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noun
Gamble  n.  An act of gambling; a transaction or proceeding involving gambling; hence, anything involving similar risk or uncertainty. (Colloq.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Gamble" Quotes from Famous Books



... lad," replied his grandfather, gently disengaging himself. "I thought perhaps your tastes may have needed more money. You do not gamble, Antoine; you are never out late, for I can hear you come in, and the sound of your violin penetrates to my room, so that I know when you are at home. I don't expect you to be always with me; I would not have it so; but when you ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer

... tell you how much this windfall means to me now." Nor did I with deep and dark design keep him along on the ragged edge. He kept himself there. How could I build up such a man with his hundred ways of wasting money, including throwing it away on his own opinions of stocks—for he would gamble on his own account in the bucket-shops, though I had shown him that the Wall Street game is played always with marked cards, and that the only hope of winning is to get the confidence of the card-markers, unless you are big enough ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips

... drink with any man in town. But I have never been drunk, Stephen, you understand that. Then I like all kinds of gaiety, and like to spend all my time dancing and laughing, and what your friend Talbot calls 'fooling.' And I gamble," Katrine paused a second before she said the decisive words, and then went on rapidly, "oh, Stephen, you don't know, I haven't told you, but I love the tables. I can sit up all night and play with the boys; I love excitement, I love the winning and raking ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross

... was occupied with sport, such nocturnal sittings would be impossible—and she comforted herself by thinking that they would not be consistent with any serious business in the city such as Elinor feared. The one danger must push away the other. He could not gamble at night in that way, and gamble in the other among the stockbrokers. They were both ruinous, no doubt, but they could not both be carried on at the same time—or so, at least, this innocent woman thought. There was enough to be anxious and alarmed ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant

... I have between five and six hundred thousand dollars, and we must all live on the income of that. And you must give your word of honor never to gamble in stocks again. ...
— Her Own Way - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch

... rumour from men making long trips across the country. He had gone to work for a cattle outfit, taking a dollar a day and doing an ordinary cowboy's work. Even before he was twenty-one, men called him Red Reckless. He had learned to gamble, and to gamble for big stakes. He played poker; he took his chance with the "bank"; but he loved the dice. They were quicker; a man could "make or break" at one throw. It was his way to hazard everything on a throw, to laugh if he won, ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory

... financial crisis which resulted in business failures, unemployment and the indictment of prominent figures in the commercial world; it was precipitated by a gamble in copper stocks. An unsuccessful attempt to corner the stock of a copper company led to the examination of the Mercantile National Bank of New York, with which the speculators had intimate connections. Meanwhile the president of the bank and all the ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley

... and Company undertook to finance the raid on National Woolens it was already deep in the Great Lakes gamble. James was new to Wall Street's green table; and he liked the sensations and felt that his swindle on other gamblers and the public—he did not call it by that homely name, though he knew others would if they found him out—was moving smoothly. Still very, very deep down his self-confidence ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips

... to-day, are disturbed and alarmed by the point of view and the behavior of people about us—especially the younger generation. Girls of good family are seen on all sides, who smoke and gamble and drink and paint their faces and laugh with scorn at the traditions and conventions which their grand-parents regarded with almost sacred reverence. The young men are worse, if anything, and as for the married people of the new era, what they are doing to the sanctity of the home and the ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)

... the laborious and careful cultivation was and is Dutch in its neatness. Some millets were grown in the autumn and the sandhills yielded melons. The people have now learned that it is worth while to gamble with a spring crop of gram, and this has led to an enormous extension of the cultivated area. But even now in Mianwali this is a comparatively small fraction of the total area. There is a small amount of irrigation ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie

... pursuit of loftier ideals in India. He is intensely disappointed and disgusted at finding himself, on joining his regiment, among men who have very slight education and wild manners, whose talk is coarse, who gamble, fight duels, dislike the country, and care nothing for the people. The aims and methods of the Government itself appear to him eminently unsatisfactory, being chiefly directed towards such grovelling business as revenue collection, superficial order, and public works, ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... 'You don't gamble, you're not even very hard up.... It's a woman, of course,' said Lord Selsey, 'and you want to marry, I suppose, or you wouldn't come to me about it.... ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson

... to gamble for cash, I had reason while on a job for sticking to a known amount of chips. She stood there while I got a thousand dollars worth of ten-buck markers, looking at me with some kind of plea in her eyes. This again was not in the pattern. Most hustlers ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett

... should prefer to bestow upon them rich abbeys and priories, rather than leave these to the monks in their cloisters—monks who, as the monarch used to say, "were good for nothing but to eat and drink, to frequent taverns and gamble, to twist cords for the cross-bow, set traps for ferrets and rabbits, and train linnets to whistle"—men whose idleness and other vices were so notorious that the expressions, "He is as idle as a priest or monk," and "Avaricious and lewd ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... way it has been—growing worse and worse since Nisikoos died," she said. "In there the white men who come down from the north, drink, and gamble, and quarrel. They are always quarrelling. This room is ours—Nisikoos' and mine." She touched with her hand a door near which they were standing. Then she pointed to another. There were half a dozen doors up and down the hall. ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood

... arrived at the reservation. On all sides were the lights among the camps, where the hop-pickers were making merry. More than one group hailed him as he passed, demanding to know if he had come out from town to dance, to gamble, or to see a maid. But he had replied to each in kind and pressed on to his father's house. Kitsap the elder greeted his son ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various

... Uneconomic character of gambling. This prevalence of chance sometimes tempts men to say that business is "a gamble." But a distinction in principle must be made between gambling and legitimate risk-taking. The chances enumerated above are not sought, but avoided as far as possible; yet they must be borne by some one if productive enterprise is to continue, and the burden must ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter

... Fortunately, in this instance, his want of success in literature stimulated the strong mind of his son to seek occupation of more certain profit; and those who feel interest in the whereabouts of celebrated men, may think upon the days when William Hogarth wrought in silver, as the apprentice of Ellis Gamble, in Cranbourne Street, and speculate upon the change of circumstances, wrought by his own exertions, when, as a great painter, in after time, he occupied the house, now known as the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... any international gathering. It is now felt as never before that behind political leaders, rulers, princes, statesmen, the people are advancing and soon will be able to push aside those who make of the relations of peoples a game and a gamble, a struggle for power, which, when achieved, dissolves into the nothingness ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl

... the breakfast for which he never had any desire. At noon the two would have luncheon with more drinks. In the afternoon they would retire to the poolrooms and play the races, and, when the races were over, they would then visit the faro banks and gamble until midnight or later. Later on they would proceed to another resort on Louisiana Street where Dodge really lived. Here his day may be said to have begun and here he spent most of his money, frequently paying out as much as fifty dollars a night for wine and invariably ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne

... rows of trees, under that wall, where lovers walk, and ragged, handsome urchins play the exciting game of fives, or sit in the dirt, gambling with cards for the Sorrento currency. I do not know what sin it may be to gamble for a bit of printed paper which has the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... it. He also gave me fortune; for out of that money I have made myself rich at the gaming-table. And finally, a remark which he made to me has remained with me to this day, and has at last conquered me; and in conquering has saved the remnant of my morals: I shall gamble no more. Now I have no idea who that man was, but I want him found, and I want him to have this money, to give away, throw away, or keep, as he pleases. It is merely my way of testifying my gratitude to him. If I could stay, I would find him myself; but no matter, he will be found. This ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... "And I'll gamble that's a spot higher than he stacks up in the cow game," Pink observed with the pessimism which matrimony had given him. "You mind him asking about bad horses, last night? That Lizzie-boy never saw a bad horse; they don't grow 'em where he come from. What they don't ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower

... York," who died at Pisa in 1803, and "Henry De Butts, a citizen of Baltimore, N. America," who died at Sarzana; with "James M. Knight, Esq., Captain of Marines, Citizen of the United States of America," who died at Leghorn in 1802; and "Thomas Gamble, Late Captain in the Navy of the United States of America," who died at Pisa in 1818; and doubtless there were other Americans whose tombs I did not see. The memorials of the English were likewise here, whether they died at Leghorn or not; ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells

... rejoice in the days of their youth. They gamble, yacht, race, enjoy prize-fights and cock-fights, the one openly, the other in secret; they establish luxurious clubs; they break themselves over horse-flesh and other things, and they are instant in a quarrel. At twenty they are experienced in business, embark in vast enterprises, ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling

... they celebrate a novena in his house at night, where the relatives (and sometimes those who are not relatives) assemble. After praying, it is not seldom that they sit down to gamble. On the last day there is a great banquet, and sometimes a dance. These mortuary feasts are practiced even yet, in all their purity, in the mountains, as ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin

... living for others; of having horses merely to exhibit them; of doing all things for the sake of what may be said of them; of wasting my substance to keep fools from crying out: 'Dear, dear! Paul is still driving the same carriage. What has he done with his fortune? Does he squander it? Does he gamble at the Bourse? No, he's a millionaire. Madame such a one is mad about him. He sent to England for a harness which is certainly the handsomest in all Paris. The four-horse equipages of Messieurs de Marsay and de ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac

... England, and Grayson gave up. He went to Richmond, and came back with money enough to pay off his notes, and I think it took nearly all he had. Still, he played poker steadily now—for poker had been resumed when it was no longer possible to gamble in lots—he drank a good deal, and he began just at this time to take a singular interest in our volunteer police guard. He had always been on hand when there was trouble, and I sha'n't soon forget him the day Senator Mahone spoke, when we were punching ...
— 'Hell fer Sartain' and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.

... retorted the surveyor, "that when the Company has taken enough money from the settlers, whom they have induced to stake everything they have on the gamble by letting them think it is a sure thing, they will use a part of it to give the people what they think they are ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright

... ironically. "I very much doubt it. Also what right had you to gamble with your wife's happiness? You knew the risk you ran. You knew the—er, the rule regarding the rents. Job ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore

... to leave the society and comfort to which their bread-winner's official position has raised them, and he, held by his affection, is ready to sacrifice all convictions and principle to remain in power. To this man politics becomes a desperate gamble, and the country's interests can go to the dogs so long as he ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin

... to. A gal as attractive, vivacious, and clever as you are, would have to marry—in self-defense, if for no other reason. Marriage need not interfere. It might help. With that hazard and gamble out of the way, it would allow you to expand your talents in planning, executing, and managing ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney

... about it, and if you both land in the lock-up, all the better. If the rascal insists on coming back to Dodge, start after night, get lost, and land somewhere farther down the river. Keep him away from this town for a week, and I'll gamble that you boss a herd for old ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams

... material is consciously differentiated, the spiritual is there in a fiery fusion with all other forces. If it is absent, the body unsupported may take to its heels or will yield. It has played its only card, and has not eternity to fling upon the table in a last gamble for victory. ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell

... later, and again there were days when he went off in his boat in the morning and did not return until the last stragglers on the terrace of the hotel were ready to go to bed. He was irregular even in playing, which was after all his chief pastime. Possibly he knew of reasons why it should be good to gamble on one day and not upon another. Then he had his fits of amateur seamanship, when he would insist upon taking the tiller from Ruggiero's hand. The latter, on such occasions, remained perched upon the stern in case of an emergency. San Miniato ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford

... summer of 1791 is nothing short of a psychological marvel. They regarded the Revolution as a jest, and the flight to the Rhine as a picnic. These beggared aristocrats, male and female, would throw their money away by day among the wondering natives, and gamble among themselves at night. If they ever thought of the future it was only as the patricians in Pompey's camp thought; who had no time to prepare for a campaign against Caesar, because they were absorbed in distributing offices among themselves, ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams

... of the village now collected and began to gamble. The most common game was one in which one of the company was banker, and played against all the rest. He had a piece of bone, about the size of a large bean, and having agreed with any individual as to the value of the stake, would pass the bone from one hand ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks

... slave had to have a whipping, he was taken to a whipping post in Jonesville. A bull-whip was used for the punishment and it brought the blood from the bare back of the man or woman being whipped. One day a grown slave was given 150 lashes with the bull-whip, for teaching the young boys to gamble. He saw this punishment administered. He had climbed a tree where he could get a better view. He said that several slaves were being whipped that day for various things, and there were several men ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... arrow or bullet should ever reach the Bat. He lost the contents of his lodge at the game of the plum-stones—all the robes that Seet-se-be-a had fleshed and softened, but more often his squaw had to bring a pack-pony down to the gamble and pile it high with his winnings. He was much looked up to in the warrior class of the Red Lodges, which contained the tried-out braves of the Cheyenne tribe; moreover old men—wise ones—men who stood for all there was in the Chis-chis-chash, talked to him occasionally out of their ...
— The Way of an Indian • Frederic Remington

... he was bent on breaking up the gang and putting me in jail. But I remembered how Walpole had said that every man had his price. I ascertained Morley's. It was ease and comfort and plenty of money to gamble with." ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume

... although we drove him to the farthest limit of the shade trees. We were in two minds whether or not it mattered if he listened, and made the usual two-minds hash of it. Finally we put it to a vote, letting Brown have a voice with the rest of us. He was in favor of anything that offered prospect of a gamble; and we remembered the letter in code we had given the missionary to mail to Monty. We had told him in that that we should make tracks for Elgon, and we all voted ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... I were you," Forrest answered. "It is overrun just now with the wrong sort of people. There is nothing to do but gamble, which doesn't interest me particularly; or dress in a ridiculous costume and paddle about in a few feet of water, which appeals ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... 'Lord' Bill. Yes, you are right, Lablache does not look very amiable. I think this would be a good opportunity to suggest a little gamble in ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... angry at being rebuked by an ignorant ruffianly gaucho, who like most of his kind would tell lies, gamble, cheat, fight, steal, and do other naughty things without a qualm. Besides, it struck me as funny to hear the golden plover, which I wanted for the table, called "God's little birds," just as if they were wrens or swallows or humming- birds, or the ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson

... the San Pedro, whose adobe buildings were all pitted with bullet-marks from successive sieges; and at these lonely outposts the arrival of the east or west bound mail was always more or less of a gamble. ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt

... has begun. Privates Ogg and Hogg are in charge of Number Thirteen target. They are beguiling the tedium of their task by a friendly gamble with the markers on Number Fourteen—Privates Cosh and Tosh. The rules of the game are simplicity itself. After each detail has fired, the target with the higher score receives the sum of one penny from its opponents. At the present moment, after ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay

... a bob per prisoner and the Militia ninepence, not to mention side-bets which are what really keep the men keen. It isn't supposed to be done by the Volunteers, but they gamble worse than anyone. Why, the very kids do it when they go to First Camp ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling

... continued to live and go and come, like a bachelor. If the marriage ever occurred, it was kept, for some reason, very much under the rose. Be this as it may, Percy was always provided with money from some source. He used to gamble sometimes, but was not an habitual gamester. Philip said he was too much of a sybarite and ladies' man to be wedded ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch

... under the new influences began to drink and gamble. With his companions on Saturday and Sunday he would ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan

... to work for me. I'll pay you well, give you a room here, furnish everything down to guns, and the finest horse you ever saw in your life. Your job won't be safe and healthy, sometimes, but it'll be a man's job—don't mistake me! You can gamble on having things to do outdoors. Now, what ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... and especially in the latter Middle, Ages it was otherwise. The great religious houses not only tended to accumulate wealth and to perpetuate it in the same hands (they could not gamble it away nor disperse it in luxury; they could hardly waste it by mismanagement), but they were also ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc

... camp-fire in the market-place gather still more of the Barons' troops, and eat and drink deep, and bellow forth roystering drinking songs, and gamble and quarrel as the evening grows and deepens into night. The firelight sheds quaint shadows on their piled-up arms and on their uncouth forms. The children of the town steal round to watch them, wondering; and ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome

... scope. That same kindly eye, one glance of which we all loved so much to catch in after-life, beamed only the more warmly as the creatures frisked in greater confidence around him. It was to me an omen for good. He who could enjoy thus the innocent gamble of these guinea-pigs could not fail to be accessible for good when occasion required. It was the first flush of that largeness of heart which afterwards appeared in all I ever heard him say or ...
— Heads and Tales • Various

... their good. And when I have made up my mind that a thing is right to do, you know that my nature is of iron. No child of mine shall marry a lazy vagabond who can do nothing but lie in a hammock and bet and gamble and make love. And a half-breed! Mother of God! Now go to San Francisco, and send for more money when this ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton

... "A gamble with death in the Strand—seeing that the stake is precisely the same—should be quite as enthralling as a hairbreadth 'scape on the plains of Texas, even though the gambler wears a top-hat instead of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152. January 17, 1917 • Various

... them was another village whose people were called Mooswa, or Moose people, and Nanahboozhoo soon found out that, while the inhabitants of these two villages were antagonistic to each other, they frequently met to gamble, and that the Moose people were nearly always successful and had won from the Elk people nearly everything they possessed. The latter were very much humiliated at Nanahboozhoo's finding them in such a wretched condition, but they told ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young

... recesses of the porches, all day long, knots of men of the lowest classes, unemployed and listless, lie basking in the sun like lizards; and unregarded children,—every heavy glance of their young eyes full of desperation and stony depravity, and their throats hoarse with cursing,—gamble, and fight, and snarl, and sleep, hour after hour, clashing their bruised centesimi upon the marble ledges of the church porch. And the images of Christ and His angels look ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... American offensive was ready to be launched the French were eager to gamble, first, that our dough-boys could not take the "untakable," and second, that if by any miraculous procedure they succeeded in breaking the German line, they could not hold what they had taken. This ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West

... should build palaces we never finished, make billiard-rooms under ponds, run imbecile walls round irrational estates, scorch about the world in motor-cars, devise flying-machines, play golf and a dozen such foolish games of ball, crowd into chattering dinner parties, gamble and make our lives one vast, dismal spectacle of witless waste! So it struck me then, and for a time I could think of no other interpretation. This was Life! It came to me like a revelation, a revelation at once incredible and indisputable of the ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells

... secrecies and sensations would be impossible here; but one fashionable fallacy about it may be exploded with advantage. An extraordinary notion still exists that the New Witness denounced Ministers for gambling on the Stock Exchange. It might be improper for Ministers to gamble; but gambling was certainly not a misdemeanor that would have hardened with any special horror so hearty an Anti-Puritan as the man of whom I write. The Marconi case did not raise the difficult ethics of gambling, but the perfectly plain ethics of secret ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton

... been a gigantic gamble, my friend," he said, at the last. "A gigantic and desperate gamble to get the money that should be yours. You can end it by the mere trouble of climbing over that wall yonder and taking the Clamart tram back to Paris. As ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman

... was particularly enlightening, but it at least squelched any notion the Grass might be dying of itself. I did not expect any great results from the scientists' expedition, but I felt it worth a gamble. In the meantime I dismissed the lost continent from my mind and turned to ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... one debt which my wife ever paid, but one promise she ever kept. It was that made at the gaming-table. I offered, as soon as my father, realizing the hopelessness of the situation, had gone tottering from the room, to gamble ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green

... Agatha simply, "that was only part. It did not seem right that Gregory should go against Wyllard's wishes, and gamble the Range away on ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss

... Hon. Judge Neilson, his friend, wrote to Dr. Ryerson for particulars of Mr. Bidwell's early life, with a view to publish it in a memorial volume. This information Dr. Ryerson obtained from Sir W. B. Richards, Clarke Gamble, Esq., Q.C., and Rev. Dr. Givens, and, with his own, embodied it in a communication to Judge Neilson. In a letter to Dr. Ryerson, dated 30th April, 1873, the late ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... that is called Fortune. Most men gamble with her, and gain all, and lose all, as her wheel rolls. But do thou leave as unlawful these winnings, and deal with Cause and Effect, the chancellors of God. In the Will work and acquire, and thou hast chained the wheel ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... you must go, for it may be the one great chance of your life. And think how proud it will make us all when we hear of you in the company of Charles's grand friends. But you will promise me not to gamble, Roddy? You heard to-night of the dreadful things which come ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... most of the plantations up the country, and have obtained the finest site on the hill behind the town for their stately tombs. Every afternoon their carriages roll out into the country, conveying them to their substantial bungalows to smoke and gamble. They have fabulous riches in diamonds, pearls, sapphires, rubies, and emeralds. They love Malacca, and take a pride in beautifying it. They have fashioned their dwellings upon the model of those in Canton, but whereas ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)

... a way of losing as any other," said Archie. "Let's do it for our first gamble, anyway. Simpson, as our host, shall put the money on. I, as his oldest friend, shall watch him to see that he does it. What's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various

... My father used to gamble. All the young men of the country used to gather at my father's house-and they used to ...
— The King of the Dark Chamber • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)

... bank-balance before being allowed to enter the baccarat rooms, Aristide paid his two francs and made a bee line for the tables. I am afraid Aristide was a gambler. He was never so happy as when taking chances; his whole life was a gamble, with Providence holding the bank. Before the night was over he had converted his two louis into fifty. The next day they became five hundred. By the end of a week his garments were wadded with bank notes whose value amounted to a sum ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke

... before I went there. They said he had been a very handsome man; but he was red and bloated when I knew him. He had a dissipated circle of acquaintances, who used to meet at his house in Savannah, and gamble with cards till late into the night; and the liquor they drank often made them very boisterous and quarrelsome. Mrs. Fitzgerald never made any remark, in my presence, about these doings; but I am sure they troubled her, ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child

... from my pocket and threw it down on the red remarking, "I'll lose that to pay for my suppers." Unhappily I won, and, laughing, turned to the dealer and said: "Here, give me my money. I am done," and a moment later went out with my friend, fully determined never more to gamble. But, being in there the next night, I, of course, ventured again. Again I was so unfortunate as to win, and within a short time staked and lost or won nightly. But something worse than gambling was ahead of me, just at the ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell

... Florence (from what I hear of the hum of it at a distance) is worse than any coterie-society in the world. A coterie, if I understand the thing, is informed by a unity of sentiment, or faith, or prejudice; but this society here is not informed at all. People come together to gamble or dance, and if there's an end, why so much the better; but there's not an end in most cases, by any manner of means, and against every sort of innocence. Mind, I imply nothing about Mr. Lever, who lives irreproachably with his wife and family, rides out with his children in a troop of horses ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon

... stone. [He shakes it with all his might, then makes signs.] What do we care? Come, let's have a game. [He starts to gamble as hard as ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka

... very early next morning and proceeded to the Audience Hall to worship the God of Wealth. We all accompanied her and took part in the ceremony. During the next few days we did nothing but gamble and scramble for Her Majesty's winnings. This was all very nice in its way, until one day one of the Court ladies began to cry, and accused me of stepping on her toes in the scramble. This made Her Majesty angry and she ordered the offender to go ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling

... some Burmese, and all the pastime of their lives seemed to go on there, prayers, feeding, gambling and theatricals, at the same or at different times without hurry. We patronised the gambling corner—gave the principal high priest who did the honours of the place to us five rupees to gamble with for us—he was a fine big man with a potent expression—he lost and won a good deal, then lost the lot and two or three more rupees, and went on playing with his own money. It was delightful to see the hearty way these gamblers laughed when they lost, and chuckled when they won: I got a respect ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... Flat roofs were great institutions they decided as they crawled cautiously towards the other side. This roof was of hard, sun-baked adobe, over two feet thick, and they did not care if their friends shot up on a gamble. ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford

... outlaws, who, despising their allies, believed and proved that with his rifle one American could account for a dozen Nicaraguans, Walker was the one man who did not boast or drink or gamble, who did not even swear, who never looked at a woman, and who, in money matters, was scrupulously honest and unself-seeking. In a fight, his followers knew that for them he would risk being shot just as unconcernedly as to maintain his ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis

... I have a ranch down there; I have my water record. I have gone on working the ranch, making improvements from year to year, and every dollar I could scrape up I put into more land. I wasn't speculating. I can gamble with any man when I have to; but this wasn't gambling. There was the land, and there was the water. The increase of value was merely a question of time. Others bought as I bought. We put our money and our years of work into lands ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm

... is going to go slow. The gamble is too big to risk any slip. He doesn't want to get in bad with the law. There won't be any strong-arm stuff ... not until he recalls ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak

... skilled men and faced with higher prices for fertilizers and feeding-stuffs, was expected to grow more food without having any certainty that he would be able to dispose of it at a remunerative price. Farming is always a bit of a gamble, but in present conditions it beats the Stock Exchange hollow. Some of the proposals which Mr. SCOTT outlined to improve the situation would have been denounced as revolutionary three years ago, and were a little too drastic even now for Mr. PROTHERO. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 14, 1917 • Various

... Ah! in 1787, I predict that all was lost, from the day when I beheld the Duc de Rohan, Prince de Leon, Duc de Chabot, Duc de Montbazon, Marquis de Sonbise, Vicomte de Thouars, peer of France, go to Longchamps in a tapecu! That has borne its fruits. In this century, men attend to business, they gamble on 'Change, they win money, they are stingy. People take care of their surfaces and varnish them; every one is dressed as though just out of a band-box, washed, soaped, scraped, shaved, combed, waked, smoothed, rubbed, brushed, cleaned on the outside, irreproachable, polished ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... with one on. Hector Hall he's always got a couple of 'em on him, and Matt mostly has one in sight. You can gamble on it he's got an automatic in his pocket when he don't strap it on ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden

... Nature's favourite haunts, from the numbers of people who come here to worship her, especially on Bank Holidays. Those are her high festivals, when her adorers troop down, and build booths and whirligigs and circuses in her honour, and gamble, and ride donkeys, and shy sticks at cocoanuts before her. Also they partake of sandwiches and many other appropriate offerings at the shrine, and pour libations of bottled ale, and nectar, and zoedone, and brandy, and soda-water, and ginger-beer. They always leave the corks ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang

... easy that this person's scared, it's plain he's a killer jest the same. It's frequent that a-way. I'm never much afraid of one of your cold game gents like Cherokee Hall; you can gamble the limit they'll never put a six-shooter in play till it's shorely come their turn. But timid, feverish, locoed people, whose jedgment is bad an' who's prone to feel themse'fs in peril; they're the kind who kills. For myse'f ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis

... only one real vice, that I could see. He would gamble. Stud poker was his favourite; and I never saw a Britisher yet who could play poker. I used to head him off, when I could, and he was always grateful, but ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White

... gamble in Exchange Alley, by pretending to buy and sell the public funds, but in reality only betting that they will be at a certain price, at a particular time; possessing neither the stock pretended to be sold, nor money sufficient to make good the ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.

... may be against the quick lunch method of divorce, but you can gamble on it that the business men heartily approve; and these same women and preachers will find their larders and contribution boxes but scantily filled if the odorous money of the ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr

... awful gamble. But suppose you succeed. Suppose you win everything and more than you are now contending for. Suppose at forty you are nominated for Congress from this district, do you think I'd ask you then to be my wife? Not if I had failed ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris

... perfect movement of the machinery requires only the presence in Congress of dominant good sense. Congress is easily denounced, but no one has found a substitute for it, and it is fairly representative of the country. Congress will never gamble away the inheritance of the people. It will probably, in spite of all shortcomings, have its average of ability and utility kept up. Congress may go wrong, but will not betray. Our outlying possessions must be Territories until they are Americanized, and we take it Americans know ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... Deaconess Home, and the branch in New Orleans, there is the Elizabeth Gamble House in Cincinnati, of which Miss Thoburn is superintendent; the Home in New York city, instituted by the Board of the Church Extension and Missionary Society, under the superintendence of Miss Layton; the home in Detroit, under the auspices of the Home Missionary Society; and homes under ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft

... said the padron. "We brawl and gamble and seduce women, and we sing and we dance, and then we repent and the priest fixes it up with God. In America ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos

... he added, "that your friend Colonel Pendleton has dropped a good deal of money over in Europe. Somebody told me that he actually was reduced to take a steerage passage home. It looks as if he might gamble—it's an old Californian complaint." As Paul, who had become suddenly grave again, did not speak, Mrs. Woods reminded them that she had always doubted the colonel's moral principles. Old as he was, he had never got over that freedom of life and ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte

... his friend's face. "Jack," he said, with a look and tone of earnestness quite unusual to him, "we must not think of that. Whatever straits we are reduced to, we must not gamble—I ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne

... till Silver was able to make the trip, for he wouldn't leave him behind. No, he couldn't go just yet—he'd have to stay with the deal another month. He wouldn't stay a day longer than he had to, thought you could gamble ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower

... very nasty. But I suppose a man does gamble when he loses so much money that he has to ask his father to pay ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... exclaimed excitedly, "there's a feller pushin' his plug as tho' them Injuns was on his heels. Say, it's Seth o' White River Farm, and by the gait he's travelin', I'd gamble, Nevil, you don't cut that wood to-morrow. ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum

... cried his uncle, darting in front of the chair and its restless occupant, "don't say that again. It's enough to make a man go to the bad, to lose hope. What have you been doing lately? Do you gamble?" ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney

... individuals had come from different quarters, either to witness the proceedings, or to swap their horses, their saddles, their bowie knife, or anything; for it is while law is exercising its functions that a Texian is most anxious to swap, to cheat, to gamble, and to pick pockets and quarrel under its nose, just to shew his independence ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat

... happened. I should have risked the love of my husband and the happiness of your sweetheart without a qualm. And who knows? It might have been worth it. An hour from now I shall be sure it wasn't; I shall be sure it was all blind, wicked folly. But now I am a little sorry. I wanted to gamble with fate. I wanted us to stake our two lives recklessly upon a kiss—and see what happened. And you couldn't. It wasn't a moment of beauty and terror to you. You didn't want to challenge fate. You just wanted to ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell

... word came from him. Within a few days the natives began again to show the spirit of resistance and were brought to courtesy by a show of force. Then another difficulty arose. All but eight of the crew joined with the English prisoners in seizing the officers, and put Lieutenant Gamble, the commander, with four loyal seamen, adrift in a small boat, while the mutineers went to sea in one of ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... there were always a respectable number, discovered that he esteemed them as they were aggressive and determined. He explained to Yancy that too great certainty detracted from the charm of living, for, after all, life was a game—a gamble—he desired to be reminded of this. Yet he was held in great respect for his wisdom and learning, which was no more questioned that ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester

... so I told her to speak what was in her mind. The substance was that Mr. Framtree had lasted much longer than most, therefore he must be a very great artist with the cards. Many men had come with fortunes to The Pleiad, and most of them were ready to gamble with her lord, who invariably got their money in the end. It was not only the money, but he had a vast pride in his mastery, and in the house he had built. It was not possible for him to continue ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort

... gamble on anything really said Procurio returning to the hot water pipes though of course I know a lot more than most peaple about ...
— The Young Visiters or, Mr. Salteena's Plan • Daisy Ashford

... There was a paper sent to me this morning, called 'An Address from the Protestants of Ireland to their Protestant Brethren of Great Britain.' It is dated "5, Dawson Street," and is signed by "John Trant Hamilton, T.A. Lefroy, and R.W. Gamble." The paper is written in a fair and mild, and I would even say,—for persons who have these opinions,—in a kindly and just spirit. But they have been alarmed, and I would wish, if I can, to offer them consolation. They say ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... me, woman, How the God in heaven above Starts the fires of hell a-burning From a spark of human love; Why He ever made a woman Who could play a fickle part; Why He ever made a fellow With his soul tied to his heart; Why He made life just a gamble— I can't talk the way I feel— In the game that I've been playing, You know this ain't no square deal! I will go away and leave you, But 'twould kind o' ease the pain If you'd only tell me, Nancy— If ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker

... to work for him I advised steam but he goes ahead, and look what's happened—broke down and you can gamble he won't start up again." Lannigan added confidently as though he spoke from personal knowledge—"Them stockholders ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart

... whole party slept as much as was possible, and then endeavoured to sleep more than was possible, under the shelter afforded by the spreading branches of the trees. Part of the time was fair, with occasional gleams of sunshine, when the men turned out to eat and smoke and gamble round the fires; and the two friends sauntered down to a sheltered place on the shore, sunned themselves in a warm nook among the rocks, while they gazed ruefully at the foaming billows, told endless stories of what they had done ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne

... enjoying it," put in the Comte de Born. "No one wears his clothes with a finer air, nor drives a tandem with a better grace. It is Maxime's gift; he can gamble, eat, and drink more gracefully than any man in the world. He is a judge of horses, hats, and pictures. All the women lose their heads over him. He always spends something like a hundred thousand francs a year, and no creature can discover that he has an acre of land ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac

... everywhere in private hands and run for profit. In the case of shipping they are run for profit on such antiquated lines that freights vary from day to day and from hour to hour. It makes the business of food supply a gamble. And it ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells

... 'futures' in farming. are just about as certain as in Wall Street. There's a mighty gamble to this farm-game." ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune

... to gamble occasionally." (God! What banal talk!) "Gambling with life, however, is ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... The Riviera has its gambling place of world-wide fame with no opprobrium or responsibility attaching to the French Government. The extra-territoriality does not extend to criminals. The inhabitants of the neighboring French towns are not demoralized by the opportunity to gamble. French army officers are protected from corruption. It is presumed that the rest of the world, which can afford a trip to the principality, will be able to take care of ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons

... check. We've got our hands full for a few hours getting set, so I just asked my friends to keep an eye on things. Always did say that a man who's going to gamble is smart to ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse

... of noblesse oblige is more important than the positive. A gentleman is under more restraints than a non-gentleman. In the eighteenth century he patronized cockfights and prize fights, and he could get drunk, gamble, tell falsehoods, and deceive women without losing caste. He now finds that noblesse oblige forbids all these things, and that it puts him under disabilities in ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... that I could not be true either to Phyllis or Gretchen, since I did not know positively which I loved. I knew that I loved one. So much was gained. I wanted to throw up a coin, heads for Phyllis, tails for Gretchen, but I couldn't bring myself to gamble on the matter. I threw a stick at his squirrelship, and he scurried into the hole in the crotch of the tree. A moment later he peered at me, and, seeing that nothing was going to follow the stick, crept out on the limb again, his tail ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath

... of the house into a club it became notorious for the high play which went on under the shadow of the palm-tree. Walpole, for example, tells the story of a gamble between an Irish gamester named O'Birne and a young midshipman named Harvey who had just fallen heir to a large estate by his brother's death. The stake was for one hundred thousand pounds, and when O'Birne won he said, "You can never pay me." But the youth replied, "I can, my ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley

... that Cass had correctly concluded that in no other way was he likely to be reimbursed. And, at best, it was only a hazard, a wild gamble. In fact, it was a last desperate chance. Moreover, stock was always available; while cash was a ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... will make you win, I am sure you will carry it through, but if at first you don't succeed, try, try again; and if you haven't the money, I'll supply the capital. I know I should like to gamble. Anyhow, you have my best ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr

... destroy; despair will overtake you, heedless ones, and tears will dim your eyes. I will not say that your mistresses will deceive you—that would not grieve you so much as the loss of a horse—but you can lose on the Bourse. For the first plunge is not the last, and even if you do not gamble, bethink you that your moneyed tranquillity, your golden happiness, are in the care of a banker who may fail. In short, I tell you, frozen as you are, you are capable of loving something; some fibre of your being can be torn and you can give vent to cries that will resemble a moan of pain. ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset

... captain's knife between his shoulder-blades. And the go-fever which is more real than many doctors' diseases, waked and raged, urging him who loved Maisie beyond anything in the world, to go away and taste the old hot, unregenerate life again,—to scuffle, swear, gamble, and love light loves with his fellows; to take ship and know the sea once more, and by her beget pictures; to talk to Binat among the sands of Port Said while Yellow 'Tina mixed the drinks; to hear the crackle of musketry, and see the smoke roll outward, thin and thicken again till the shining ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling

... Take my advice, and never touch them. If you have no genius for chance, twelve months will suffice to ruin you. If you turn out a great player, one half the genius you expend upon it will conquer a kingdom or found an empire. If you prefer oxygen to air—gamble! If you think aquafortis healthier than water—gamble! If you consider fever and fire the proper components of your blood—gamble! Take my advice, and never touch a card again—your bond is ashes. Come, Tom, ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous

... doubt, John would attract a substantial body of loyal readers, but in the meantime there was, if John would forgive the gross commercialism of the expression, "no immediate money in him." Nevertheless, Mr. Jannissary was prepared to gamble on John's future. Even if he should never make enough to cover the expense of publishing John's book, he would still feel compensated for his loss merely through having introduced the world to so excellent a novel. Idealism was not very ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine

... to our side. Why should not that become an alliance—an absolute alliance? Your interests are drawn into ours. You have now a real and great reason for throwing in your lot with us. Let me look at you. Let me think whether I may not venture upon a great gamble." ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... and foot. They were hardy troops, seasoned in rough mountain-campaigning, but reckless and dissolute, as soldiers are apt to be when accustomed to predatory warfare. They would fight hard for booty, and then gamble it heedlessly away or squander it in licentious revelling. Alhama abounded with hawking, sharping, idle hangers-on, eager to profit by the vices and follies of the garrison. The soldiers were oftener gambling and dancing ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving

... exquisite little girl of six say to a little boy, 'Go away; I can't dance with you, because my mamma says your mamma only keeps a maid to answer the doorbell.' When they get home from the dancing-class, tutors in poker and bridge are waiting to teach them how to gamble for each other's little dimes. I saw a little boy in knickerbockers and a wide collar throw ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister

... a gamble, an' there ain't no certs. Some day, I s'pose, I'll git wise to the skirts, An' learn to take the bitter wiv the sweet... But, strike me ...
— The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke • C. J. Dennis

... times were. "This sudden mood strikes me as very remarkable. 'After all I have done—twelve years of grind to keep you from the brunt of the world; and now...! My dear child, do you realize that there are husbands with violent tempers, husbands who drink and gamble ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various

... military advance had long ago changed into a tragic retreat. The bourgeois press madly libelled the army. Whereas, on the eve of the advance, the ruling parties told us that we were an insignificant gang and that the army had never heard of us and would not have anything to do with us, now, when the gamble of the drive had ended so disastrously, these same persons and parties laid the whole blame for its failure on our shoulders. The prisons were crowded with revolutionary workers and soldiers. All the old legal bloodhounds of ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky

... fellow went into that trench, it was an even gamble that he would come out on a stretcher. At one time, a Scotch battalion held it, and when they heard the betting was even money that they'd come out on stretchers, they grabbed all the bets in sight. Like a lot of bally idiots several of the battery ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey

... of the Siamese is gambling; but it can be practised only in houses licensed by the government, though on certain holidays, New Year's in April especially, the people are privileged to gamble at home, or even in the streets. Marriages are arranged by women of mature age. The birthdays of the contracting parties must be agreeable; for the people are superstitious, and consult the stars for their horoscopes. The old ladies agree upon the amount of money the parents of the ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic

... you're going to hate me for it!" he said. "Reckon I can't afford that. I knew it was a gamble when I started. If I can't win, I'll back out ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell

... that has existed in Kansas, especially in the Missouri River towns, for the last three years, Under the shade of every green tree, on the streets, in every shop, store, grocery and hotel, it has seemed as if the chief business of the people was to gamble ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler

... trace of the simple young Canadian habitant was left in Pierre La Marche. He spoke mountain English and French patois with equal fluency. There was a decision of character about him that commanded the respect of his comrades. When the other trappers went to St. Louis, they used to drink and gamble away their hard-won dollars, few of these men caring for anything beyond the indulgence of immediate fancies. But Pierre was ambitious, and thought that money might be made subservient to his aspirations in a better way than speculating with it upon "bluff" or ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... arrangement.* [footnote... At a meeting of the Institution of Civil Engineers, May 23, 1883, when various papers were read on Waterworks, Mr. H. I. Marten observed in the course of the discussion: —"It has been stated in Mr. Gamble's paper (on the waterworks of Port Elizabeth) that the sluice valves are of the usual pattern. The usual patterns of the present day are in wonderful advance of those of thirty or forty years since. The great improvement originated with the introduction of 'the double-faced sluice-cock.' ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... ventured, nothing have!" Mrs. Atterson finally agreed. "Go ahead—if it won't cost much more than what you say to get the corn in. I understand it's a gamble, and I'm taking a gambler's chance. If the river rises and floods the corn in June, or July, then we get nothing ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd

... Fenwick. "I'll gamble with you—for one more stake: If Ellerbee's device is on the level, you'll make a grant to Clearwater and other institutions of like qualifications, and you'll ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones



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