t consider in what way to communicate the
happy tidings to his wife and family; but, upon repassing the shop, he
observed that the number was altered to 10,069, and, upon inquiry, had
the mortification to learn that his ticket was a blank, and had only
been stuck up in the window by a mistake of the clerk. This effectually
calmed his agitation; but he always speaks of himself as having once
possessed twenty thousand pounds, and maintains that his ten-minutes'
walk round St. Paul's was worth ten times the purchase-money of the
ticket. A prize thus obtained has, moreover, this special advantage: it
is beyond the reach of fate; it cannot be squandered; bankruptcy cannot
lay siege to it; friends cannot pull it down, nor enemies blow it up; it
bears a charmed life, and none of woman born can break its integrity,
even by the dissipation of a single fraction. Show me the property in
these perilous times that is equally compact and impregnable. We can no
longer become enriched for a quarter of an hour; we can no longer
succeed in such splendid failures: all our chances of making such a miss
have vanished with the last of the Lotteries.

Life will now become a flat, prosaic routine of matter-of-fact; and
sleep itself, erst so prolific of numerical configurations and
mysterious stimulants to lottery-adventure, will be disfurnished of its
figures and figments. People will cease to harp upon the one lucky
number suggested in a dream, and which forms the exception, while they
are scrupulously silent upon the ten thousand falsified dreams which
constitute the rule. Morpheus will stifle Cocker with a handful of
poppies, and our pillows will be no longer haunted by the book of
numbers.

And who, too, shall maintain the art and mystery of puffing in all its
pristine glory, when the lottery-professors shall have abandoned its
cultivation? They were the first, as they will assuredly be the last,
who fully developed the resources of that ingenious art,--who cajoled
and decoyed the most suspicious and wary reader into a perusal of their
advertisements by devices of endless variety and cunning,--who baited
their lurking schemes with midnight murders, ghost-stories, crim-cons,
bon-mots, balloons, dreadful catastrophes, and every diversity of joy
and sorrow, to catch newspaper-gudgeons. Ought not such talents to be
encouraged? Verily the abolitionists have much to answer for!

And now, having established the felicity of all those who gained