THE TULIP MANIA.

The Hollanders, the most phlegmatic people in the world, had their gambling scene in 1683. It was called the tulip mania. It was a speculation in tulips. Properties worth half a million dollars turned into tulips. All the Holland nation either buying or selling tulips. One tulip-root sold for two hundred dollars, another for two thousand.

Excitement rolling on and rolling on until history tells us that one Amsterdam tulip, which was supposed to be the only one of the kind in all the world, actually brought in the markets $1,816,000! That is a matter of history. Of course the crash came, and all Holland went down under it.

MISSISSIPPI SCHEME.

But France must have its gambling expedition, and that was in 1716. John Law's Mississippi scheme it was called. The French had heard that this American continent was built out of solid gold, and the project was to take it across the ocean and drop it in France. Excitement beyond any thing that had yet been seen in the world. Three hundred thousand applicants for shares. Excitement so great that sometimes the mounted military had to disperse the crowds that had come to get the stocks. Five hundred temporary tents built to accommodate the people until they could have opportunity of interviewing John Law.

A lady of great fashion had her coachman upset her near the place where John Law was passing, in order that she might have an interview with that benevolent and sympathetic gentleman! Stocks went up to two thousand and fif ty per cent, until one day suspicion got into the market, and down it all went-John Law's Mississippi scheme-burying its projector and some of the greatest financiers in all France, and was almost as bad as a French revolution.

SOUTH SEA BUBBLE.

Sedate England took its chance in 1720. That was the South Sea bubble. They proposed to transfer all the gold of Peru and Mexico and the islands of the sea to England. Five millions' worth of shares were put on the market at three hundred pounds a share. The books open, in a few days it is all taken, and twice the amount subscribed.

Excitement followed excitement, until all kinds of gambling projects came forth under the wing of this South Sea enterprise. There was a large company formed with great capital for providing funerals for all parts of the land. Another company with large capital, five million pounds of capital, to develop a wheel in perpetual motion. Another company with a capital of four million pounds, to insure people against loss by servants. Another company with two million five hundred thousand pounds capital to transplant walnut trees from Virginia to England. But of course, when blown to the full capacity, THE BUBBLE BURST!

To cap the climax, a company was formed for "a great undertaking, nobody to know what it is." And lo! six hundred thousand pounds in shares were offered at one hundred pounds a share; books were opened at 9 o'clock in the morning and closed at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, and the first day it was all subscribed. "A great undertaking, nobody to know what it is." An old magazine of those days describes the scene (Hunt's Magazine). It says:

"From morning until evening Change Alley was full to overflowing with one dense moving mass of living beings, composed of the most incongruous materials, and in all things save the mad pursuit wherefor they were employed utterly opposite in their principles and feelings, and far asunder in their stations in life and the professions they follow. Statesmen and clergymen deserted their high stations to enter upon this great theatre of speculation and gambling. Churchmen and Dissenters left their fierce disputes and forgot their wranglings upon church government in the deep and hazardous game they were playing for worldly

treasures and for riches, which, if gained, were liable to disappear within an hour of their creation.

"Whigs and Tories buried their weapons of political warfare, discarded party animosities, and mingled together in kind and friendly intercourse, each exulting as their stocks advanced in price, and grumbling when fortune frowned upon them. Lawyers, physicians, merchants, and travelling men forsook their employment, neglected their business, disregarded their engagements, to whirl along in the stream and be at last ingulfed in the wild sea of bankruptcy.

"Females mixed with the crowd, forgetting the station. and employment which nature had fitted them to adorn, and dealt boldly and extensively, and, like those by whom they were surrounded, rose from poverty to wealth, and from that were thrown down to beggary and want, and all in one short week, and perhaps before the evening which terminated the first day of their speculation. Ladies of high rank, regardless of every appearance of dignity, and blinded by the prevailing infatuation, drove to the shops of their milli ners and haberdashers, and there met their stock-brokers, whom they regularly employed, and through whom extensive sales were daily negotiated. In the midst of the excitement all distinctions of party, and religion, and circumstances, and character were swallowed up."

MORUS MULTICAULIS.

It was left for our own country to surpass all. We have the highest mountains, and the greatest cataracts, and the longest rivers, and, of course, we had to have the largest swindle. One would have thought that the nation had seen enough in that direction during the morus multicaulis excitement, when almost every man had a bunch of crawling silkworms in his house out of which he expected to make a fortune.

OIL FEVER.

But all this excitement was as nothing compared with what took place in 1864, when a man near Titusville, Pa.,

digging for a well, struck oil. Twelve hundred oil companies call for one billion of stock. Prominent members of churches, as soon as a certain amount of stock was assigned them, saw it was their liberty to become presidents, or secretaries, or members of the board of direction.

Some of these companies never had a foot of ground, never expected to have. Their entire equipment was a map of a region where oil might be, and two phials of grease, crude and clarified. People rushed down from all parts of the country by the first train and put their hard earnings in the gulf.

A young man came down from the oil regions of Pennsylvania utterly demented, having sold his farm at a fabulous price, because it was supposed there might be oil there -coming to a hotel in Philadelphia, at the time I was living there, throwing down a five-thousand-dollar check to pay for his Monday meal and saying he did not care anything about the change! Then he stepped back to the gas-burner to light his cigar with a thousand-dollar note. Utterly in

sane.

The good Christian people said, "This company must all be right, because Elder So-and-so is president of it, and Elder So-and-so is secretary of it, and then there are three or four highly professed Christians in the board of directors. To join this company is almost like joining the church!" They did not know that when a professed Christian goes into stock-gambling he lies like sin!

But alas! for the country; it became a tragedy, and one thousand million dollars were swamped. There are families to-day sitting in the shadow of destitution, who but for that great national outrage would have had their cottages and their homesteads.

WARNING TO YOUNG MEN.

I hold up before young men these great swindling schemes that they may see to what length men will go smitten of this passion, and I want to show them how all the best interests of society are against it, and God is against it, and will damn it for time and damn it for eternity.

64

CHAPTER VIII.

Gambling.

'Aceldama, that is to say, The field of blood."—ACTS 1 : 19.

THE money that Judas gave for surrendering Christ was used to purchase a graveyard. As the money was bloodmoney, the ground bought by it was called in the Syriac tongue, Aceldama, meaning "The field of blood." Well, there is one word I want to write over every race-course where wagers are staked, and every pool-room, and every gambling saloon, and every table, public or private, where men and women bet for sums of money, large or small, and that is a word incarnadine with the life of innumerable victims-Aceldama. The gambling spirit, which is at all times a stupendous evil, ever and anon sweeps over the country like an epidemic, prostrating uncounted thousands.

The fact that there is not enough moral force to put into the penitentiary the gambling jockeys who belong there, is only a specimen of the power gained by this abomination, which is brazen, sanguinary, transcontinental and hemispheric.

Some of you are engaged in mercantile concerns, as clerks and book-keepers, and your whole life is to be passed in the exciting world of traffic. The sound of busy life stirs you as the drum stirs the fiery war-horse. Others are in the mechanical arts, to hammer and chisel your way through life, and success awaits you. Some are preparing for professional life, and grand opportunities are before you; nay, some of you already have buckled on the armor. But, whatever your age or calling, the subject of gambling about which I speak is pertinent.

"O!" says some one, "that subject has no interest for