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Gamble   /gˈæmbəl/   Listen
Gamble

verb
(past & past part. gambled; pres. part. gambling)
1.
Take a risk in the hope of a favorable outcome.  Synonyms: adventure, chance, hazard, risk, run a risk, take a chance, take chances.
2.
Play games for money.



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"Gamble" Quotes from Famous Books



... could have taken no less interest in his work than I had taken in mine. It was bad—bad—bad; worthless and hateful. There wasn't a new idea in it and I hadn't one in my head. I, who had taken up writing as a last resort, a gamble which might, on a hundred-to-one chance, win where everything else had failed, had now reached the point where that had failed, too. Campbell's surmise was correct; with the pretence of asking him to the Cape for a week-end of fishing and sailing I had lured him there to tell him of my discouragement ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln

... "And I'll gamble ten cents that you kissed him back. That's Natural Selection, if I know anything about it. Niti, if that man—and he is a man—doesn't get killed in a fight, he'll marry you in spite of all the misguided scientific Dads on earth. Don't you worry. You've made me just happy. I'm not emotional that ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith

... words are really unconnected, 'to gamble' being 'to gamle' or 'game', and 'to gambol' being akin to French gambiller, to fling up the legs (gambes or ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

... "he may have run through his money the first night or two after coming up to town. That is the way with these fellows. As long as they have money they gamble. When they have none, they cheat or turn to other evil courses. Now that there are two of you together, there is less danger in going to such places; for, though these rascals may be ready to pick a quarrel ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty

... each week or each month in the periodical, the coincidence of a familiar package on a drug-store counter seems to be providential and therefore irresistible. I know that I ought to be examined by a physician, but I am busy and not unwilling to gamble for my health; it cannot kill me and there is a chance that it will cure me. If there is nothing the matter with us, we may be cured by our faith. If we are taking a cure for consumption, the morphine in it may lull us into thinking we ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen

... mansion, the half of whom were extravagant in their habits, so that great was, of course, his delight to frequent them. To-day, they would come together to drink wine; the next day to look at flowers. They even assembled to gamble, to dissipate and to go everywhere and anywhere; leading, with all their enticements, Hsueeh P'an so far astray, that he became far worse, by a hundred times, than ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... 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 to the other ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks

... promise Blix that he would no longer gamble at his club with the other men of his acquaintance; but it was "death and the devil," as he told himself, to abide by that promise. More than once in the fortnight following upon his resolution he had come up to the little flat on the Washington Street hill ...
— Blix • Frank Norris

... crowd of the world on foot went drifting, Standing aside on the trodden grass To chaff as they let the traffic pass. Then back they flooded, singing and cheering, Plodding forward and disappearing, Up to the course to take their places, To lunch and gamble and see ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield

... Chicago 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 ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft

... at the wrong end, but it doesn't matter. Frank Woods has used the money entrusted him by the French Government to gamble with. He counted on the contracts with the International Biplane people to bring him clean and leave him a comfortable fortune besides. The end of the war and the wholesale cancellation of government contracts killed that. To cover his deficits, ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny

... profit of 600 per cent on his actual investment. This intoxicates rich and poor alike. It enables the small capitalist to operate on the scale that belongs, in healthy times, to the large capitalist; a beggar can now gamble like a prince; his farthings are accepted as counters for sovereigns; but this is a distinct feature of all the more gigantic bubbles recorded. Here, too, you see, is illusory credit on a vast scale, with its sure consequence, inflated and fictitious values; another bit of soap that goes to ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... Say, I bought that tobacco myself for my own personal use, and not for a lazy, loafing, cow-faced lump of slumgullion to glom and smoke. Why don't you spend something besides the evening now and then? Gawda-mighty, you sit on yore coin closer than a hen with one egg! I'll gamble that Robinson Crusoe spent more money in a week than you spend in four years. Two sacks of my smoking. You got a gall like a hoss. There was my extra undershirt under those sacks. It's a wonder you ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White

... You know that no other woman will ever fill my place—but that makes no difference to you. You forget them—you want to punish me, so you want to take them from me. I'm justified in saying to you that it's an act of cowardly wickedness and a vile piece of vengeance! Ah! The children! You want to gamble with them now. No—to take them away from me—think, Pierre, think; it isn't possible, ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux

... stop the fascinating gamble for empire. It only added one more move to the possible complexities of the game. The lesser players had their chance. They intrigued and they fought. Egypt, the last remaining civilized state outside of Rome, was drawn into the whirlpool ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various

... & Co. I made money, and was saving of what I earned. I did not gamble. I took good care of myself, and, having the respect of every person, I admit I was quite vain and proud. I was accused by the gamblers of being stingy with my money. So I thought I would do as others did, and commenced to give money to others as a stake to ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee

... up to it, my son. But play the game fair. If it comes to a case of being kind to yourself or kind to a woman, why, take a gamble, and try being kind to the woman. They need it. I'm coming back: but now I must be getting on. First, I'm going to get something to eat. Where's ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough

... religious instruction at all in many localities where there are hundreds of slaves. Hence they resort to some kind of amusement. Those who make no profession of religion, resort to the woods in large numbers on that day to gamble, fight, get drunk, and break the Sabbath. This is often encouraged by slaveholders. When they wish to have a little sport of that kind, they go among the slaves and give them whiskey, to see them dance, "pat juber," ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb

... carefully. Keep in personal touch with your creditors, keep your promises, pay on account when you cannot pay in full, hustle, be honest, keep good company, don't gamble, don't be a sport. If you practice these virtues, offers of aid will come to you ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter

... you utter a jargon as mysterious as theirs. I neither gamble nor quarrel; why, then, ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... Hothampton Place and several other terraces in what is now the centre of modern Bognor quickly appeared. A determined attempt to change the name to Hothampton failed, and as soon as the speculator died, his gamble a personal failure, the town reverted to ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes

... Coblentz during this 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, or in inventing torments to inflict on the rebels. ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams

... seventeen from German high schools and universities who were the sons of noble and well-to- do families, had been accepted as volunteers by Prussian war-lords ruthless of human life in their desperate gamble with fate. Some of these lads were brought to the hospitals in Furnes, badly wounded. One of them carried into the convent courtyard smiled as he lay on his stretcher and spoke imperfect French very politely ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs

... that gang held together and got rich—fair rich. They made it so fast they couldn't even gamble the stuff away. About a thousand times, I guess posses went out after Piotto, but they never came back with a trace of 'em; they never got within shootin' distance. Finally Piotto got so confident that he started raidin' ranches and carryin' off members of well-off ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand

... became old and inactive, his Christmases grew gradually duller, until he did little more than sit out a play or two, and gamble with his courtiers, his Christmas play-money requiring a special draught upon the treasury, usually for a hundred pounds. He died on January ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... government can be properly managed by novices. The reckless, experimental appointment of untried men to positions of grave responsibility on which the happiness, comfort, and life of the whole public may depend, and the very existence of the country be put in jeopardy, is a gamble, ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman

... play is an effort to seek excitement and thus to forget cares, or it is a seeking of excitement for its own sake. Thus men gamble, not only for the gain but because such excitement as is aroused offers relief from business worries or home difficulties. The prize fights, the highly competitive professional sports of all kinds are frequented and ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson

... will give the critics something to do. And I suppose that in coming on here he has in mind to get an indorsement for his picture that will give it a commercial value. He's canny, is my Uncle Ezra, and he likes to gamble too, like the rest of us. If he should draw a prize, it wouldn't be a bad ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick

... There isn't a man on the force in whom I have greater confidence than you. But, if I was to gamble, I'd wager ten to one that you'd lose out if I sent you up to take ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood

... 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 standing around watching the ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... in his girdle. In reply—"No: Iemon was cheated by Kondo[u] and Cho[u]bei. A plain woman—perhaps; but a monster, a worse than rokurokubi, was never thought of even in a dream. Compensation is to be found. Iemon likes gambling. He will gamble. Have a care to supply the needed funds; and don't interfere." Roughly he shoved her out of the ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... the story. This little piece of land where the old Indian woman had lived and brought up her boy, was rich and valuable. It was therefore coveted by the white man. At first men had said: "She will die soon; the boy will then sell the hut for a song, gamble off the money, and then go the way of all who are stained with the dark and tawny blood of the savage—death in a ditch from some unknown rifle, or death by the fever in the new Reservation." But the old woman still lived ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller

... A to Z. Good, as goodness might be measured in their particular class, hard-working for meagre wages and scorning the sale of self for easier ways, nervously desirous for some small pinch of happiness in the desert of existence, and facing a future that was a gamble between the ugliness of unending toil and the black pit of more terrible wretchedness, the way whereto being briefer though ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... slide. In fact, I drew away from the table intending to stop. But instead of quitting the place there and then, I was fool enough to argue the position out solemnly to myself, with the result that I eventually decided the whole affair from beginning to end to be entirely of the nature of a gamble, and naturally felt bound to test whether the luck was ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne

... Pleasant-Faced Lion, "the children are retreating. Carry-on-Merry, Gamble, Grin, and Grub, I believe you are the champion snowballers of the world. I think myself you must have acquired the gift from some unusually impish urchins whose methods you have closely observed round Westminster way. I consider ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton

... 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 ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson

... another Southern leader, Stonewall Jackson, in his piety. It was not ostentatious, but simply part and parcel of the man, due to his Presbyterian training. Haig did not swear or gamble or dance all night. He was more apt to be found in his tent, when off duty, either reading ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden

... not think of the Standard Oil Company as a missionary agency, but it has certainly done a great deal to light up the dark corners of China, morally as well as physically, by providing the people with a cheap way of lighting their houses. Formerly when darkness fell, there was nothing to do but gamble and smoke. Now the industrious Chinese can ply his trade as late as ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall

... worthies to toady to society magnates, who affects the supercilious air of a shallow dandy and cherishes the heart of a frog. True, he repeatedly insists on the obligation of truthfulness in all things, and of, honor in dealing with the world. His Gentleman may; nay, he must, sail with the stream, gamble in moderation if it is the fashion, must stoop to wear ridiculous clothes and ornaments if they are the mode, though despising his weakness all to himself, and no true Gentleman could afford to keep out of the little gallantries ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... of the night before,—"Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage!" It was Saturday. He ate a hearty breakfast, joked with George and Amy, and refreshed, glowing with an expectation mingled with just the right amount of delightful uncertainty that made the great affairs of life a gamble, yet with the confidence of the conqueror, he walked in sunlight to the mill. In view of this firm and hopeful tone of his being he found it all the more surprising, as he reached the canal, to be seized by a trepidation strong enough to bring ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... 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 on that. ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower

... last time in an awful state. Before he left some one sent him a load of money, and he did nothing but drink and gamble whilst it lasted. I used to tell him that he ought to take care of his money, and he'd snap his fingers and laugh. He used to say that he owned the goose that laid the golden eggs, and could have money whenever he wanted it. Well, ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb

... men are accustomed to gamble for enormous and excessive stakes; whatever of this sort is especially objectionable should be corrected. During the visits and intercourse of the women, their chief diversion is to play cards, and more commonly than is becoming to their station. Men are admitted ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair

... gospel as you hate us. And what do you hate us for? It is not because we are so different from you, but because we are so like. You say we are a licentious lot; well, so are you. We drink hard; so do you. We gamble and we swear; but what do you do, I should like to know? Why should you be so hard on us? We don't interfere with your little enjoyments: for pity's sake, don't meddle with ours. You talk about driving us out and sending for the Lutheran ministers. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various

... a tall Gamble. Under the Circumstances, he didn't see that there was anything for Ferdinand to do except mop up a few Drinks and ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade

... most thorough gentlemen I ever knew, as courteous to the humblest soldier as to General Bragg, who was then and during the summer a frequent visitor. His wife lay for some months very ill at some point near Ringgold. Mrs. Gamble, who, with her lovely children, was domiciled at Cherokee Springs, three miles distant, was also a delightful addition to our little circle. She was thoroughly accomplished, of charming manners, although perfectly frank and outspoken. Her musical talent was exceptional, and her lovely voice, ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers

... talking about yanking him out of Holland and putting him on trial," answered Frank; "but it's a gamble if they really will. He's such a skulking cowardly figure just now that perhaps it wouldn't be well to try him. It might dignify him too much, make a martyr of him. They may let him and the Crown Prince stay where they ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall

... notes 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 I shuns all sech. I won't say them erratic, quick-to-kill ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis

... the gambling game of "wi and tep" and says that one description with slight variations will answer for nearly all the tribes of central and southern California. After describing the making up of the pool of stakes, he adds: "They gamble with four cylinders of bone about two inches long, two of which are plain, and two marked with rings and strings tied round the middle. The game is conducted by four old and experienced men, frequently ...
— Indian Games • Andrew McFarland Davis

... laws providing penalties for fraudulent representations and requiring publicity, to perfect an organization to SECURE EXECUTION of these laws, and also to carry on campaigns of education showing to investors, first, that mining is a legitimate business and not a gamble; second, that mines are found and not made; third, that investments in mining should be made with the same care and prudence exercised by business men when embarking in other business enterprises. . . . The ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... the old man clutching his head in despair... "Why didn't the man die? He's only forty years old. He will take away my last farthing, marry, enjoy life, gamble on the Exchange, and I will look on like an envious beggar and hear the same words from him every day: 'I'm obliged to you for the happiness of my life. Let me help you.' No, it's too much! The only escape from bankruptcy and disgrace—is ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various

... shouting, fighting youths there, with their filthy pack of cards and few centissimi, sprawling in the unstinted sunshine, were nearer the essential truth. They were the profound, because the practical philosophers! Therefore let us gamble, gamble, gamble, be the stake small or great, as long as the merest flicker of life, or fraction of uttermost farthing, is left! And so, when Destournelle took up his lament again, she listened to him, for the moment, with remarkable lightness ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... of our lives. However, the wind died down a bit next day, and we both felt a lot better—better in body and worse in mind—as often happens. Before we got to Melbourne we could eat and drink, smoke and gamble, and were quite ourselves again. We'd laid it out to have a reg'lar good month of it in town, takin' it easy, and stopping nice and quiet at a good hotel, havin' some reasonable pleasure. Why shouldn't we see a little life? We'd got the cash, and we'd earned that pretty hard. It's the ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood

... regarded by the moderate men—and there are many—who, if Home Rule comes, intend to throw their abilities into making it a success, and who will be indispensable to Ireland at a moment of supreme national importance. Irretrievable mistakes may be made by too long a gamble with the chances of political warfare. Whatever the scheme produced, the extremists will have to oppose it tooth and nail. If the measure is big, sound, and generous, it will be necessary to attack its ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers

... delegate your powers to another or others, and let all continue as it is. The income would be at your disposal to save or spend. You need never enter Princes Buildings if that is what troubles you. You can spend the money in philanthropy, or gamble it away at Monte Carlo, or leave it to accumulate for your heirs. If you'll do that I'll undertake to find suitable men to carry on ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant

... not concern myself," she said smiling, with some bitterness. "Felix, do not gamble in any house, no matter whose ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac

... always innocent as a dove. Whatever tricks or mischief we did, we always got the idea from Benny. Who taught us to smoke cigarettes in secret, letting the smoke out through our nostrils? Benny. Who told us to slide on the ice, in winter, with the peasant-boys? Benny. Who taught us to gamble with buttons—to play "odd or even," and lose our breakfasts and dinners? Benny. He was up to every trick, and taught us them all. He won our last "groschens" from us. And when it came to anything, Benny had disappeared. Playing was to us the finest thing in the ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich

... youse charged wid totin' concealed cards and attempt to gamble. Ten years at hard labor. Put him in de dark, Simpson, and throw de key away. (He looks at the girl and beams.) Don't you worry bout how you gointer git home. You gointer be took home right, 'cause I'm gointer take you myself. Bring ...
— Three Plays - Lawing and Jawing; Forty Yards; Woofing • Zora Neale Hurston

... miss, you gamble on that—and the lightnin's a fool to us!" shouted Dollops in reply. "Let her have it, Gov'nor! Bust the bloomin' tank. Give her her head; give her her feet; give her her blessed merry-thought if she wants it! ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew

... lay a-stretch along the sand. Others tottered about, uttering maudlin speeches. Still others of stronger stomach and steader brain kept their feet, as also their senses; only that these became excited, increasing their cupidity. They wanted more than they had got, and would gamble to get it. One had a piece of cotton print, and so had another. Each wished to have both or none. How was it to be decided? By cards? By dice? No. There was a way more congenial to their tastes—more a propos to their habits. It should be done by their horses. They ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... "My time-table has gone wrong, but I haven't given up hope. Tom is only human and he can't work miracles. He may have been so placed that it simply wasn't possible to make a break. But one thing you can gamble on, and that is that he hasn't given up trying. And when a man has that spirit his ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall

... ain't carin' a whoop, but I'll gamble we could own the town. This fake minin', ranchin', hoss-dealin' Hardman was a hunk of bad cheese. Pard, are you goin' to deny you killed him? Fer shore they've ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey

... then, while I was a journalist seemed to me a depraved proceeding, almost as bad as going to Lord's in the morning. I thought I could write one (we all think we can), but I could not afford so unpromising a gamble. But once in the Army the case was altered. No duty now urged me to write. My job was soldiering, and my spare time was my own affair. Other subalterns played bridge and golf; that was one way of amusing oneself. Another way was—why not?—to ...
— First Plays • A. A. Milne

... and it is so heavy that Europeans have adopted the habit of carrying none, giving for any debt incurred I. O. U.'s, called "chits," which are sent in at the end of each month for payment; a vicious custom, which leads to deplorable excesses, especially in drinking and in gambling. Men drink and gamble more freely when immediate payment is not required, or when the chances of a lucky turn may recoup their losses; besides, many who have no means to pay incur debts. Indeed, so many cases of this kind have happened since "hard times set in" that I ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie

... 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 ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne

... enough for a trip, poor souls. Bah! they must have—everybody has when it comes to life and death. They'll get it somehow—rich relations and all that. Burr Claflin is their cousin, I know. David Newbold himself was rich enough five years ago, when he made that unlucky gamble in stocks—which killed him, they say. Well—life is certainly hard." And the doctor turned his mind to a new pair of horses he had been looking at in the afternoon, with a comfortable sense of a wind-guard or so, at the ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... abundantly shown by Shakespearean commentators, to stand upon one's cards at primero; but the word "pull" in this connexion is not at all easy to explain. The general sense of the present passage is plain: "Is my life held in such paltry esteem that slaves are allowed to gamble for it as for a stake at cards?" We have nowhere a plain account of primero. When the "Compleat Gamester" was published (in 1674) the game had been discontinued. The variety of quotations given by Nares, under Primero and ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various

... mebbee knows what lawyers think of an arrangement with a sister-in-law that leaves a real sister out! Mebbee that's a 'Sister's title' you ain't thought of, Mr. Brant! And mebbee you'll find out that your chance o' gettin' Mrs. Peyton's consent ain't as safe to gamble on as you reckon it is. And mebbee, what's more to the purpose, if you DID get it, it might not be just the trump card to fetch Susy with! And to wind up, Mr. Brant, when you DO have to come down to the bed-rock and me and Jim McClosky, you may find out that him and ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte

... gambling houses may be divided into two classes: occasional gamblers and professional gamblers. Among the first may be placed those attracted by curiosity, and those strangers I have alluded to who are brought in by salaried intermediaries. The second is composed of men who gamble to retrieve their losses, or those who try to deceive and lull their grief through the exciting diversions ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin

... you're 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

... reach the New—an opportunity to wrestle with fate for freedom and a home of their own. When their weary years of servitude were over, if they survived, they might obtain land of their own or settle as free mechanics in the towns. For many a bondman the gamble proved to be a losing venture because he found himself unable to rise out of the state of poverty and dependence into which his servitude carried him. For thousands, on the contrary, bondage proved to be a real avenue to freedom and prosperity. Some of the best citizens of America ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard

... as she and I alone were sauntering down the long shady avenue which connects the town with the little-port of the lake, she said that people went into the Cercle and the Villa des Fleurs, the two Wonder Houses aforesaid, merely to gamble. I pooh-poohed the notion. ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke

... were at work, and at work desperately, for the closing down of winter was so imminent that it was a gamble whether or not they would get across the great chain of lakes before the freeze-up. Yet, when Kit arrived at the tent of Messrs. Sprague and Stine, he ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London

... anything that gets something for nothing. I batten on the mangy hides of the workingmen. I don't have to gamble. I don't have to work. My father left me enough of his winnings.—Oh, don't preen yourself, my boy. Your folks were just as bad as mine. But yours lost, and mine won, and so you plow in my ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London

... mouths. In consequence of (their possession of) two arms, the organ of speech, the stomach, and the organ of pleasure, the very gods are said to have four doors. One should, therefore, strive one's best to keep those doors under control.[1245] One should not gamble with dice. One should not appropriate what belongs to another. One should not assist at the sacrifice of a person of ignoble birth. One should not, giving way to wrath, smite another with hands or feet. That intelligent man who conducts himself in this way is said to have his hands ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... might as well understand, too," he went on more calmly. "If you continue to go to Chad's, I shall go, too; if you make those fellows your boon companions, they shall be mine as well; if you continue to drink and gamble, as you've been doing lately, and to-night, I will drink and gamble, too. I mean every word I am saying, Phil. It may go against the grain at first to associate with such cads as Chad and his crowd; but perhaps that'll wear away in time, and ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus

... who was a good fellow in his blundering way. "Chaps gamble, you know. And this part of the world is full of fleas and mosquitoes and gamblers. When a man's been chucked, he's always asking what's trumps. He's not keen on the game; and the professional gambler takes advantage of ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath

... to the Marquesas Islands, where he entered into the service of his country in the capacity of Midshipman under Commodore Porter—made his escape from there in company with Lieutenant Gamble of the Marine corps, by directions of the Commodore, was captured by the British, landed at Buenos Ayres, and finally ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere

... dominions of Hostaqua, who could muster three or four thousand warriors, and who promised with the aid of a hundred arquebusiers to conquer all the kings of the adjacent mountains, and subject them and their gold-mines to the rule of the French. A humbler adventurer was Peter Gamble, a robust and daring youth, who had been brought up in the household of Coligny, and was now a soldier under Laudonniere. The latter gave him leave to trade with the Indians, a privilege which he used so well that he grew rich with his traffic, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... chose to assume. It was true that, when one is supposed to be at Mentone for one's health one should not leave one's courier there (in order to receive letters) and reside instead with one's maid at Monte Carlo; true, further, that it is unwise to gamble heavily, to lose largely, to confide the misfortune to a man of Paul's equivocal position and reputation, to borrow twenty thousand francs of him, to lose or spend all, save what served to return home with, and finally to acknowledge the transaction and the obligation both very cordially ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope

... which many of its friends are now so fearful. 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 ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... place, between here and Greeleville. In da Gamble's Bible is my age. Don't know my age. Pretty much know how old, I bout 90. I wuz ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration

... gamble with death rested with those who sent an expedition from the United States to the tropics in midsummer when the measures necessary to safeguard its health were not yet known. This responsibility rested immediately upon the ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish

... instantly. The Connie commander knew the situation exactly, and he was staking everything on one great gamble, sending his snapper-boats to land on the asteroid—to crash-land ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin

... "Said I was a wrong 'un," he said, cheerfully, "and would bring my mother's gray hairs to the grave with sorrow. I'm to 'ave bad companions and take to drink; I'm to steal money to gamble with, and after all that I'm to 'ave five years for bigamy. I told her I was disappointed I wasn't to be hung, and she said it would be a disappointment to a lot of other people too. Laugh! I thought I ...
— Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection) • W.W. Jacobs

... bocadillo de coco!" Then the lottery-men, the messengers of Fortune, with their shouts of "The last ticket yet unsold, for half a real!" a tempting announcement to the lazy beggar, who finds it easier to gamble than to work, and who may have that ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... are. But this disinterestedness need not prevent you from resuming your dissipations. You must gamble, bet, and lose more money than you ever did before. You must increase your demands, and say that you must have money at all costs. You need not account to me for any money you can extort from her. All you get is your own to spend as ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau

... tingling in their veins, the manly love of wonderful adventure, and, by no means least, the gamble of it, that dared them to sail for strange outlandish parts with odds of five to one against them, these, quite as much as the wish to make a fortune, were the chief reasons why Sea-Dogs sailed from every port and made ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood

... Methodist, as she called him. She had a good-looking, confidential maid who had lived with her for years. In one of her fits she told this maid that she would give half of what she possessed if her nephew were like other young men. 'I don't want him to be a sot or to gamble away my money,' she cried, 'but there's not much else I should mind if he were ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford

... are rarely played in these houses. The victim is generally fleeced. Men who gamble in stocks, curbstone brokers, and others, vainly endeavor to make good a part of their losses at these places. They are simply unsuccessful. Clerks, office-boys, and others, who can spend but a few minutes and lose only a few dollars at a time, are constantly seen ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... or Egyptology than Julia did, and cared even less. She set out to be intelligently ignorant—to be anything else was called "middle-class" in her set—and she achieved her end, although she could do some things extremely well—play bridge, gamble in stocks and shares and anything else, and arrange lights and colours with the skill of an artist when a suitable setting for her pretty self was concerned. She had all the charms of womanly weakness without any ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad

... degenerating. We were always too fond of liquor, and Heaven knows our responsibility for drunkenness all over the world; but worse than that is our gambling. You may drink and be a fine fellow; but every gambler is a sneak, and possibly a criminal. We're beginning, now, to gamble for slices of the world. We're getting base, too, in our grovelling before the millionaire—who as often as not has got his money vilely. This sort of thing won't do for 'the lords of human kind.' Our pride, if we don't look out, will turn to bluffing ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing

... to a place that seems accessible in order to procure a photograph. It was a foolhardy undertaking, and we knew it. But fortune favored us, and the much-desired picture was secured. But thus will men gamble with death to gratify a whim, for a false step or sudden vertigo would have sent us crashing on ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson

... and the hope of gain. So after their labours were over, when they were supposed to be resting and enjoying themselves, they would get together and torment themselves with an imitation struggle, mimicking the grim and dreadful gamble of business. Down in the Street, Oliver had pointed out to his brother a celebrated "plunger," who had sometimes won six or eight millions in a single day; and that man would play at stocks all morning, and "play the ponies" in the afternoon, and then spend the evening in a millionaires' ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair

... to Ford, scowling at the group and at life in general, while the snow melted upon his broad shoulders and trickled in little, hurrying drops down to the nearest jumping-off place. "Come, drownd your sorrer," Bill advised amiably. "Nobody said nothing but Sammy, and I'll gamble he wishes he hadn't, now." If his counsel was vicious, his smile was engaging—which does not, in this instance, mean that ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower

... and the only chance of filling my pocket. To a young man life without love isn't worth much; to a man of any age, in my opinion, life without money isn't worth much; it becomes worth still less when he is held to account for money he ought to have. So I cheerfully entered upon my biggest gamble, holding the stake of life well risked. My pleasure in the affair was only marred by the enforced partnership of McGregor. There was no help for this, but I knew he wasn't much fonder of me than I of him, and I found myself ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope

... about those people back in those old States: Not one in ten, I'll gamble, knows the teacher he sends his children to school to. But when he has a promising colt to be shod, the owner goes to the blacksmith shop himself, and he and the smith will sit on the back sill of the shop, and they will discuss how to shoe that filly so ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams

... match. The superior officer of the gens-d'armes is a 'good fellow.' The nobility-marshal a great sportsman. Besides the government and the local officers, there live in a government town stingy landowners, or those who have squandered away their property; they gamble from evening to morning, nay, from morning to evening too, without getting the least bit tired of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... prize just as dearly as the American the things which these words signify, is another matter; it is not the Englishman's habit to formulate them even to himself, much less to talk about them to others. Most Englishmen have large sympathy with Captain Gamble who, bewailing the unrest in Canada at the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, complained that the Colonials talked too much about "that ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... there is," said Ted. "He's an old horse sharp. Sol Flatbush knows him. He wants a race in town, thinking he can draw us into betting. He doesn't know that we never gamble, but he evidently believes that in the excitement of the moment he will be able to get some ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor

... a farthing!" cried Reybold at the door, speaking to some one. "Chips, indeed! What shall I give you money to gamble away for? A gambling beggar is worse than an impostor! ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various

... 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 ...
— Heads and Tales • Various

... went down 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 is done ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart

... 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

... Barney Gibbs says, all the yellow fever patients Gutieras discovered during his tour of South Texas were up "hunting either a drink or a job" ere this peripatetic expert was well out of town. I'll gamble four dollars that there is not in the United States to-day a genuine case of Yellow Jack. There's every indication that the cases at Mobile, New Orleans and Biloxi are identical with the disease discovered by Gutieras at Galveston—nothing under heaven but the dengue. Who the ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... the lamps were put out, and you could hear the Spirit of the Reindeer stamping on the roof; and when a spear was thrust out into the open black night it came back covered with hot blood. He wanted to throw his big boots into the net with the tired air of the head of a family, and to gamble with the hunters when they dropped in of an evening and played a sort of home-made roulette with a tin pot and a nail. There were hundreds of things that he wanted to do, but the grown men laughed at him and said, "Wait till you have been in the ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling

... assented at once, and the next day they removed to the most modest lodgings they could find within easy access of the gardens. Then; very warily and gently, Saint-Cyr unfolded to Pauline his new-born hopes. She was terribly alarmed at first and sobbed piteously. 'It is so wicked to gamble, Georges,' she said;—' no blessing can follow such a plan as yours. And I dare not tell papa about it.' 'It would be wicked, no doubt,' said Georges, 'to play against one's friend or one's neighbor, as they do in clubs and private circles, ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford

... whether it was wise to allow the two backwoodsmen to continue in an enterprise in which the future was so clouded and full of the possibilities of disaster. He himself might win through, and he might not. The thing was a gamble, in any event. He could afford to take the risk. Sewall ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn

... should be sorry for Ppt's sake; he is very tender of her. I have long lost all my colds, and the weather mends a little. I take some steel drops, and my head is pretty well. I walk when I can, but am grown very idle; and, not finishing my thing, I gamble(6) abroad and play at ombre. I shall be more careful in my physic than Mrs. Price: 'tis not a farthing matter her death, I think; and so I say no more to-night, but will read a dull book, and go ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift

... 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 and drink. ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler



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