From his earliest years Charles James Fox had been accustomed to gambling, having been elected a member of Brooks's when but sixteen years old. At that time the Club in question, now so decorous and staid, was the head-quarters of the fashionable London gamester, and the high-spirited youth fully availed himself of the excellent opportunities for dissipating a fortune which were here at easy command. On one occasion Fox sat playing at hazard for twenty-two consecutive hours, with the result that he rose the loser of eleven thousand pounds. At twenty-five he was a ruined man, his father having paid for him one hundred and forty thousand pounds out of his own property. [Illustration: _The SPENDTHRIFT_ Deaf to his aged Sire's advice, And biggotted to Cards and Dice; With many a horrid Oath and Curse, He loudly wails his empty Purse. From an Eighteenth-Century Print.] Though a most unsuccessful gambler. Fox played whist and piquet exceedingly well, it being generally agreed at Brooks's that he might have made about four thousand a year at these games had he but confined himself to them. His misfortunes arose from playing at games of chance, particularly at faro, of which he was very fond. As a rule after eating and drinking plentifully, he would repair to the faro table, almost invariably rising a loser. Once indeed, and only once, he won about eight thousand pounds in the course of a single evening; part of this money he paid away to his creditors, and the remainder he lost again almost immediately in the same manner. Mr. Boothby, also an irreclaimable gamester and an intimate friend of Fox, speaking of the latter said, "He was unquestionably a man of first-rate talents, but so deficient in judgment as never to have succeeded in any object during his whole life. He loved only three things: women, play, and politics. Yet at no period did he ever form a creditable connection with a woman; he lost his whole fortune at the gaming-table; and with the exception of about eleven months he remained always in opposition." Before he attained his thirtieth year, Fox had completely dissipated every shilling that he could either command or procure by the most ruinous expedients. During his career he experienced, at times, many of the severest privations attached to the vicissitudes which mark a gamester's progress, and frequently lacked money to defray common expenses of the most pressing nature. Topham Beauclerk--himself a man of pleasure and of letters--who lived much in Fox's society at that period of his life, used to say that no man could form an idea of the extremities to which his friend had been driven in order to raise money, after losing his last guinea at the faro table. For days in succession he was reduced to such distress as to be under the necessity of having recourse to the waiters of Brooks's Club to lend him assistance--even sedan-chairmen, whom he was unable to pay, used to clamour at his door.