The Ouachita telegraph. [volume] (Monroe, La.) 1865-1889, 1881-02-25
STORY OF A LOTTERY TICKET.

The story was told to me by one
who had been cognizant of every Cir
cumstance he related. He went out
to New Orleans as an agent for a
| travelling exhibition he had got as
far as that city when the con-
Germ burst up, leaving him on his oars,
ana In pretty shoal water. However,
he was not. the man to remain idle.
He cast about him for something to
do, and soon struck lottery office-a
branch of q Havana hOuse-where
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 appear
ed 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 Sc
lected the date of the year of her hus-
bands death for the number, having
dreamed, she said, that number would
draw one of the grand prizes. The
number was 1877. She asked Dan il
he would sell it for her. He took it,
aud sold it, and on the following day,
when the woman called again, he
handed her the ten dollars in full, de-
Quoting no commission for himself.
She thanked him heartily, and went
her way. ..z,
Tho man to whom our clerk had sold
the ticket was u bartender Mt a saloon
on the levee, and he, a day or two later,
being In need Of ten dollars, offered ii
first for sale to n dry goods clerk, who
was in the habit of dropping in, ,issur-
prize. A poor widow had been
warned by a dream OF the lucky num-
Der, and had bought the ticket, but
had been unable to keep it. The
clerk, however, though no had ten
dollars with him, wonld not purchase
It,.
An hour or two later another dry
goods clerk came in, and he bought
the ticket.
In due course of time tho budget
from Havana arrived, bringing the
result of the drawing and ticket
Number 1347 had drawn twenty thou
sand dollars! And now came the
grand result TO those who had to do
with the ticket.
The poor widow who had originally
purchased it of the company, believed
that she had been punished for betray-
ing the unseen spirit that came in her
dream, and In the depth of her grief
kA At5tkSN5S 4Ot t'sk tOS5--StS tCOA u tutut
dose of poison.
The bartender of the levee, who had
owned it, and sold it, frctted himself
into 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 Il 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 cIerkship; launched out
into caurse of conviviality and de-
bauchery, and was fast sinking mot
the slough Of despopd when our friend
gave up his clerkship in tho lottery Of
flee, and left the Crescent City.
So much for one lottery ticket. And
the story is not an exaggeration. 1t is
Il logical sequence-cause and effect
not at all to be wondered at.
N. Y. LEDGER.
The long talked of marriage of the
II