Page:California Inter Pocula.djvu/700



Christians all set their faces against games of chance. The Talmud censures them. No Hindoo gambler was allowed to testify in courts. The duke of Clarence in 1469 prohibited gambling hi his household except at the " xii dayes in Christmasse."

Silly Charles VI. of France played with painted cards; some say they were first made for his use in 1392, though of this there is no proof; since which time the mischief has often been played with them, though this was not the fault of the cards.

During the reign of Henry VII. card-playing was very generally in vogue ; so much so that it was prohibited by law. Apprentices the edict especially regarded, forbidding them to play with cards except during the Christmas holidays, and in their master's houses.

Pecullar as was the character of some of the waofers in California, there were none here so indecent or irreverent as were exposed by the law courts of England fifty years ago—instance the case of Joanna Southcote, an unmarried woman, upon whose delivery of a male child, a new Messiah, within certain days was bet £200 to £100; a wager that Napoleon would be removed from St Helena within a certain time, a wager upon the sex of a femininelooking man, upon a decree of a court, upon the death of one's father, and the like.

The merchant does not grow rich, as moralists sometimes aver, by the debauched lives of the young, nor the husbandman by the scarcity and consequent dearness of his grain, nor the architect by the decay of buildings. It is true that doctors live by the diseases of mankind, and priests by the principle of evil, and lawyers by disputes. Good springs from evil, and life from death. As Montague says, " Ce que considerant, il m'est venu en fantasie, comme nature ne se desment point en cela de sa general polici, car les physiciens tiennent que la naissance, nourissement, et augmentation de chacque chose est I'alteration et corruption d'une aultre."