ung son leave to buy "a chance" for a gold
watch. Thoughtlessly,--it was just a dollar to the fair and an
amusement to the boy. And before twenty-four hours had passed, she
would have given anything in the world to recall her permission. For
at once the boy's mind became wholly absorbed in his "chance." The
fair went on, the drawing was long delayed; and day after day--hour by
hour, if he could--he went to inquire and to watch; and the mother saw
her child in a true gambling fever, and she obliged to let it run its
course. Mercifully, as she said, the watch fell to another. "If it
had come to George, I don't know what in the world I should have done."

"We play for sugarplums,"--we "toss up" for nuts; but each time the
evil seeds are planted. The mere habit of _talking_ of "chance," of
"luck," of "fate," as if you believed in them all, tends directly to
weaken your realizing trust in the Great Ruler of the world; who counts
his sparrows, and numbers the hairs of your head. Chance? If the
watchmaker could not control one smallest wheel or point in his watch;
if even a grain of dust got in and defied him; what think you he could
do with mainspring and hands? One unmanageable atom would stop the
whole.

To quote Dr. Skinner again,--one to whom I think it never occurred to
like anything but what God liked,--in his early life as a young man he
had seen much wild company; and so strong was their association with
evil, that to the end of his life he could never even hear the dice
fall without a shiver.

"Put it away, my dear," he would say of even the backgammon board. "I
don't like it--I don't like it!"

For games of chance, as a rule, gather round them a setting of sin and
sorrow which other games do not. I suppose men take in their practical
infidelity, and grow lawless. You do not mean to appeal to God in your
games of "chance,"--but if not to him, then to some other power
supposed to be outside his rule or beyond his notice: "chance," "luck,"
or the devil. And it does not much matter which word you use. Yet
"tired" Church members will play euchre and whist, and there are cards
in the table drawer in the parlour, and of course a dingier pack in the
kitchen, in many a so-called Christian house; though the family hide
them or apologize before people who are called "intense." The minister
comes in upon a card party in his parish, and all rise in deprecatory
confusion; and perhaps (ah I know it happened in