A STORY OF A LOTTERY TICKET.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume XI, Issue 1334, 26 July 1883, Page 4

A STORY OF A LOTTERY TICKET.

The story was told by one who had been cognisant of every circumstance he related. He went out to New Orleans as agent for a travelling exhibition. He had got as far as that city when the concern burst up, leaving him on his oars, and in pretty shoal water. However, he was not the man to remain idle. He cast about him for something to do, and soon struck a lottery office—a branch of a Havana house—where a faithful clerk was wanted. The day for drawing was near at hand, and business was driving. Dan had been at work at his desk but a short time when to him appeared a pale-faced, forlorn-looking woman, who had invested ten dollars in a ticket; but she had come to want, and could not keep it. She had selected the date of the year of her husband’s death for the number, having dreamed, she said, that that number would draw one of the grand prizes. The number was 1847. She asked Dan if he would sell it for her. He took it and sold it, and on the followsng day, when the woman called again, he handed her the ten dollars in full, deducting no commission for himself. She thanked him heartily, and went her wsy. The man to whom our clerk had sold the ticket was a bar-tender at a saloon on the Levee, and he, a day or two later, being in need of ten dollars, offered it first for sale to a dry goods clerk, who was in the habit of droping in, assuring him that it was sure to draw a prize. A poor widow had been warned by a dream of the lucky number, and had bought the ticket, but had been unable to keep it. The clerk, however, though he had ten dollars with him, would not purchase it.

An hour or two later, another drygoods clerk came in, and he bought the ticket. In due course of time, the budget from Havana arrived, bringing the result of the drawing, and ticket No. 1847 had drawn 20,000d01s 1 And now came the grand result to those who had to do with that ticket. The poor widow who had originally purchased it from the company believed that she had been punished for betraying the unseen spirit that had come to her in her dream, and in the depth of her grief—in distress for her loss—she took a fatal dose of poison. The bar-tender of the Levee, who had owned it and sold it, fretted himself into a fever, and, from the fever and over-drinking died within two weeks. The unfortunate dry goods clerk, to whom the ticket had been offered, and who had refused to purchase, felt that he had lost twenty thousand dollars, and in sorrow and chagrin he sought to bury his remembrance in drink, and was last seen an outcast and a beggar, without home or friends. And lastly, the other dry goods clerk, who had purchased the lucky ticket, and who drew the fortune which it brought him, lost his head, threw up his clerkship, launched out into a course of conviviality and de* bauchery, and was fast sinking into the slough of despond when our friend gave up his clerkship in the lottery office and left the Crescent City. So much for one lottery ticket, And the story is not an exaggeration. It is a logical sequence ; cause and effect not to be wondered at.