Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It was the chief support of the old couple; for Mr. Sedley's speculations in life subsequent to his bankruptcy did not by any means retrieve the broken old gentleman's fortune. He tried to be a wine-merchant, a coal-merchant, a commission lottery agent, &c., &c.
Even the Quakers winked at the godless doings of their fellow citizens, while the enrollment and drill of a volunteer force went forward, and funds were raised for building and arming a battery. Franklin suggested a lottery, to raise money, and went to New York to borrow guns.
But if he has been more happily gifted he will decide that the magnificent adventure is worth plunging into; the ineradicable and fine gambling instinct in him will urge him to take, at the first chance, a ticket in the only lottery permitted by the British Government.
One captain in that employ won a cool ten thousand dollars in Bahia Blanca. It was the thing to do. Up in the agent's office the clerks would talk over the lottery drawings, and each skipper would be anxious to do the same as the others you see? Well, my Old Man had bought fifty tickets. He was full of a system by which he picked them. Every third one, then every third one again. A mad idea!
To this stir of tragi-comedy, To these fortune-waves that madly swell, To this vain and childish lottery, To this busy crowd effecting naught, To this rest with labor teeming o'er, Brother! to this heaven with devils fraught, Now thine eyes have closed forevermore. Fare thee well, oh, thou to memory dear, By our blessings lulled to slumbers sweet!
On Broadway, down town, there are several large lottery offices, well known, frequented by merchants and well-to-do business men, where policy is played with high stakes, where hundreds of tickets are sold daily. There is one near John street, on Broadway.
Who will profit by it? Speculators; a few lucky merchants, who draw prizes in the lottery; commissaries and contractors. Who must suffer by it? The people. It is their blood, their taxes that must flow to support it.
At dessert Calsabigi begged me to give him my opinion of a scheme he had drafted, the aim of which was to bring in a sum of two million crowns, so that the credit of the lottery might remain secure. The lady left us to talk business at our ease.
He regrets the Pontifical Government, having had a cousin who was a Cardinal's train-bearer, and believes that if only you lay a table for two, light four candles made of dead men's fat, and perform certain rites about which he is not very precise, you can, on Christmas Eve and similar nights, summon up San Pasquale Baylon, who will write you the winning numbers of the lottery upon the smoked back of a plate, if you have previously slapped him on both cheeks and repeated three Ave Marias.
The same saint proves that all evils spring from women ; and in another passage he opines that marriage is indeed a lottery and the vices of women are too great to make it worth while. "The sex is practiced in deceiving," observes St. Maximus. St. Augustine disputes subtly whether woman is the image of God as well as man.
Word Of The Day