“Two honest republicans, Aldophus and Camillus, confront the scene at the faro bank with horror: "Do you note the amazement on every countenance, ghastly visages, and paralytic nerves? Does not your heart, Camillus, recoil from this scene with unconquerable disgust? Every discordant passion here rages in the extreme - unhappy mortals, each joy is poisened by insatiable desire, and every bountiful renumeration of heaven, is converted into a self-tormenting engine." Gambling fostered the agony of incessant, unfulfilled desire. Indeed, Camillus replies, even "reasonable men" ca be sucked into the "vortex of infamy" by the seductions of gaming. "Expectation here is bouyed up to the very zenith, and plunged as suddenly into the abyss. Such rapid hopes and fears sap the vital springs of the constitution. To such a height is the frenzied imagination carried, that every faculty of the soul is strained to bursting."”
