built up. We may rest assured that as long as intellectual man
exists the problem will be considered unsolved, and the question will
be agitated. Future generations will destroy what we establish, and will
fashion a something according to their advancement, and so on; for
if there be a term which, of all others, should be expunged from the
dictionaries of all human beings, it seems to be Lord Russell's word
FINALITY. Something NEW will always be wanted. 'Sensation' is the very
life of humanity; it is motion--the reverse of 'death'--which we all
abhor.

The gamester lives only for the 'sensation' of gaming. Menage tells us
of a gamester who declared that he had never seen any luminary above the
horizon but the moon. Saint Evremond, writing to the Count de Grammont,
says--'You play from morning to night, or rather from night to morning.
All the rays of the gamester's existence terminate in play; it is on
this centre that his very existence depends. He enjoys not an hour of
calm or serenity. During the day he longs for night, and during the
night he dreads the return of day.'

Being always pre-occupied, gamesters are subject to a ridiculous absence
of mind. Tacitus tells us that the Emperor Vitellius was so torpid that
he would have forgotten he was a prince unless people had reminded him
of it from time to time.(8) Many gamesters have forgotten that they were
husbands and fathers. During play some one said that the government were
about to levy a tax on bachelors. 'Then I shall be ruined!' exclaimed
one of the players absorbed in the game. 'Why, man, you have a wife and
five children,' said the speaker.

(8) Tanta torpedo invaserat animum Vitellii, ut si principem eum fuisse
non meminissent, ipse oblivisceretur. Hist., lib. iii.

This infatuation may be simply ridiculous; but it has also a horrible
aspect. A distracted wife has rushed to the gaming table, imploring her
husband, who had for two entire days been engaged at play, to return to
his home.

'Only let me stay one moment longer--only one moment. . . . . I shall
return perhaps the day after to-morrow,' he stammered out to the
wretched woman, who retired. Alas! he returned sooner than he had
promised. His wife was in bed, holding the last of her children to her
breast.

'Get up, madam,' said the ruined gambler, 'the bed on which you lie
belongs to us no longer!' . . .

When the gamester is fortunate, he enjoys his success elsewhere; to his
home he brings