They are on a holiday in the free country of peradventure. They do
not know at this moment whether the next turn of Fortune's reel will
bring up a perch or a pickerel, a sunfish or a black bass. It may
be a hideous catfish or a squirming eel, or it may be a lake-trout,
the grand prize in the Lake George lottery. There they sit, those
gray-haired lads, full of hope, yet equally prepared for
resignation; taking no thought for the morrow, and ready to make the
best of to-day; harmless and happy players at the best of all games
of chance.
"In other words," I hear some severe and sour-complexioned reader
say, "in plain language, they are a pair of old gamblers."
Yes, if it pleases you to call honest men by a bad name. But they
risk nothing that is not their own; and if they lose, they are not
impoverished. They desire nothing that belongs to other men; and if
they win, no one is robbed. If all gambling were like that, it
would be difficult to see the harm in it. Indeed, a daring moralist
might even assert, and prove by argument, that so innocent a delight
in the taking of chances is an aid to virtue.
Do you remember Martin Luther's reasoning on the subject of
"excellent large pike"? He maintains that God would never have
created them so good to the taste, if He had not meant them to be
eaten.
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