The Law of the Land. least in courts of honor. It were perhaps an invidious distinction to say that the winner is paid for having his joy and hilarity, while the one who suffers the anguish must pay his debt of honor, so that the joy of the other may remain unabated. Debts of honor follow mankind through life. They begin early in life with " come seven, come eleven." Then later it is a penny ante with a five cent limit, and the limit gradually grows until there is no limit or it becomes only a question of the size of your pile. By and by the gauntlet is run of bucking the tiger in his den at faro, roulette and every other kind of a game that goes. Betting on elections, buying pools at horse races and policy shops and indulging in all kinds of lotteries follow. When these things out of which debts of honor grow become indigenous to the soil, everything goes. You play to win the cigars you smoke, the drinks you drink, and all the other luxuries, as well as many of the necessities of life you must have. You finally reach a stage where you will kill off minutes and money upon the color of the hair of the girl or horse that next passes within range of your sight. The education of the gentleman is, how ever, not complete until he takes a plunge into the society where all the great ones of his class live, move and have their being. He must learn, in order to be ultra, what a future is, what a margin is, or what fun there is in selling short, and other nice points of the great game. When the education of a gentleman is complete he ought to be a marvel of culture, and usually is if it has landed him on his uppers. If he does not find himself in that condition he does discover that he is very little further ahead of the game than after his first experiences with " come seven, come eleven." The puritanical may call all such beings as we have been talking about, gamblers. It is unbecoming, however, among gentlemen, as showing lack of culture and breeding, to call
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names, for all gamblers are gentlemen unless they are blacklegs. One cannot be a gentle man and play with a card up his sleeve, or with loaded die, or enter a horse with a record under an assumed name in a lowerclass race, or do any other trick of the trade, unless, per haps, the others in the game are all at the same tricks; then they are all gentlemen blacklegs together. Usually a blackleg is a blackleg when he is caught stealing. The offense consists in being caught. Among gentlemen such a one sometimes gets his reward. In one state of civilization he loses his caste, even if he has a title, if he is caught at bac carat. In another western civilization he loses more if the mark is not missed, which is a poor thing to bet upon its doing. It is curious that the law of the land is brutal in its language when applied to debts of honor and the transactions out of which they grow. This is rather remarkable in the face of the popular belief that lawyers and judges in their leisure moments do amuse themselves with games of chance played with pieces of pasteboards adorned with sym bolical hieroglyphics. Either the public is possessed of mistaken views as to the profes sion or the profession is broad enough to See the right and approve it, too, Condemn the wrong, and yet the wrong pursue.
One court, in speaking of debts of honor, declared the law of the land in relation thereto, saying that a band of robbers might plead a similar sense of honor. This sense of honor, when founded on a transgression of law and upheld in order that law may be prostrated, is a vice of the most dangerous character. A sense of honor may actuate even unlawful deeds, but it cannot long en dure such association without being seriously trampled and finally effaced. This is exceed ingly strong language to use about the affairs of gentlemen. But as the court of honor in which all debts of honor are liquidated is beyond the law, it makes no odds if the law does declare all gambling transactions con
