day presented the hopeful
ticket, a detestable blank. The rest came out with different fortune,
and in conclusion I lost thirty pounds by this great adventure.

I had now wholly changed the cast of my behaviour and the conduct of
my life. The shop was for the most part abandoned to my servants, and
if I entered it, my thoughts were so engrossed by my tickets that I
scarcely heard or answered a question, but considered every customer
as an intruder upon my meditations, whom I was in haste to dispatch. I
mistook the price of my goods, committed blunders in my bills, forgot
to file my receipts, and neglected to regulate my books. My
acquaintances by degrees began to fall away; but I perceived the
decline of my business with little emotion, because whatever
deficience there might be in my gains I expected the next lottery to
supply.

Miscarriage naturally produced diffidence; I began now to seek
assistance against ill luck, by an alliance with those that had been
more successful. I inquired diligently at what office any prize had
been sold, that I might purchase of a propitious vender; solicited
those who had been fortunate in former lotteries, to partake with me
in my new tickets, and whenever I met with one that had in any event
of his life been eminently prosperous, I invited him to take a larger
share. I had, by this rule of conduct, so diffused my interest, that I
had a fourth part of fifteen tickets, an eighth of forty, and a
sixteenth of ninety.

I waited for the decision of my fate with my former palpitations, and
looked upon the business of my trade with the usual neglect. The wheel
at last was turned, and its revolutions brought me a long succession
of sorrows and disappointments. I indeed often partook of a small
prize, and the loss of one day was generally balanced by the gain of
the next; but my desires yet remained unsatisfied, and when one of my
chances had failed, all my expectation was suspended on those which
remained yet undetermined. At last a prize of five thousand pounds was
proclaimed; I caught fire at the cry, and inquiring the number, found
it to be one of my own tickets, which I had divided among those on
whose luck I depended, and of which I had retained only a sixteenth
part.

You will easily judge with what detestation of himself a man thus
intent upon gain reflected that he had sold a prize which was once in
his possession. It was to no purpose that I represented to my mind the
impossibi