Massachusetts spy and Worcester advertiser. [volume] ([Worcester, Mass.]) 1823-1825, 1824-03-17
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FROM THE PORTSMOUTH JOURNAL.
ANTICJp

To loose good days that might be better
spent,
To waste long nights in pensive discomfort;
To speed tod ", to be put back tomorrow,
To feed on nope, to pine with fear and sorrow;
70 fawn, to crouch, to walk, TO ride, to run,
To spend, TO give, to want, to be undone.'
Spencer.
Much ofthe happiness of younger life
consists in the indulgence of anticipa-
ton ant very many of the miseries of
ripper age, in the pangs of apprehension.
Youth looks forward to manhood with
a sparkling and delighted eye.-Happy
and sanguine &c twenty one" grasps at
the straw of the future, as possessing
all the virtues of the lamp of Aladdin;
yainly hoping to find every imagination,
reality every wish, fruiton; every
anticipation, truth; and that happiness,
fortune, and fame, are merely matters
of course.
But as soon as the gallant adventurer
takes possession Of his Island of Barata-
ria, he finds to his modification, that
like his great predecessor, Governor
Sancho Panza, he is exposed to the buff
lettings of misfortune, the shafts of mall
ice, the rich mans contumely, and that
finally he must make the best of his way,
with his own humble Dapple over the
race ground of human life consoling
himself with Socrates, that Is the fewer
our wants, the nearer we resemble the
gods"
There are certainly very many pref
ty receptions, las we'll as some sore dis
appointments practised upon US, for
which we are indebted 10 the ventrlo-
quism of the imagination where
1.-THE pleasure is as great,
Of being cheated as to cheat"
But unluckily, experience opens our
eyes and dissipates into " idle wind" the
beautiful visions that lowered around
the fancy. The illusions of anticipation
are innumerable.
Nothing is more difficult TO be endur-
ed than the chagrin and modification OF
the credulous holder of lottery tickets.
upon finding that his money lis in the
deep bosom of the ocean buried -
and that all his day dreams ofglory, and
all his well built castles in the air are
buried with it, leaving not wreck be-
hind :-magni nominis umbru Addison
in the Spectator gives us pleasant mar
rative of the whims and follies Of those
who expect to obtain livelihood by
the lottery. One man pitched upon
the number I'LL because that number
+ correspondent with the date of the year;
another was almost furious for the num-
1874, because that was the majority by
which an obnoxious bill was defeated
in the house of Commons; and GER
tain jealous dissenter, being a great
enemy to popery and believing that
bad men are the most fortunate in this
world, would lay two to one on the
number 666 against any other number,
because, he said, =" it is the number OF
the beast" Now, notwithstanding the
fact that thousands of people in this
country and tens of thousands more in
Europe, are annually ruined by the per.
nicious passion of Lottery Gambling
yet there are other thousands and other
ten thousands who in defiance of expe-
rience, arithmetic, common sense and
proba bility impovish themselves by
throwing buckets into empty wells
and growing oldin drawing nothing up.''
Still Ounce the second bugs like Ounce the
first"
And the professed gambler too, cheat
ed by anticipation, and cheated by hi:
unPrincipled companions, shakes again
his foolish cap.-throws his last die, and
dies.
Even the every day concerns Of life
j are fraught with wholesome instruction