to be wrong. Here are you and I. We want
to have a game of billiards. It is uninteresting to play even billiards
for nothing; but we each have a little money, and choose to risk a small
sum. Our object is not gain, therefore we play for merely sixpenny
points. We both agree to risk that sum. If I lose, all right. If you
lose, all right. That's fair, isn't it?"

"No; it is undoubtedly equal, but not necessarily fair. Fair means
`free from blemish,' `pure,' in other words, right. Two thieves may
make a perfectly fair division of spoil; but the fairness of the
division does not make their conduct fair or right. Neither of them is
entitled to divide their gains at all. Their agreeing to do so does not
make it fair."

"Agreed, Tom, as regards thieves; but you and I are not thieves. We
propose to act with that which is our own. We mutually agree to run the
risk of loss, and to take our chance of gain. We have a right to do as
we choose with our own. Is not that fair?"

"You pour out so many fallacies and half truths, Dick, that it is not
easy to answer you right off."

"Morally and politically you are wrong. Politically a man is not
entitled to do what he chooses with his own. There are limitations.
For instance, a man owns a house. Abstractly, he is entitled to burn it
down if he chooses. But if his house abuts upon mine, he may not set it
on fire if he chooses, because in so doing he would set fire to my house
also, which is very much beyond his right. Then--"

"Oh, man, I understand all that," said Sharp quickly. "Of course a man
may put what he likes in his garden, but with such-like limitations as
that he shall not set up a limekiln to choke his neighbours, or a
piggery to breed disease; but gambling does nothing like that."

"Does it not?" exclaimed Blunt. "Does it not ruin hundreds of men,
turning them into sots and paupers, whereby the ruined gamblers become
unable to pay their fair share of taxation; and, in addition, lay on the
shoulders of respectable people the unfair burden of supporting them,
and perhaps their families?"

"But what if the gambler has no family?"

"There still remains his ruined self to be maintained."

"But suppose he is not ruined--that he manages, by gambling, to support
himself?"

"In that case he still remains guilty of two mean and contemptible acts.
On the one hand he produces nothing whatever to increase the wealth or
happiness of the world, and, on the