“Chance, my dear Bob, chance is ten times a more intoxicating liquor than champagne, and, once take to ‘dramming’ with fortune, you may bid a long adieu to sobriety! I do not speak here of the terrible infatuation of play, and the almost utter impossibility of resisting it, but I allude to what is infinitely worse—the certainty of your applying play theories and play tactics to every event and circumstance of real life.”—_James Dodd to Robert Doolan, Esq.—Lever._ If Mr. Dodd’s advice upon the subject of play, and his contention as to its worst results be correct, and I think no one can fairly contradict him, how much stronger is the position if the converse of the proposition be taken. The latter was the case, however, in the infancy of the diamond fields. There the daily work was one continual game at hazard with Dame Fortune. The “hard-up” and disconsolate digger of to-day might be Chance’s chosen favorite to-morrow. One blow of the pick, one turn of the shovel, might disclose for him a treasure exceeding his wildest imaginings, the difference between the precarious business of digging for diamonds and gambling at a faro table, in fact, being a moral difference only. Hence that hope which “springs eternal in the human breast” buoyed him up under all difficulties and prevented his ever yielding to absolute despair. But at the same time it tended to weaken the force of his moral character; he was compelled by circumstances to confront, and in a measure calculate upon, the chances, and probabilities of his daily avocations; he had to begin with that state of mind in which Mr. Dodd’s gambler is supposed to finish; and there is little ground, therefore, for surprise that, when turning from labor to leisure, the digger’s favorite recreations should be those of the gamester. His surroundings, moreover, were depressing in the extreme. Even when mitigated by the company of a “chum,” tent life, upon mere bread and meat, with indifferent coffee, and no rational amusements at command, was not exhilarating. Is it wonderful, therefore, that the gregarious instinct of man should have led the diggers to while away the dreariness of their idle hours at the hotels or gambling saloons? Even of happy England did not Shenstone say: “Whoe’er has traveled life’s dull round, Whate’er his stages may have been, Must sigh to think he still has found His warmest welcome at an inn?” And accordingly, in all mining camps, the two great social evils have always been drinking and gambling. The diamond fields were not singular in this respect, for the digger only followed the example of his Australian and Californian brother when he allowed his appetite for drink and his passion for play to run riot. The canteens and gambling saloons supplied the opportunities, and on the principle of “vires acquirit eundo”—reached such dire proportions as to call for legislative interference.