SIR,

AS I have passed much of my life in disquiet and

suspense, and lost many opportunities of advantage

by a passion which I have reason to believe

prevalent in different degrees over a great part of

mankind, I cannot but think myself well qualified

to warn those who are yet uncaptivated, of the

danger which they incur by placing themselves

within its influence.

I served an apprenticeship to a linen-draper, with

uncommon reputation for diligence and fidelity;

and at the age of three-and-twenty opened a shop

for myself with a large stock, and such credit

among all the merchants, who were acquainted with

my master, that I could command whatever was

imported curious or valuable. For five years I

proceeded with success proportionate to close application

and untainted integrity; was a daring bidder at every

sale; always paid my notes before they were due,

and advanced so fast in commercial reputation, that

I was proverbially marked out as the model of young

traders, and every one expected that a few years

would make me an alderman.

In this course of even prosperity, I was one day

persuaded to buy a ticket in the lottery. The sum

was inconsiderable, part was to be repaid though

fortune might fail to favour me, and therefore my

established maxims of frugality did not restrain me

from so trifling an experiment. The ticket lay

almost forgotten till the time at which every man's

fate was to be determined; nor did the affair even

then seem of any importance, till I discovered by

the publick papers that the numbers next to mine

had conferred the great prize.

My heart leaped at the thought of such an

approach to sudden riches, which I considered myself,

however contrarily to the laws of computation, as

having missed by a single chance; and I could not

forbear to revolve the consequences which such as

bounteous allotment would have produced, if it had

happened to me. This dream of felicity, by degrees,

took possession of my imagination. The great delight

of my solitary hours was to purchase an estate,

and form plantations with money which once might

have been mine, and I never met my friends but I

spoiled all their merriment by perpetual complaints

of my ill luck.

At length another lottery was opened, and I had

now so heated my imagination with the prospect

of a prize, that I should have pressed among the

first purchasers, had not my ardour been withheld

by deliberation upon the probability of success from

one ticket rather than another. I hesitated long

between even and odd; considered the square and

cubick numbers through the lottery; examined all

those to which good luck had been hitherto annexed;

and at last fixed upon one, which, by some

secret relation to the events of my life, I thought

predestined to make me happy. Delay in great

affairs is often mischievous; the ticket was sold,

and its possessor could not be found.

I returned to my conjectures, and after many arts

of prognostication, fixed upon another chance, but

with less confidence. Never did captive, heir, or

lover, feel so much vexation from the slow pace of

time, as I suffered between the purchase of my

ticket and the distribution of the prizes. I solaced

my uneasiness as well as I could, by frequent

contemplation of approaching happiness; when the sun

rose I knew it would set, and congratulated myself

at night that I was so much nearer to my wishes.

At last the day came, my ticket appeared, and

rewarded all my care and sagacity with a despicable

prize of fifty pounds.

My friends, who honestly rejoiced upon my

success, were very coldly received; I hid myself a

fortnight in the country, that my chagrin might

fume away without observation, and then returning

to my shop, began to listen after another lottery.

With the news of a lottery I was soon gratified,

and having now found the vanity of conjecture,

and inefficacy of computation, I resolved to take

the prize by violence, and therefore bought forty

tickets, not omitting, however, to divide them

between the even and odd numbers, that I might not

miss the lucky class. Many conclusions did I form,

and many experiments did I try, to determine from

which of those tickets I might most reasonably

expect riches. At last, being unable to satisfy myself

by any modes of reasoning, I wrote the numbers

upon dice, and allotted five hours every day to the

amusement of throwing them in a garret; and,

examining the event by an exact register, found, on

the evening before the lottery was drawn, that one

of my numbers had been turned up five times more

than any of the rest in three hundred and thirty

thousand throws.

This experiment was fallacious; the first day

presented the hopeful ticket, a detestable blank. The

rest came out with different fortune, and in conclusion

I lost thirty pounds by this great adventure.

I had now wholly changed the cast of my behaviour

and the conduct of my life. The shop was for

the most part abandoned to my servants, and if I

entered it, my thoughts were so engrossed by my

tickets, that I scarcely heard or answered a

question, but considered every customer as an intruder

upon my meditations, whom I was in haste to

despatch. I mistook the price of my goods,

committed blunders in my bills, forgot to file my

receipts, and neglected to regulate my books. My

acquaintances by degrees began to fall away; but I

perceived the decline of my business with little

emotion, because whatever deficience there might

be in my gains, I expected the next lottery to

supply.

Miscarriage naturally produces diffidence; I

began now to seek assistance against ill luck, by an

alliance with those that had been more successful.

I inquired diligently at what office any prize had

been sold, that I might purchase of a propitious

vender; solicited those who had been fortunate in

former lotteries, to partake with me in my new

tickets; and whenever I met with one that had in

any event of his life been eminently prosperous, I

invited him to take a larger share. I had, by this rule

of conduct, so diffused my interest, that I had a

fourth part of fifteen tickets, an eighth of forty, and

a sixteenth of ninety.

I waited for the decision of my fate with my

former palpitations, and looked upon the business

of my trade with the usual neglect. The wheel at

last was turned, and its revolutions brought me a

long succession of sorrows and disappointments. I

indeed often partook of a small prize, and the loss

of one day was generally balanced by the gain of

the next; but my desires yet remained unsatisfied,

and when one of my chances had failed, all

my expectation was suspended on those which

remained yet undetermined. At last a prize of five

thousand pounds was proclaimed; I caught fire at

the cry, and inquiring the number, found it to be

one of my own tickets, which I had divided among

those on whose luck I depended, and of which I

had retained only a sixteenth part.

You will easily judge with what detestation of

himself, a man thus intent upon gain reflected that

he had sold a prize which was once in his possession.

It was to no purpose, that I represented to

my mind the impossibility of recalling the past, or

the folly of condemning an act, which only its

event, an event which no human intelligence could

foresee, proved to be wrong. The prize which,

though put in my hands, had been suffered to slip

from me, filled me with anguish, and knowing that

complaint would only expose me to ridicule, I gave

myself up silently to grief, and lost by degrees my

appetite and my rest.

My indisposition soon became visible; I was

visited by my friends, among them by Eumathes, a

clergyman, whose piety and learning gave him such

an ascendant over me, that I could not refuse to

open my heart. There are, said he, few minds sufficiently

firm to be trusted in the hands of chance.

Whoever finds himself inclined to anticipate futurity,

and exalt possibility to certainty, should avoid

every kind of casual adventure, since his grief must

be always proportionate to his hope. You have long

wasted that time, which, by a proper application,

would have certainly, though moderately, increased

your fortune, in a laborious and anxious pursuit of

a species of gain, which no labour or anxiety, no art

or expedient, can secure or promote. You are now

fretting away your life in repentance of an act,

against which repentance can give no caution, but

to avoid the occasion of committing it. Rouse from

this lazy dream of fortuitous riches, which, if

obtained, you could scarcely have enjoyed, because

they could confer no consciousness of desert; return

to rational and manly industry, and consider the

mere gift of luck as below the care of a wise man.