Birmingham age-herald., 1895-06-15

profound chemist. at home with the poets and the great minds of literature. His English, when he chose to write. was terse and epigrammatic. He was q critic of sound judgment and fine at tainments. His Shakespeare lore was It his finger tips.
 Far back in the ,50s John A. Morris endeavored to ascend the throne of the lottery kingdom. It is known that in his early life he went to Wilmington. Del, and there established daily draw ing of a lottery. It is said that the city taxed him S25,000 a month for the priv ilege, and gave him an exclusive fran chise. For time he prospered, yet one day his own agents devised a scheme which wrecked him.
 But even here John A. Morris luck stood by him. Just as the scheme to swindle him got under way, the moral element in the city enjoined him from operating. He bonded the injunction and went on. The city was afraid to take his $25,0O0 per month in the face of the public censure. So each month he ten dered the same s25.000 and his tender was refused. For seven months this went on, until, finally, $175,000 was due. And also about this time the $25,000 rendered was all that John A. Morris had left after paying the losses due to the successful
 
 At this stage of Morris Wilmington ca- reer, the courts dissolved the injunction, the city claimed it's S75,0o0 and the lot tery scheme, of course, came to an end. There was no money to pay the city, and Wilmington's daily lottery was a thing of the past.
 But John A. Morris was a "good loser He did not yield to adversity's' hard blows. He set about planning in other directions. It was not long be- fore reconstruction days came in the south Society had not yet settled to normal conditions, and Louisiana, was more unsettled than any other southern state I2ue laws had no place; loose laws were in vogue, and they were un- usually loose with regard to games of chance. To Louisiana, therefore. went the future lottery king. Associating himself with kindred spirits in the world of chance, among others the ner- Yous and nervy Charlie T. Howard, John A. Morris secured. in 1868, from the legislature of Louisiana a charter for the Louisiana State Lottery com pany. The shares were $10 each, and members of the legislature were ann ply supplied with them. To the close of the Louisiana lotterys career, in 1894, when the state drove the company out. some of the members of the leg islature of 1868. or their heirs. held stock.
 The scheme of the Louisiana lottery was to give each month a capital prize of $S0.000, with other financial "possi- bilities," aggregating $112500..
 There were 100000 tickets at $2 each. aggregating $200,000. If all the tickets were sold the profit was $S7.5O0 per month, exclusive of expenses. Honesty was the best policy for the company. At any and all events the master mechanic of this new road to fortune, John A. Nor ris insisted that every drawing should be honest, because in honesty lay all the profit. The chances against the ticket buyer were enormous, but give him that chance" was the motto of the company.
 Soon the capital prize was made H5, 600, and the aggregate monthly output of the company was $251 300. Then there were 100000 tickets as before, but they cost So each So the company's gross profit was $24S5O0 per month, provided all tickets were sold
 This ."lottery king had no vices. He never drank even the mildest of wines; smoking he eschewed as a deadly poison; gambling was not a part of his personal creed. Though he had q large stable of horses, he never wagered a dollar on the turf. Tn his domestic life he was sin gularly free from any tendency to flash and display. His mind was of a philo- sophie turn. Those who knew him in- timately and had an insight into his true nature saw, years ago. that melancholy had marked him for her own. In the midst of the gay throng, while his face did not betray it, his words showed the spirit of the blase; he had worn out life's pleasures by having known and enjoyed them all.
 His charities were simply limitless He knew how to do good and good only. A score of young men he educated each year-a legion of relatives shared his bounty. Every poverty-stricken wre1 il that reached him came from him the richer His life was one continual round of goodness to his fellows. Yet he was never happy--the shadow of the lottery was upon him always, and it was a shad- ow that never dissolved Suns might come and suns might go, but the shadow went on forever And he, beyond all other men, saw it, knew it and felt it.