It is over ten years since my midnight visit to that gambler's death-bed. I remember still one sentence of the ruined man: "It doesn't pay, sir! It doesn't pay!" Aye! and even if it does pay some few, what then? Is it not ill-gotten gain? And if so, what shall it profit such a man, though he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? The vice of gambling does not stand alone. It is the mother of sins; the sordid and the sensual too frequently go hand in hand. Lying, blasphemy, impurity, dishonesty, trickery, double-dealing, follow in its train. The gambler who, by a stroke of "luck," becomes rich in an hour, is tempted to spend his winnings in riotous living. It is with him a case of "luxury" to-day, despair and drink to-morrow. A general atmosphere of blackguardism seems ever to pervade the race-course. Here is a cutting from the daily press of August last:-- "BLACKGUARDISM AT THE ALEXANDRA PARK RACES.--Fourteen brutal assaults, committed on the Alexandra Park race-course on Saturday afternoon, have been reported to the police, the assaults in several cases having been accompanied by robbery. One of the gentlemen assaulted was a professional man well known in the neighbourhood. He was standing at a refreshment bar in the grand stand when he was half-killed by roughs. Another person who was assaulted was a member of the Jockey Club staff; but many frequenters of the course were heard to express pleasure at this, in the hope that it would lead to some better provision being made for the exclusion of well-known roughs from the rings and stands." I have seen more than one young man of my acquaintance stand in the felon's dock, and I know they were brought there by betting. I have heard the wail of wife and children in the court as the culprit was hurried from the dock to his cell. And what was left for him to do when he was released from prison? Who will employ a man with the stigma of "imprisonment for dishonesty" resting upon him? He sinks lower and lower, dragging his poor wife and has little children down with him in his degrading descent--down to abject misery.