Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 October 1875 — THE LOTTERY TICKET. [ARTICLE]

THE LOTTERY TICKET.

James Lanning was a mechanic, a young, honest man, whose highest ambition was to gain a comfortable living for himself and wife, and to be thought well of by his neighbors. He had built himself a house, and there still remained upon it a mortgage of $500; but this sum he hoped to pay in a very few years if he had only his health. He had calculated exactly how long it would take him to clear off his incumbrance, and he went to work with his eyes open. One evening James came home to his supper more thoughtful than usual. His young wife noticed his manner, and she inquired its cause. “ What is it, Janies ?” she kindly asked. “ Why, 1 never saw you look so sober before.” “ Well, I’ll tell you, Hannah,” returned the young man, with a slight hesitation in his manner. “ I have just been thinking that I would buy a lottery ticket.” Hannah Lanning did not answer immediately. She looked down and smoothed the silken hair of her babe, which was chirping like a little robin in her arms, and the shade of her handsome features showed that she W'as taking time to think. •‘How much will it cost?” she asked, at length, looking half timidly up into her husband’s face. i * 1 " “ Twenty dollars,” returned James, trying to assume a confidence which he did not feel. _ : “ And have you made up your mind to buy it?” “Well, I think I shall. What do you think about it?” “If you should ask my advice, I should say do not buy it.” “But why so?” , “ For many reasons,” returned his wife, in a trembling tone. She would not offend her husband, and she shrank from giving him advice which he might not follow. “ In the first place,” she said, “ I think the whole science of lotteries is a bad one; and then you have no money to risk.” “Butjust look ,at, the prizes,” said James, drawing a “scheme” from his pocket. “Here is one prize of $20,000, another of SIO,OOO, another of $5,000, and so on. Something tells me that if I buy a ticket I shall draw a large prize. And then just think, Hannah, how easily I should pay all up lor my house, and perhaps have agood,handsorfte»sum left.” The young man spoke w ith much earnestness and assurance; but he saw there was a cloud upon his wife’s brow. “It seems to me that the chance of drawing a prize is very doubtful,” said Hannah, as she took the scheme. “ Here are many thousand tickets to be sold.” The babe tried hard to snatch the paper, and Hannah held it aside. “ 1 think I shall run the risk,” resumed James, glancing once more over the paper, and resting with a nervous longing upon the figures which represented the higher prizes. “There’s Barney; he drew about SBOO a year ago,” “ Yes,l know it,” said Hannah with more warmth than she had before manifested, “and what has become of the money? You know he has squandered it all away.

AH, James, money is of no use unless we come honestly by it.” “ Honestly,” repeated tfteyouag man. “ Surely there is nothing dishonest in drawing a prize in a lottery.” “I think there is,” kindly, but emphatically, replied his wife. “ All games of hazard, where money is at stake, are dishonest. Were you tp draw a prize of twenty thousand dollars you would rob a thousand men of twenty dollars each; or at least you would take from them money for which you returned them no equivalent. Is it not gambling in every sense of the word ?” “Oh, no! You look upon/the matter in too strong a light.” “ Perhaps I do; but yet so It looks to me. What you may draw, some one else must lose; and perhaps it may be some one who can afford the loss no better than you can. I wouldn’t buy the ticket, James. Let us live on the products of honest gains and we shall be happier.” . I James Lanning was uneasy. He had nd answer for his wife’s Arguments; at least nio answer that could spring from his moral convictions, and he let the matter drop. But the young man could not drive the siren from his heart. All the next day his head was full of “ prizes,” and while he was at his work he kept muttering to himself, “ Twenty thousand dollars,” “ Ten thousand dollars, “Five thousand dollars,” and so on. When he went Lome the next night he was almost unhappy with the nervous anxiety into which he had thrown himself. The temlpter had grasped him firmly, and whenever he thought of the lottery he saw nothing but piles of gold and silver. In short James Lanning had made up his mind that he would buy the ticket. He went to the little box where he had already SIOO laid up toward paying off the mortgage from his house. The lock clicked with a startling sound, and when he threw back the cover he hesitated. He looked at his wife, and he saw that she was sad. “Oh, I’m sure I shall draw a prize!” he said, with a faint, fading smile, He took four half-eagles from the box and put them in his pocket. His wife said nothing. She played with her baby to hide her sadness, for she did not wish to say more on the subject. She had seen that little pile of gold gradually accumulating, and both she and her husband had been happy in anticipating the day when the pretty cottage would be all their own. But when she saw those four pieces of gold taken away from the store she felt a foreshadowing of evil. She might have spoken against the movement, but she saw that her husband was sorely tender on the subject, and she let the affair go to the hands of fate. A week elapsed from the time that James bought his ticket to the drawing of the lottery, and .during that time the young man had not a moment of real enjoyment. He was alternating between hope and fear, and therefore his mind was constantly on the stretch. At length the clay arrived. James went to the office and found that the drawing had taken place and that the list of prizes had been made out. He seized the list and turned away so that those who stood around should not see his face. He read the list through, but he searched for his number in vain. It was not there. He had drawn a blank! He left the office an unhappy man. Those twenty dollars which he had lost had been the savings of two months of hard labor, and he felt their loss most .keenly. When he returned home that night he told his wife that he lost. She found no fault with him. She only kissed him and told him that the lesson was a good one, even though it had been dearly bought. But James Lanning was not satisfied. He brooded over his loss with a bitter spirit, and at length the thought came to him that he might yet draw a prize. He wished that he had not bought the first ticket, and he thought that if he could only get back his.twenty dollars he would buy no more; but he could not rest under his loss. He was determined to make one more trial, and he did so. This time he purchased the ticket without his wife’s knowledge. The result was the same as before. He drew a blank.

“Forty dollars!” was a sentence that dwelt fearfully upon the mechanic’s lips. “ Oh, I must draw a prize!” he said to himself. “I must make up what I have lost. Let me once do that and I’ll buy no more tickets." Another twenty dollars was taken from the little bank, another blank was drawn. At tlie end of three months the little bank was empty, and James Lanning had the fast ticket in his pocket. Ah, how earnestly he prayed that that last ticket might draw him a prize! He had become pale and careworn, and his wifeApoor, confiding soul, thought he only repined because he had lost twenty dollars. \ When she would try to cheer him he would laugh and try to make the matter light. “ James,” said his wife to him one day —it was the day before that on which the lottery was to be drawn in which he held the sixth ticket—“ Mr. Bowse has been here to-day after his semi-annual interest. I told him that you would see him tomorrow.” “Yes, 1 will,” said James in a faint voice. “ Yes, to-morrow I shall pay him.” Young Lanning thought of the lottery and of the prize. This was his sixth trial, and he fcjt sure that he should draw. The morrow came, and when James Lanning returned to his home at night he was penniless! All his golden visions had faded away, and he was left in darkness and misery. “ James, have you paid Mr. Rowse his interest yet?” said Hannah. The young man leaned his head upon his hands and groaned aloud. “ For Heaven’s sake, James, what has happened?” cried the startled wife, springing to tlie side of her husband, and twining her arms about his neck. SJThe young man looked up with a wild, haggard expression. His lips were bloodless, and his features were all stricken with a death hue. “ What is it?.Oh, what ?” murmured tlie wife. “ Go look in our ,box —our little bank!” groaned the poor man. Hannah hastened away, and when she returned she bore an empty box in her hand. ■ “ Robbed!” she gasped, and she sank tremblingly, down by her husband's side. “ Yes, Hannah,” whispered tlie husband, “ I have robbed you.” * The stricken wife gazed upon her husband with a vacant look, for at first she ci id not comprehend; but she remembered his behavior for weeks past; she remembered how he had murmured in his sleep of lotteries and tickets, of blanks hrfd prizes and gradually the truth broke in upoii her. “ I have done it all, Hannah,” hoarsely whispered the condemned man, when he siiw that his wife guessed the truth. “All has gone for iotteiy tickets. The demon tempter lured me; he held up glittering gold in his hand, but he gave me none of it. Oh, do not chide me! You know not

what I have suffered—what hours of agony I have and you cannot know now. Omy wife, would to Gbd I had listened tj>you!” “ —sh,” calmly whispered the faithful wife, as she drew her hand across her husband’s heated brow. “ Mourn not for what is lost. I wjll not chide thee. It is hard thus for you to lose your scanty earnings, but there might be many calamities worse than that; courage, James; we will soon forget it.” “And Mr. Rowse will foreclose the mortgage. You will be homeless,” murmured young Lanning, in broken accents. “ No; I will see that all is safe in that quarter,” added Hannah. At that moment the babe awoke, and the gentle mother was called to care for it. On the next day, at noon, Hannah Lanning gave her husband a receipt for fifteen dollars from Mr. Rowse. “ Here,” said she, “ interest is paid. Now let us forget all that has passed, and commence again.” / “ But how —what has paid this?” asked James, gazing first upon the receipt and then upon his wife. “ Never mind.” “Ah, but I must mind. Tell me, Han- “ Well, I have sold my gold watch.” “ Sold it!” “ But I can buy it back again. The man will not part with it. But I don’t want it, James', till we are able. Perhaps I shall never want it. You must not chide me, for never did I derive one iota of the pleasure from its possession that I now feel in the result of its disposal.” James Lanning clasped his wife to his bosom and he murmured a prayer, and in that prayer there was a pledge. Two years passed away, and during that time James Lanning lost not a single day from his work. He was as punctual as the sun, and the result was as sure. <■; It was late on Saturday evening when he came home. After supper he drew a paper from his pocket and laid it upon the table. “There, Hannah,” said he, while a noble pride beamed in every feature, “ there is my mortgage. I’ve paid it—every cent. This house is ours; it is our own house. I’ve bought it with dollars, every one of which has been honestly earn.ed by the sweat of my brbw. lam happy now.” Hannah Lanning saw that her husband had opened his arms, and she sat down upon his knee and laid her hand upon his shoulder. “ Oh, blessed moment!” she murmured. “Yes, it is a blessed moment,” responded the husband. “ Do you remember, Hannah, the hour of bitterness that we saw two years ago ?” The wife shuddered, but made no reply. “Ah,” continued the young man, “I have never forgotten, that bitter lesson, and even now I tremble when I think how fatally I was deceived by the tempter that has lured so many thousands to destruction.” “ But its horror is lost in this happy moment,” said Hannah, looking up with a smile. “ Its terror may be lost,” resumed James, “ but its lesson must never be forgotten. Ah, the luring lottery ticket has a dark side—a side which few see until they feel it.’’ “And are not all its sides dark?” softly asked the write. “If there is any brightness about it is only the glare of the fatal ignis fatuus which can only lead the wayward traveler into danger and disquiet.” “ You are right, my dear wife. You were right at first. Ah,” he continued, as he drew the faithful being more closely to his bosom, “if husbands would oftener obey the tender dictates of the loving wife there would be far less of misery in the world than there is now.”