One incident occurred during this season at Albany showing extraordinary character in so young a man. The fearful power of the passion for gaming has been well known in all ages. It has prevailed with equal violence and evil among the rudest savages and in the most luxurious phases of civilization. Every year, at the present time, in the capital centres of Christendom it explodes in forgeries, murder, and suicides. And we read in the Mahabharata, the great Sanscrit epic written we know not how many centuries before the Christian era, that king Yudishthira was so desperately addicted to gambling that on one occasion he staked his empire, and lost it; then his wife, and lost; finally, his own body, lost that, and became the slave of the winner. In New Orleans Forrest had felt something of the horrid fascination of this passion. He had not, however, indulged much in it, although his friend Gazonac, who stood at the head of the profession, had initiated him pretty thoroughly into the secret tricks of the art. The company of actors and actresses used often to stay after the play was over and engage in games of chance. Forrest joined them several times. He then steadily refused to do so any more; for he felt that the gambling spirit was getting hold of him. But on a certain evening they urged him so strongly that he consented,--determined to give them a lesson. He said it was a base business, full of dishonest arts by which all but the sharpest adepts could be cheated. They maintained that there were among them neither decoys nor dupes, and they challenged fraud. They played all night, and Forrest at last had won every cent they had with them. He then rose to his feet, and denounced the habit of gaming for profit as utterly pernicious. He recited some examples of the horrors he had known to result from it. He said it demoralized the characters of those who practised it, and, producing nothing, was a robbery, stealing the time, thought, and feeling which might so much better be devoted to something useful. With these words he swept the implements of play into the fire, strewed the money he had won on the floor, left the room, and went home in the gray light of the morning,--and never gambled again from that hour unto the day of his death.