With only a few dollars in his pocket, he one night entered a low gaming house, and for some time betted without either loss or gain. At length, however, he lost. He threw down another stake, and that too was swept up by the banker. His last dollar was in his hand, ready to be put up, when he paused, and the question flashed across his mind, what if he should lose again? Never before had he been so near to utter poverty. He had even no place where he might lodge that night, and, save that dollar, he owned nothing in the wide world but the garments he wore. He paused, and turned away. “The cards pass,” said the banker. “You do not bet this time, sir?—another chance, and you retrieve your loss.” Still the young man hesitated. The banker lost. “The cards pass,” said the banker again; “you see you would have won, sir. How much do you put up now?” The young man glanced fiercely at the speaker, hesitated an instant, and half turned away again; but the temptation to try his luck once more was too great, and hastily throwing down his dollar, he grasped the cards convulsively. “Twenty!” said the banker, flinging his cards with a smile on the table. “Sir, you have lost.” The young man stared wildly at the hoary villain, and then grinding his teeth together fiercely, with ill-concealed despair, he pushed the piece towards his tempter, cast a stern defying glance around the room at the curious spectators of the scene, and strode from the apartment. “Humph!” said the banker, “I’ll bet it’s his last dollar—who takes me up? No one, eh! Then, gentlemen, proceed.” No sooner had the young man reached the street than he paused, and looking up at the gay windows of the room he had left, he shook his clenched hand fiercely at them, and exclaimed— “Curses on ye for the ruin ye have brought upon me!—ay! ten thousand curses on ye and your hoary owners!” and then the recollection of his poverty seeming to cross his mind in another guise, he added, less passionately, “My God! not a cent have they left me, even to buy a night’s shelter. Oh! that I had never left my father’s house!” For hours he wandered up and down the streets, now inflamed to madness by his despair, now melting at the recollection of the happy days he had once enjoyed under his father’s roof. Morning still found him a wanderer. Pale, dejected and spirit-broken, he entered, at early dawn, an obscure coffee-house, just as the sleepy menials were opening the shutters, and sitting moodily down, picked up the morning paper. The first paragraph that his eye lit upon was as follows: “Died, on the 5th inst., after a lingering illness, which she bore with Christian meekness and fortitude, Elizabeth, wife of George L. Vernon.”