Relatives
and friends I have, from whom I do not wish to part under such
circumstances, but necessity compels. Oh, wretch! lottery tickets have
been thy ruin. But I cannot add more."
There are multitudes of people who disapprove of ordinary lotteries,
yet have been thoroughly deceived by iniquity under a more attractive
nomenclature. The lottery in which our most highly respectable and
Christian people invest is some "Art Association," or some benevolent
"Gift Enterprise," in which they fondly believe there can be no harm
in drawing Bierstadt's _Yosemite Valley_, or Cropsey's _American
Autumn_!
At no time have lottery tickets been sown so broadcast as to-day,
notwithstanding the law forbids the old-style lottery.
A few years ago our newspapers flamed with the advertisements of the
Crosby Opera House scheme. A citizen of Chicago, finding on his hands
an unprofitable building, calls upon the whole country to help him
out. Rooms are opened in all the great cities. In rush, not the
abandoned and the reprobate (for _they_ like the old styles of
swindling better), but the educated and refined and polished, until a
host of people are in imminent peril of having thrown upon their hands
a splendid Opera House.
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