An immoderate love of gaming among men, has ever been looked upon by all wise persons, and lovers of regularity, not only as an enormous folly, but a vice also; even those who practice it can find no excuses for their doing so; they curse it when they lose their money, and are ashamed to praise it when they win.

            What then can be alleged in vindication of a female gamester? Why truly nothing, but that it is the mode, and without play they should make but awkward figures at a rout, or a drum-major; the example of some few leading ladies influences the rest, and a polite mother makes it the chief part of her daughter's education. Miss must read Hoyle instead of the Bible; study the rules of Whist before those of her catechism; and be confirmed as a gamester, before she is confirmed as a Christian.

            This vice has indeed taken so deep a root, especially among well-bred people, that despairing of a reformation, I was in some debate within myself whether I should mention it or not; but when I considered that there were yet some few whom the contagion had not taken hold of, I thought it an indispensable duty to offer them such antidotes as are in my power.

            As I know nothing of more weight with the fair sex than the preservation of those personal charms Heaven has endowed them with, I would have them in the first place reflect, that a continual perturbation of the spirits, joined with the want of repose at those hours ordained by nature for it, is a most cruel enemy both to beauty and to health, and that this is one of the evils which in gaming are unavoidable.

            In the next, let her remember that while she is not only wasting her time, but wasting it in an amusement which seems followed in mere contradiction to the laws of God and man, as well as to those of reason, she ought not to flatter herself with being under the protection of Heaven, and that a thousand ill accidents may happen in her family at home, which possibly might have been prevented by her presence.

            Let her ask herself the question, by what motive she is induced to become a party at a gaming-table? If it be the expectation of adding some pieces to her purse, is not the danger of losing those she has already there, at least equal to the chance of acquiring more? If she goes for the sake of company, what satisfaction, what improvement can she propose to receive from the conversation of a promiscuous assembly, who talk of nothing but the grand business of their play; and if influenced only by a desire of complying with the custom of the present age, let her consider that there are many pernicious customs, besides gaming, which late years have introduced among us; and that if she would be entirely in the fashion, she must also abandon herself to some others yet more shocking to a new practitioner in vice.

            There is no act of licentiousness, indeed, to which gaming is not an introduction; it opens a door to such enormities, such scenes of vice, as I hope there are a great many of my readers who would shudder at the bare description of; for their sakes I shall therefore proceed no further on so disagreeable a subject, and leave the mischiefs which frequently attend an attachment to this destructive and miscalled diversion, to the imagination of everyone to suggest.

            What can a husband think of a wife who wilfully runs herself into dangers of the most dreadful kind, and which if she escapes it may be looked upon as a kind of prodigy, and leaves her no room to boast that it is either to any consideration of her own character, or her husband's honour or peace of mind, she is indebted?

            But it is not to those who are already far entangled in the fatal snare that I am directing this discourse,—those I look upon to be incorrigible; and perhaps one great motive of their being so is a self-conviction of their fault: some are above repentance, and choose to persist obstinately in their errors, not so much because they still like them, as because their pride will not suffer them to acknowledge, by a reformation, that they have ever been to blame. To persons of this unhappy disposition all lessons would be ineffectual; nay, they would rather be hardened, than any way amended either by remonstrances or reproofs.

            It is those, who being at present entirely free, yet through the prevalence of example, the persuasion of others, or their own inadvertency, are liable to be drawn into this vice, whose eyes I would attempt to open, and make them see the dangers of that precipice they are about to climb, before they reach too near the brink.

            In the first place, I would have them reflect on the low shifts to which a woman who plays much is frequently reduced; how, after an evening's ill-luck, in order to discharge what they call a debt of honour, her jewels, plate, and sometimes a birthday suit, are exposed in the shop of a common pawnbroker, and there deposited among the dirty rags of the most abject wretches who are obliged to strip their backs to supply the necessities of their stomachs: this, though the least of all the numerous train of evils to be apprehended from gaming, should, methinks, be sufficient to deter a woman of any delicacy from pursuing it.

            But let her carry her ideas yet a little further; let her well weigh what it is,—that besides her money she is about to hazard, no less than her reputation in the world, the whole happiness of her life at home, her husband's honour, her own peace of mind, and perhaps her virtue too; some of these are forfeited by being staked, and all the others depend but on the turning of a card, and may also be lost beyond a possibility of recovery.

            If these considerations are not of force to restrain her from enrolling herself in the list of female libertines,—for a female gamester is no other,—we may justly conclude that she is pleased with destruction, and proud to sacrifice to that idol, fashion, whatever is truly valuable in womankind.

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