Life — May 31, 1888 — page 13: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

- LIFE: REFLECTIONS, DRUNKARD'S FATE. HE esteemed New York Hera/d, which lately expressed so much dissatisfaction with our eminent townsman, Jay Gould, has come out in frank disapprobation of the great American game of poker. Poker, it avers, is a game based upon chance, combined with insolence and deception. Matthew Arnold himself could hardly have found less that is excusable in a great American weakness. ¢ : / ‘ The Herald may say what it will of Mr. Gould, who has \ \F f | elles z no friends except those whom he hires, but our friends in : Nin ) a | [| TNO ks Thompson Street are not the only ones who will resent its . ' opinion about poker. i < Ls) Ne 1) {fie * * * Y the same token, its brief arraignment is deceptive as well as defective. Baseball itself might be described as a game based upon avarice, combined with a crowd and an umpire; and American journalism might seem to meet Mr. Arnold's notion of it, if diagnosed as a business, based upon white paper, combined with frivolity and imperti- nence. It is easy to fit any great institution with adjectives apt enough to adhere without being sincerely descriptive. * * * ND yet, recognizing the eminence of poker and its place in the affections of the people, LIFE hesitates to assert that it deserves the attention that it gets, or that the world is better for its perpetuation. It has two undesirable characteristics—one is an intense propensity to ally itself with whiskey; the other, a tendency to shift capital so sud- denly as to upset the social equilibrium. The time that’s lost in watching and pursuing The light that lies In woman’s eyes seems not.so lamentably fruitless as the aggregation of wee hours passed in seeming to lack what is in the hand, and seeming to hold what is in the pack Oe eT * * * T is gratifying to learn that certain of the brethren of the esteemed Presbyterian fold in England and Scotland have revised and resolved the ancient Westminster Con- fession of Faith into twenty-two fresh Articles, which are likely to be accepted wherever Presbyterians prevail, as the expression of their contemporary sentiments. The new Articles are understood to do away with several of the bars which were put up by the stern divines of Crom- well’s time to keep the goats from flocking with the sheep, and especially is it reported that they destroy that odious monopoly of salvation which was devised at Westminster for the benefit of “ the elect.” Hoping that the new Articles may be all that its pious fancy paints them, LIFE congratulates the Presbyterian brethren on this movement of their platform in the direction of their voters. ELS. M. BUT IT WASN'T THAT KIND! comicbooks.com