It is a practice so disallowed among Christians, and so excluded by mere moralists, and so hateful to industrious and thriving men, that those who practise it are shut up to themselves; unlike lawful pursuits, it is not modified or restrained by collision with others. Gamblers herd with gamblers. They tempt and provoke each other to all evil, without affording one restraint, and without providing the counterbalance of a single virtuous impulse. They are like snakes coiling among snakes, poison and poisoning; like plague-patients, infected and diffusing infection; each sick and all contagious. It is impossible to put bad men together and not have them grow worse. The herding of convicts promiscuously, produced such a fermentation of depravity, that, long ago, legislators forbade it. When criminals, out of jail, herd together by choice, the same corrupt nature will doom them to growing loathsomeness, because of increasing wickedness. IV. It is a provocative of thirst. The bottle is almost as needful as the card, the ball, or the dice. Some are seduced to drink; some drink for imitation, at first, and fashion. When super-excitements, at intervals, subside, their victim cannot bear the deathlike gloom of the reaction; and, by drugs or liquor, wind up their system to the glowing point again. Therefore, drinking is the invariable concomitant of the theatre, circus, race-course, gaming-table, and of all amusements which powerfully excite all but the moral feelings. When the double fires of dice and brandy blaze under a man, he will soon be consumed. If men are found who do not drink, they are the more noticeable because exceptions.