Gambling With Pins.
When I was a small boy there passed through my school such a contagion as often passes through schools,-a passion for playing a certain game with pins. It was played in this way.
One boy held a pin in his closed fist. “Point " or " Head," said the boy with whom he was playing, meaning that he guessed that the pin was held with the point or the head uppermost.
If he guessed rightly, he got the pin; if wrongly, he gave a pin to the other fellow. Then he took his turn, and the other fellow guessed. So it went on till one or the other had no more pins.
All over the playground at recess and noon, when we should have been at healthy sports, we were playing this silly game. It even went on during school hours. Some of the boys won great bottles full of pins, and were looked upon as the Vanderbilts of the school. Other boys never had more than a small handful, and that not long.
I played this fascinating game for some days without thinking what it was, or even suspecting its nature.
One day my mother found out what was going on, and put a stop at once to my participation in it. She called it by a word which scared me. She said it was gambling.
And, of course, it was. The same eagerness and absorption, the same neglect of everything else, the same desire to get something for nothing, the same exultation of the winner and depression of the loser. We were getting ready to gamble with stocks and bonds and wheat and cards when we grew up. Mother knew it, and so did I, as soon as I stopped to think.
And yet, how I hated to quit! Every group of pin-gamblers drew me with irresistible attraction. I boldly explained why I could not play, and stood their ridicule like a little man,—far better than I stood that inward longing. Remembering vividly as I do that time of boyish temptation and trial, I recognize the ease with which I might even now become a gambler.
And whenever I catch myself wishing—as we are so likely to wish—that I had this reward or that position without working for it, and envying those who, by the turn of fortune's wheel, have fallen on riches and fame, I say to myself:
“Halt! Remember the pins. You want something for nothing again. Are not your deeds already sufficiently rewarded, your labors honestly paid for? What more can you rightfully ask? You are a gambler, serving the cards and the dice. Remember the pins. Remember the pins."