A GAME OF "CHANCE."

Evening Post, Volume LXXI, Issue 142, 16 June 1906, Page 14

A GAME OF "CHANCE."

To persons who would cleansa from taint of gambling our indoor games of chance and pkill (says "Civis," in the Otago Witness). I am able to offer a tip. A Mr. A. M. Chaiice sst up a billiard table in his own house that his sons and their fiicnds might enjoy a quiet game amongst) themselves. Mr. Chance is not, as his name mijht suggest, a personified abstract.on^boiroft-ed from Bunyan, but a citiacn of Birmingham, chairman of the Licensing Justices and a patron of t!he local V.M.C.A. Having set up his private billiard table Mr. Chance was urged by specious arguments to allow betting. '"A small bet on the game added to ito interest; but nobody desired to play for money for the sake of money, oh, dear, no ! — the idea was scorned." "Very well," said Mr Chance, "you ma-\ play for money if you like. You can have shilling, pound, or even five-pound note points, if you like; I only make one stipulation I have here n. box for the Children's Hospithl, and as you aTe not playing for tine money itself, all the winnings can be dropped in that box The man who wine will not, of course, begrudge putting the money there, because he is not playing for the money itself, and Uhe man 'who loses will have the satisfaction of knowing that he has done some good to a deserving institution." It is melancholy tto add that a billiard room money box set up on these conditions collects no money. Says Mr. Chance, "There has not been a single penny put into that box up to this day " I should like to see a similar experiment tried at some of our Dunedin - bridge parties.

Speaking at 'a so-called "Pleasant Sunday Afternoon " of tho Korumburra branch of the Political Labour Council, Mr. Solly, M.L.A., fulminated as follows:—"It was damnable that hundreds of thousands of pounds should be expended in building churches for the people to enter onco a week, instead oi every lnlfpenny being spent to assist tho poor and the downtrodden in getting justice. If people went to church the pl«fe was stuck into their faco3 as soon as they entered, The middle and upper classes of Victoria were the worst class of snobocracy, and wero a set of hypocrites." "One year's seeding makes seven years' weeding ' is a farmer's old maxim, and once noxious growths have taken possession of the land it is an expensive and difficult matter to extirpate them.