"Never Bet The Devil Your Head" - читать интересную книгу автора (Poe Edgar Allan)

and De mortuis nil nisi bonum is an excellent injunction- even if
the dead in question be nothing but dead small beer. It is not my
design, therefore, to vituperate my deceased friend, Toby Dammit. He
was a sad dog, it is true, and a dog's death it was that he died;
but he himself was not to blame for his vices. They grew out of a
personal defect in his mother. She did her best in the way of flogging
him while an infant- for duties to her well- regulated mind were
always pleasures, and babies, like tough steaks, or the modern Greek
olive trees, are invariably the better for beating- but, poor woman!
she had the misfortune to be left-handed, and a child flogged
left-handedly had better be left unflogged. The world revolves from
right to left. It will not do to whip a baby from left to right. If
each blow in the proper direction drives an evil propensity out, it
follows that every thump in an opposite one knocks its quota of
wickedness in. I was often present at Toby's chastisements, and,
even by the way in which he kicked, I could perceive that he was
getting worse and worse every day. At last I saw, through the tears in
my eyes, that there was no hope of the villain at all, and one day
when he had been cuffed until he grew so black in the face that one
might have mistaken him for a little African, and no effect had been
produced beyond that of making him wriggle himself into a fit, I could
stand it no longer, but went down upon my knees forthwith, and,
uplifting my voice, made prophecy of his ruin.
The fact is that his precocity in vice was awful. At five months
of age he used to get into such passions that he was unable to
articulate. At six months, I caught him gnawing a pack of cards. At
seven months he was in the constant habit of catching and kissing
the female babies. At eight months he peremptorily refused to put
his signature to the Temperance pledge. Thus he went on increasing
in iniquity, month after month, until, at the close of the first year,
he not only insisted upon wearing moustaches, but had contracted a
propensity for cursing and swearing, and for backing his assertions by
bets.
Through this latter most ungentlemanly practice, the ruin which I
had predicted to Toby Dammit overtook him at last. The fashion had
"grown with his growth and strengthened with his strength," so that,
when he came to be a man, he could scarcely utter a sentence without
interlarding it with a proposition to gamble. Not that he actually
laid wagers- no. I will do my friend the justice to say that he
would as soon have laid eggs. With him the thing was a mere formula-
nothing more. His expressions on this head had no meaning attached
to them whatever. They were simple if not altogether innocent
expletives- imaginative phrases wherewith to round off a sentence.
When he said "I'll bet you so and so," nobody ever thought of taking
him up; but still I could not help thinking it my duty to put him
down. The habit was an immoral one, and so I told him. It was a vulgar
one- this I begged him to believe. It was discountenanced by
society- here I said nothing but the truth. It was forbidden by act of
Congress- here I had not the slightest intention of telling a lie. I
remonstrated- but to no purpose. I demonstrated- in vain. I entreated-