rest he cared nothing: fifty pounds a year would have covered his racing bets: if he played Bridge, it was by request. My brother-in-law was no gambler. There was something, however, about the shining wheel, sunk in its board of green cloth, which ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... builder, the waster, the gambler, the loyal citizen, the slacker, the honest and dishonest—they were all there at the pay window of the Mill. And to each the pay envelope meant a different thing. To big Max the envelope meant an education for his son. To Bill Connley it meant food and clothing for his brood ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... has tossed it about for a few seconds, he swiftly holds them apart, and if his opponent can guess which hand the pebble or stone is in, he wins; if not, he loses. Immense amounts are frequently wagered in this game, for the North American Indian is an inveterate gambler. ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... proof on every hand that vigorous mental life may be but one side of a personality, of which the other is moral barbarism. A man may be a fine archaeologist, and yet have no sympathy with human ideals. The historian, the biographer, even the poet, may be a money-market gambler, a social toady, a clamorous Chauvinist, or an unscrupulous wire-puller. As for "leaders of science," what optimist will dare to proclaim them on the side of the gentle virtues? And if one must needs think ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... is 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 ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... spent half a crown in a similar experiment. I advertised for a partner to join a man who had plenty of capital. Then I had lots of applicants ready to introduce me into all sorts of occupations, from that of a banker to that of a horsejockey or gambler, if I would only furnish the money to start with. After a while, I advertised again for a partner, and obtained one with money. We have a good mill. I devote myself closely to business, and have ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... it all 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 ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... which was bred and nourished by the continuance of her unnatural position with respect to her husband in some parts of his treatment of her, was threatening to produce a very pernicious effect by leading her to become a gambler. Some of those ladies whom she admitted to her intimacy were deeply infected with this fatal passion; and one of the most mischievous and intriguing of the whole company, the Princess de Guimenee, introduced a play-table ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... disgrace and infamy into every domestic circle to which they can by any means obtain admittance. It ought to be a source of pride to my countrymen, that they are more of a marrying people than the English or French, and do not regard women in the same degraded light as a gambler does a pack of cards, that are to be shuffled and played with for a while, and then thrown away. Our naval and military officers are rather remarkable for their readiness to form matrimonial connexions; while on the other hand, our young men who are educated to the law, physic, ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... 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 spy ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... 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, without assurances ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams |
