Now, some one may ask: “Is not gambling immoral to the extent it may induce a reliance upon chance for a livelihood, instead of patient industry.” I might reply: “What is industry, as known to political economy; and what proportion of the world’s wealth is a result of direct personal exertion?” But, generally, men are rational creatures, and do not depend upon games of chance for a living. The credulous men are relatively few who rely entirely upon the outcome of chance in games as a business; and those few are at least on a par in wisdom and ethics with the millions who gamble in future prices of stocks, grain, and other commodities. “Ah! but you forget,” rejoins my critic, “that in other pursuits a man produces something by his industry, or contributes to that result indirectly, whereas in gambling nothing is produced.” I consider this erroneous, in the face of social experience, as has been indicated heretofore. It may be as soundly said, that a “man has no right to invest his money in cattle, or lands, or bonds, unless his labor is put in with it. A man buys a horse and hires him to his neighbor. Is he entitled to the money his horse earns for him? He invests in bonds at fifty cents on the dollar. Does he not hope they will appreciate in value, until they are worth dollar for dollar? He pays $1000 for a piece of land. In two or three years, perhaps, his neighbors have invested around him, and have improved their properties, and he finds that his land will sell for $2000. His labor did not contribute to that result. He risked his capital exactly as he would have done in a game of chance.” The Destinies; or, The Reign of Law. [Illustration] CHAPTER III. The Destinies; or, The Reign of Law. On one occasion, an aged scholar soliloquized as follows: “Homer was at the same time beggar and poet: his mouth more often filled with verses than with bread. Plautus turned a mill that he might live. Menander, Cratinus and Terrence were drowned; Empedocles lost in the crater of Mount Etna; Euripides and Heraclitus torn to pieces by dogs; Hesiod, Archilochus and Ibychus, murdered. Sappho threw herself from a precipice. Condemned by a tyrant, respectively, Seneca, Lucan, and Petronius Arbiter, cut their veins and bled to death. Poison terminated the lives of Socrates, Demosthenes and Lucretius. “In Plutarch, we read of ‘two eminent persons, whose names were Attis, the one a Syrian, the other of Arcadia, both were slain by a wild boar; of two, whose names were Acteon, one was torn to pieces by his dog, the other by assassins; of two famous Scipios, one overthrew the Carthagenians in war, the other totally destroyed them; four of the most warlike commanders of antiquity had but one eye--Philip, Antigonous, Hannibal and Sertorius.’