To _The Rambler_.
Sir,
As I have passed much of 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 propensity, 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 affairs even then
seem of any importance, till I discovered by the public papers that
the number next to mine had conferred the great prize.
My heart leaped at the thoughts of such an approach of 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 a 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 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 off; considered the
square and cubic 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 contemplations of approaching happiness; when the
sun arose 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 dispatch. 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 produced 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, and
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.
_Samuel Johnson._