What was the matter with Marcus? At moments he
seemed singularly out of temper.
But the agent was full of stories. He told his experiences, the legends
and myths that had grown up around the history of the lottery; he told
of the poor newsboy with a dying mother to support who had drawn a prize
of fifteen thousand; of the man who was driven to suicide through want,
but who held (had he but known it) the number that two days after his
death drew the capital prize of thirty thousand dollars; of the little
milliner who for ten years had played the lottery without success, and
who had one day declared that she would buy but one more ticket and then
give up trying, and of how this last ticket had brought her a fortune
upon which she could retire; of tickets that had been lost or destroyed,
and whose numbers had won fabulous sums at the drawing; of criminals,
driven to vice by poverty, and who had reformed after winning
competencies; of gamblers who played the lottery as they would play
a faro bank, turning in their winnings again as soon as made, buying
thousands of tickets all over the country; of superstitions as to
terminal and initial numbers, and as to lucky days of purchase; of
marvellous coincidences--three capital prizes drawn consecutively by the
same town; a ticket bought by a millionaire and given to his boot-black,
who won a thousand dollars upon it; the same number winning the same
amount an indefinite number of times; and so on to infinity.
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