The evil of society gambling is most dangerous of all, because it is most subtle of all. Ah first no one would suspect an innocent game of cards, played just for fun. You may be the fourth one to make up a game; you may not know how to play, but you are told you can quickly learn. You brave it, and go in for a game. The next time a similar circumstance arises, you can not easily decline, for you must confess you have played, and so you go in as an old player. This may be as far as the matter ever goes with you. But here is one who is more impulsive than you; his surroundings are entirely different. He learns to play, and comes to revel in it. A passion is created for the game. He is shrewd; soon learns the tricks, and one evening--purely by chance, as it seems to him--he wins his first five dollars. Strange possibilities with cards lay hold upon him. He is consumed by that passion. He plays for business, for keeps; he has become a professional gambler. Ah! this is no finespun tale; it is being worked out every year in our country, all over the world. Among many things for which I have to thank my father and mother not the least is, that they would allow no gamblers, nor gambling, nor the instruments of gambling about our home. Better keep a pet rattlesnake for your child than a deck of cards; for if he gets poisoned by the snake he may be cured; but if the passion for card-playing should happen to seize him, there is little chance of a cure. The inmates of our penitentiaries to-day, almost to a man, testify that "card-playing threw them into bad company, led them into sin, and was one of the causes of their downfall." Dr. Talmage was asked if there could be any harm in a pack of cards. He Said: "Instead of directly answering your question, I will give you as My opinion that there are thousands of men with as strong a brain as you have, who have gone through card-playing into games of chance, and have dropped down into the gambler's life and into the gambler's hell." A prisoner in a jail in Michigan wrote a letter to a temperance paper, in which he gives this advice for young men: "Let cards and liquor alone, and you will never be behind the gates." Friends, not every one who touches liquor is a drunkard, but every drunkard touches liquor; so not every one who plays cards is a professional gambler, but every professional gambler plays cards. Is there nothing significant about these facts. "A word to the wise is sufficient." "In a railway train sat four men playing cards. One was a judge, and two of the others were lawyers. Near them sat a poor mother, a widow in black. The sight of the men at their game made her nervous. She kept quiet as long as she could; but finally rising came to them, and addressing the judge, asked: 'Do you know me?' 'No, madam, I do not,' said he. 'Well, said the mother, 'you sentenced my son to State's prison for life.' Turning to one of the lawyers, she said: 'And you, sir, pleaded against him. He was all I had.