Among the hundreds of thousands of gamblers, you can count the few prosperous ones on your fingers. Whether it be stock-market gamblers, race track gamblers, card gamblers, or what-not, the universal law is that they all must lose in the end. Every once in a while you read of some famous once-rich gambler who has just died poor and forsaken, fortune gone. The few successful ones are successful only for a short time. And the chances of your boy being one of the successful ones is about equal to his chances of becoming the king of England. The odds are all against it. In playing against the dealer, or bookmaker, or "house," the percentage is large against him. If by chance he should win, there are two chances to one that the gambler will get it all back and more too, at the next sitting. People say, "I will try it once more, and I am sure to win this time, and if I do I will quit the game forever." But the forever never comes. If they win, they will soon come to an understanding with themselves that they will try it just once more, to win just a little more, then stop. If they lose, they soon agree with themselves that they will try it just once more to get back what they lost. In either case they are bound to get back to the gaming table, and the gamblers all know this. Hence, when the professional gambler sees a winner leave his place, he does not frown; he only smiles, because he knows that the winner will soon be back to drop his winnings plus a little more. And what are we to do with this common enemy of mankind? Are we to sit down and sigh, and say, "Well, people will gamble anyway, and if they are fools enough to throw away their money that way, let them do it"; or are we to bend our energies to suppress it? Are we to allow gambling houses to exist in our midst, thus inviting our young men to become victims? Are we to allow lotteries and petty gambling devices everywhere as we do now? Are our churches to encourage the vice at their fairs in order to make money to _redeem_ the world? No, we must stamp it out wherever we find it. _Wedding Bells_ Wedlock, indeed, hath oft compared been To public feasts, where meet a public rout, Where they that are without would fain go in, And they that are within would fain go out. _Sir John Davies._ Let us listen, for a moment, to the merry jingle of the wedding bells, as they echo through the corridors of the Hall of Time. What is a wedding, and a marriage, and why? What object was sought, in the beginning, when custom demanded a marriage ceremony before cohabitation? Why has that ancient custom followed man to every far corner of the globe, and why do all peoples resent any effort to destroy that custom? Why so many different forms of ceremony, what do they mean, and why do they differ so?