"
A highly respectable gentleman drew twenty thousand dollars in a
lottery; bought more tickets, and drew again; bought more--drew more
largely; then rushed down headlong until he was pronounced by the
select men of the village a vagabond, and his children were picked up
from the street half starved and almost naked.
A hard-working machinist draws a thousand dollars; thenceforth he is
disgusted with work, opens a rum grocery, is utterly debauched, and
people go in his store to find him dead, close beside his rum-cask.
It would take a pen plucked from the wing of the destroying angel and
dipped in blood to describe this lottery business.
A man committed suicide in New York, and upon his person was found a
card of address giving a grog-shop as his boarding house, three blank
lottery tickets, and a leaf from _Seneca's Morals_, containing an
apology for self-murder.
One lottery in London was followed by the suicide of fifty persons who
held unlucky numbers.
There are men now, with lottery tickets in their pocket, which, if
they have not sense enough to tear up or throw into the fire, will be
their admission ticket at the door of the damned.
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