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Lottery   Listen
noun
Lottery  n.  (pl. lotteries)  
1.
A scheme for the distribution of prizes by lot or chance; esp., a gaming scheme in which one or more tickets bearing particular numbers draw prizes, and the rest of the tickets are blanks. Fig.: An affair of chance. Note: The laws of the United States and of most of the States make private lotteries illegal, except in certain circumstances for charitable institutions; however, many of the states now conduct lotteries tehmselves as a revenue source.
2.
Allotment; thing allotted. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Lottery" Quotes from Famous Books



... preparation and some difficulty in keeping up supplies for the camp and the porters. It is the most promising place, however, for black-maned lion and elephant, and on account of these two capital prizes in the lottery of big game hunting occasional parties are willing to venture the time and expense necessary to ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon

... one of Quiroga's proteges: that government clerk is regarded in Manila as very clever. That one farther on, he of the frowning look and unkempt mustache, is a government official who passes for a most meritorious fellow because he has the courage to speak ill of the business in lottery tickets carried on between Quiroga and an exalted dame in Manila society. The fact is that two thirds of the tickets go to China and the few that are left in Manila are sold at a premium of a half-real. The honorable gentleman entertains ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal

... dialect we find the same variety of types and nationalities characteristic of the Pacific coast: the little Mexican maiden, Pachita, in the old mission garden; the wicked Bill Nye, who tries to cheat the Heathen Chinee at euchre and to rob Injin Dick of his winning lottery ticket; the geological society on the Stanislaw who settle their scientific debates with chunks of old red sandstone and the skulls of mammoths; the unlucky Mr. Dow, who finally strikes gold while digging a well, and builds a house with a "coopilow;" and Flynn, of Virginia, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... a strange hankering after whatever is of the nature of a lottery. So the prizes are but splendid, no matter, if they are but few compared with the blanks. We are given to presuming each on his own good fortune. "Nothing venture, nothing have," has become a proverb. So agriculture is treated as if it had no rewards, because one ...
— The Growth of Thought - As Affecting the Progress of Society • William Withington

... were overcome with bitter rage. Then, as a consolation, they would think of plans for making a colossal fortune, seeking all sorts of devices. Felicite would fancy herself the winner of the grand prize of a hundred thousand francs in some lottery, while Pierre pictured himself carrying out some wonderful speculation. They lived with one sole thought—that of making a fortune immediately, in a few hours—of becoming rich and enjoying themselves, if only for a year. Their ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola

... it was usual for them to enjoy their wives by turns. But as it happened sometimes that some of them lost their turns owing to the King's absence, or to their being unwell, then in such cases the women whose turns had been passed over, and those whose turns had come, used to have a sort of lottery, and the ointment of all the claimants were sent to the King, who accepted the ointment of one of them, and thus settled ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana

... of the subject has so shaken that opinion, that I should be sorry now you laid the least stress upon it. Every man who goes into a court of law, and especially every man who attacks a newspaper there, does, under our blessed system of newspaper government, expose himself to a lottery, the chances of which no man can foresee, and out of which it would be much more desirable to keep himself. But, then, in this as in other cases, one may be driven to the wall, and obliged to do that which in itself one is far from wishing. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

... pretty indeed seen from above; not at all so pretty, seen from below. For, observe, while to one family this deity is indeed the Goddess of Getting-on, to a thousand families she is the Goddess of not Getting-on. "Nay," you say, "they have all their chance." Yes, so has every one in a lottery, but there must always be the same number of blanks. "Ah! but in a lottery it is not skill and intelligence which take the lead, but blind chance." What then! do you think the old practice, that "they should ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... punished by their masters that they may be saved, while there is yet time, from the wrath of an avenging Heaven. Some men use old pawn-tickets for wrapping up things—it may be a cabbage or a pound of bean-curd. Others use lottery-tickets of various descriptions for wrapping up a picked vegetable or a slice of pork, with no thought of the crime they are committing as long as there is a cash to be made or saved. So also there are those ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles

... heel of his boot and 2 pages had been rolled into a spill and partly burned. So no one had read anything. I am so happy. And at supper Father said: I say, why are your eyes shining with delight? Have you won the big prize in the lottery? and I pressed Mother's foot with mine to remind her not to give me away and Father laughed like anything and said: Seems to me there's a conspiracy against me in my own house. And I said in a great hurry: Luckily we're not in our own house but in a hotel, and everyone laughed ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl

... advantage. The splendid chandeliers and lustres of the drawing-room were lighted for the same reason as the lamps in the glittering retail stores of Broadway; and the brilliant effect of the taste of the young ladies was intended much like the nightly lustre of the lottery- offices, to tempt adventurers to try their chances. >From this premeditated scheme of conquest we ought, in justice, however, to except Maria herself, who, from constitutional gayety and thoughtlessness, seldom ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper

... excessive prize to the first boy in a school and flogged the second, I should not be doing justice. If one man is rewarded for a moderate amount of forethought by becoming a millionaire, and his unsuccessful rivals punished by starvation or the workhouse, the lottery of life is not arranged on principles of justice. A man must be a very determined optimist if he denied the painful truth to be found in such statements. He must be blind to many evils if he does not perceive the danger of dulling his sympathies by indifference ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen

... Gitano. He is a good ginete, too; next to myself, there is none like him, only he rides with stirrup leathers too short. Inglesito, if you have need of money, I will lend you my purse. All I have is at your service, and that is not a little; I have just gained four thousand chules by the lottery. Courage, Englishman! Another cup. I will pay ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... with your permission, I will not advise at all. Your father tried in the same lottery and drew a blank; you may gain the highest prize; but my hopes with your sister render it a most delicate subject for my opinion. Your own ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat

... mistakes, and any one who can get good out of evil is the safest sort of human being to raise in this garden plot of human souls. The judge may have been more doubtful about the stone mason, but in the young man's own phrase he considered him, too, a good bet in the human lottery. ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick

... thing. Say, I bet he was hopping mad when he tore open that package, and saw what he had drawn in the lottery, eh, Thad?" ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne

... can easily explain why it is so. Mining is like a lottery—where one draws a prize, hundreds lose. We might dig deep into the earth where we are seated, and it would surprise no one if we took out gold by the pound; and yet no one would think of laughing if we did not earn our salt. The case ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... pretty well, but indeed they are sadly mortified. Mrs. H. is cast down. It was well, if it were but on this account, that Tuthill is come home. N.B.—If my little thing don't succeed, I shall easily survive, having, as it were, compared to H.'s venture, but a sixteenth in the lottery. Mary and I are to sit next the orchestra in the pit, next the tweedle-dees. She remembers you. You are more to us than five ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb

... assented to their opinions. They declared last year that it was a losing trade at two slaves to a ton, and yet they pursued it when restricted to five slaves to three tons. He believed, however, that it was upon the whole a losing concern; in the same manner as the lottery would be a losing adventure to any company who should buy all the tickets. Here and there an individual gained a large prize, but the majority of adventurers gained nothing. The same merchants, too, had asserted, that the town of Liverpool would be mined ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson

... store was Simon's one main chance, the chief prize in his hope's lottery; and it was with a pang, indeed, that he found all his endeavours to compass its possession had been vain. Was that endless cribbage nothing, and the weary Bible-lessons on a Sunday, and the constant fetchings and carryings, and the forced ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... Chicago, enlisted the sympathies of noble-hearted men in the cause of her husband, prevailing upon a delegation of noble Illinoisans to accompany her to Washington, and, with their assistance, secured the confirmation of the Colonel as a brigadier-general of volunteers. Truly, in the lottery matrimonial, Colonel Turchin had the fortune to draw ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett

... now sold surreptitiously in New York are supposed to be drawn in Kentucky; but years ago numbers were drawn from a wheel on the steps at the old City Hall in the park. When the State Legislature annulled the charter of the lottery company and declared the game illegal, it moved over to New Jersey, where it was drawn as ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe

... further comment. The lottery had drawn the doctor's son this time; it would get some one else with the next rush. Existence had resolved itself into a hazard; all perspective was merged into a brimstone-gray background. The men did not think of home and parents, as they had on the previous ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... detained and sent in a neutral vessel for breach of belligerent rights. After long legal proceedings, extending over five years, she was condemned, and proved to be a very valuable prize to the captors. "Our friend Charles Pole," he writes, "has been fortunate in his trial; but the lottery is so very much against an officer, that never will I knowingly involve myself in a doubtful cause. Prize-money is doubtless very acceptable; but my mind would have suffered so much, that no pecuniary ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... description of lotteries, I shall confine myself to the lottery scheme before us; because it will serve as an example of all others, and because the reader will be better able to comprehend explanations of this system than if I were to write of some scheme ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green

... of preventing their opposition. There was no just ground, in his case, for the complaint that he received large fees for services he did not render; for the chances were understood by those who adventured in his lottery; in which after all there were comparatively few blanks. His name was 'a tower of strength,' which it was delightful to know that the adverse faction wanted, and which inspired confidence even on the back of the brief of his forsaken junior, who bore the burden and heat ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews

... the sixth I've sold since noon. Trade's reviving. Just as soon As this lot's worked off I'll take Wholesale figgers. Make or break, That's my motto! Then I'll buy In some first-class lottery: One half ticket, numbered right— As I ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

... brought forth the greatest lottery of all time. The drawing of number 258 by Secretary of War Newton D. Baker started the list of selective drawings to determine the order of eligibility of the young men in the 4,557 selective ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman

... and poll bills; so that the supplies for the year amounted to about five millions and a half, raised by a land-tax of four shillings in the pound, by two more lives in the annuities, a further excise on beer, a new duty on salt, and a lottery. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... thief taking wages, and perfectly barefaced, with the Government for a fence, developing the tendency to dishonesty, which is almost authorized in the cook by the time-honored jest as to the "handle of the basket." The women who formerly picked up their forty sous to buy a lottery ticket now take fifty francs to put into the savings bank. And the smug Puritans who amuse themselves in France with philanthropic experiments fancy that they are making the common ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... with the Bohemians whom melodramatists have rendered synonymous with robbers and assassins. Neither are they recruited from among the dancing-bear leaders, sword swallowers, gilt watch-guard vendors, street lottery keepers and a thousand other vague and mysterious professionals whose main business is to have no business at all, and who are always ready to turn their hands ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger

... fifth of their former price. To sell on these ruinous terms was to impoverish himself and his family. His distress was pathetic. In desperation he applied to the Legislature for permission to sell his property by lottery; but he was spared this last humiliation by the timely aid of friends, who started popular subscriptions to relieve his distress. Monroe was less fortunate, for he was obliged to sell Oak Hill and to leave Old Virginia ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson

... gives them shows, and sometimes bread, the panem et circenses prescribed by the Emperors of the Decline. It does not teach them to read, neither does it forbid them to beg. It sends Capuchins to their homes. The Capuchin gives the wife lottery-tickets, drinks with the husband, and brings up the children after his kind, and sometimes in his likeness. The plebeians of Rome are certain never to die of hunger; if they have no bread, they are allowed ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About

... thought rightly, for robbery. Even Poljensio used to claim time, now and then, when he said the conditions of the water and weather were favorable for finding pearl oysters, to go and dive for those lottery-ticket-like bivalves. ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme

... had ceased to beat. The body was then removed from the cross, the hands and feet fastened together, and it was thrown on the funeral pile. While the execution was proceeding the people applauded. On the morrow they bought up the fragments of bone, and hastened to buy lottery tickets, in the firm conviction that these precious relics would bring ...
— Quotes and Images From "Celebrated Crimes" • Alexander Dumas, Pere

... the campaign also gave impetus to the movement for the secret or Australian ballot which was first introduced in Louisville, Ky., on Feb. 28, 1888, and in Massachusetts on May 29, of the same year. Another reform movement was that which resulted in the destruction of the Louisiana lottery. Cf. A.K. McClure, Recollections, 173-183, and ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley

... through, and—we can buy off anybody who wants to make trouble. I'll buy the Bracebridges, if necessary. I'm not particularly proud of my money. It comes from land for which I do absolutely nothing, but it's better than Fleischmann money which is got by the trickery of a lottery.' ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan

... which it was secured, was ratified by the Senate, on the 3d of March, 1825, the last day of Mr. Monroe's administration. Gov. Troup, acting under this treaty, sent surveyors into the Creek Territory, to lay out the land in lots, which were to be distributed among the white inhabitants of Georgia, by lottery. The Indians resisted this encroachment, and prepared to defend their rights by physical force—at the same time sending to Washington for protection from the General Government. The authorities of Georgia insisted upon a survey, and ordered out a body of militia ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward

... peasantry knew nothing yet of M. Turgot's fall, but they soon found out that the evils from which they had imagined they were delivered continued to press upon them with all their weight. For their only consolation Clugny opened to them the fatal and disgraceful chances of the lottery, which became a royal institution. To avoid the remonstrances of Parliament, the comptroller-general established the new enterprise by a simple decree of the council. "The entries being voluntary, the lottery is no tax and can dispense with enregistration," it was said. It ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... songs, which are hymns in honour of the God who has endowed us with senses which shed such a charm over existence, and which promise us new pleasure from every fresh exercise of them. After the repast is ended, we return to the dance, and, when the hour of repose arrives, we draw from a kind of lottery, in which every one is sure of a prize; that is, a young girl as his companion for the night. They are allotted thus by chance, in order to avoid jealousy, and to prevent exclusive attachments. Thus ends the day, and gives place to a night of delights, which ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... the dying millionnaire would give all that he possesses for one moment of time, so would all mankind throw every present blessing into the scale, in the hope of drawing the prize in that great lottery. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... elevated or debased by the good or evil fortune of a captain, and their specific weight in the human family results from something more than a battle. Their honor, dignity, enlightenment, and genius are not numbers which those gamblers, heroes and conquerors, can stake in the lottery of battles. Very often a battle lost is progress gained, and less of glory, more of liberty. The drummer is silent and reason speaks; it is the game of who loses wins. Let us, then, speak of Waterloo ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various

... of course, the lottery of marriage. But for some of us it meant the risk we ran in attending the first night of a play by Mr. Jerome after our bitter experience of his Rowena in Search of a Father. To say that his present work is an improvement upon his last would ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 27, 1914 • Various

... are women. Girls marry almost as fast as they arrive, and the incoming boats are eagerly scanned by the bachelor population, much in the same spirit as that in which a ticket-holder scans the lists of winning numbers in a lottery, wondering when his turn will come to draw something. If the bulk of the men are confirmed misogynists and confine themselves to the club bar and card-room it is only because there are not enough women to go round. The sacrifice of the women who, in order to be near ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell

... necessarily follow that Addison's advice was bad? And if Addison's advice was bad, does it necessarily follow that it was given from bad motives? If a friend were to ask us whether we would advise him to risk his all in a lottery of which the chances were ten to one against him, we should do our best to dissuade him from running such a risk. Even if he were so lucky as to get the thirty thousand pound prize, we should not admit that we had counselled him ill; ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... goring finished them. . . . These recently cured men continually brought to her mind those poor beasts. Some had been wounded three times since the beginning of the war, and were returning surgically patched together and re-galvanized to take another chance in the lottery of Fate, always in the expectation of the supreme blow. . . . ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... of the Second Act. Then a bad, a very bad, fairy stuffed into Mr. MEGRUE'S head the idea of the suicide lottery. The infuriated husband, finding his wife in her friend's room at 7 P.M. (frightfully improper hour), sternly offers his bowler (or Derby) hat, in which are two cards. The one marked with a cross is drawn by the flutterer and means that he is for it. He is to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various

... who was seen by an unmarried person on the morning of that day, was regarded as the valentine for the year. Another way of finding out a valentine was to cast into a receptacle small billets, with (if the consulters were young women) bachelors' names on them, and then to draw them out lottery-wise. The bachelor whose name appeared on a billet thus extracted at random, became the valentine of the spinster to whose lot it fell. In this way a bevy of young ladies ascertained, in a few minutes, secrets they were most anxious should be disclosed. When the ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... fortunate to receive a letter from Nell, asking them to spend a fortnight at the picturesque and "cottagy" house which Drake has built at a certain out-of-the-way spot in Devonshire called Shorne Mills, go about pluming themselves as if they had drawn one of the prizes in life's lottery. For only very intimate and dear friends are ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice

... was half an inch longer than Belmont's. Then came Colonel Cochrane, whose piece was longer than the two others put together. Stephen's was no bigger than Belmont's. The Colonel was the winner of this terrible lottery. ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle

... returned from India how one of our Zillah Courts would decide several legal questions of great importance, questions not involving considerations of religion or of caste, mere questions of commercial law. He told me that it was a mere lottery. He knew how he should himself decide them. But he knew nothing more. I asked a most distinguished civil servant of the Company, with reference to the clause in this Bill on the subject of slavery, whether at present, if a dancing girl ran away from her master, the judge would force her to go back. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... it is in temporal things, so it is in spiritual. If new discoveries of Divine love lead to want of watchfulness, trial and sorrow must ensue. About sixty years ago a next door neighbour, a hatter, gained a prize in the lottery of ten thousand pounds—he became intoxicated with his wealth, moved to the fashionable end of London, went into a large way of business, dissipated his fortune, and died in a workhouse! Christian, if you have unexpected enjoyments, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... you have not Cash sufficient, call upon Mr. Moore, the Treasurer, with that Order of the Assembly, and desire him to pay you L100 of it.... I hope a fortnight ... to make a Trip to Philadelphia, and send away the Lottery Tickets.... and pay off the Prizes, etc., tho' you may pay such as come to hand of those sold in Philadelphia, of my signing.... I hope you have paid Mrs. Stephens for ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday

... hundred thousand dollars in the lottery," said the naval officer's widow; "and if I do, we will travel—I and my daughter; and you, Mr. Alfred, must be our guide. We can all three travel together, with one or two more of our good friends." And she nodded in such a friendly way at the company, that each imagined himself to be the ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... prominent part. On the trapeze, somersaulting over horses placed side by side, grouping with his so-called brother and a small lad, he did his full share of the work, and when the programme was ended he came among the audience to sell photographs while the lottery was being drawn. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various

... herself questions. Wilmot's life had not been fine, but his love had been very fine, and for longer than she could remember. Would it not be well to trust herself to such a love as that? Had she the right to send it away begging? Would it not be better, since marriage is a lottery, to grasp some things that in this case would be sure, instead of leaving everything to chance? If he kept away from her long enough, his love would probably die, or at least reduce itself to a state of occasional ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris

... "Away with your lottery!" cried a burly rifleman, whose long hunting-shirt whipped in the bitter wind. "The road up the valley is well beaten down. The old forge is half a mile away. Do you mark a line, old beef-killing Jack, and we will run for our lives. The first ten to touch the stone ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... an organized effort to re-establish internal credit. But this loan had never actually been floated, as a six months' safety clause had permitted a delay during which the Revolution had come. It was therefore necessary to begin the negotiations anew; and as the rich prizes to be won in the Chinese lottery had attracted general attention in the European financial world through the advertisement which the Revolution had given the country, a host of alternative loan proposals now lay at ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale

... they had a personal and traditional regard for a Collegian of so many years' standing, the event was creditable to the College, and made it famous in the newspapers. Perhaps more of them thought, too, than were quite aware of it, that the thing might in the lottery of chances have happened to themselves, or that something of the sort might yet happen to themselves some day or other. They took it very well. A few were low at the thought of being left behind, and being left poor; but even ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... cried Balthasar. "But no more of this. I was only going to tell you how I let myself be persuaded by my partner in the last year of his life to put for once into the neighbouring lottery. I did so against my own feelings; because these institutions appear to me deserving of the severest punishment. By them the state sanctions highway-robbery and murder. Even without such things ill-fated man is immoderately ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck

... his advances haughtily; but he accepted his fate with resignation. George Delphin was not the man to lose his time or his temper, in a hopeless pursuit. There are many respectable prizes in a lottery without aiming at the first. But now here was the chance of winning the great prize, the charming Fanny, the admiration of all. His heart swelled with pride, and if Jacob Worse could have seen the look with which he ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland

... share of both; I mean that there are some men whose life on the whole is a failure, and that there are others whose life on the whole is a success. You and I, my reader, know better than to think that life is a lottery; but those who think it a lottery, must see that there are human beings who draw the prizes, and others who draw the blanks. I believe in Luck, and Ill Luck, as facts; of course I do not believe the theory which common consent builds upon these facts. There is, of course, no such thing ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... the greatest evils in this country was the Louisiana Lottery. Through that lottery millions and millions annually were taken from the people and transferred to a few unprincipled schemers, who soon found themselves in possession of enormous fortunes. Wise men called for the abatement of this awful drain on ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... in its practical disappearance; then the recrudesence of prohibition, abandoned at the outbreak of the Civil War, and the attempt to enforce it in a rapidly growing list of States; then the successful onslaught upon the Louisiana lottery, and upon its swarm of rivals and successors; then the gradual stamping-out of horse-racing, until finally but two or three States permitted it, and the consequent attack upon the pool-room; then the rise of a theatre-censorship ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken

... forever— And so will Mr. Allen's lottery sign; And all that grace the Academy of Arts, From Dr. Hosack's face ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various

... might be of incalculable value in all branches of politics and social progress. It would do more than this. If we could find some method of making the University a real mother to her sons—something beyond a building of class-rooms, a Senatus and a lottery of somewhat shabby prizes—we should strike a death-blow at the constrained and unnatural attitude of our Society. At present we are not a united body, but a loose gathering of individuals, whose inherent attraction is allowed to condense ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... consider in brief Briard's handling of the following question: 'Whether a prize of money won at Bruges or elsewhere by the hazard known as the game of the pot, or what is commonly called the lottery, may be retained with a clear conscience as a ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen

... what a sight it was to see M. de Vauversin, with a cigarette in his mouth, twanging a guitar, and following Mademoiselle Ferrario's eyes with the obedient, kindly look of a dog! The entertainment wound up with a tombola, or auction of lottery tickets: an admirable amusement, with all the excitement of gambling, and no hope of gain to make you ashamed of your eagerness; for there, all is loss; you make haste to be out of pocket; it is a competition who shall lose most money ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson

... her maiden name had been, I do not at this moment remember; but this name was of very little importance, being soon merged in that of Harvey, bestowed on her at the altar by a country gentleman. The squire—not very rich, I believe, but rich enough to rank as a matrimonial prize in the lottery of a country girl, whom one single step of descent in life might have brought within sight of menial service—had been captivated by the young woman's beauty; and this, at that period, when accompanied by the advantages ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... there was a ——[67] Lottery after the opera; it is an odd ceremony. Bankes and I took tickets of it, and buffooned together very merrily. He is gone to Firenze. Mrs. J * * should have sent you my postscript; there was no occasion to have bored you in person. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... all likelihood the wife of the foregoing, whom she survived. In 1822 she was manager of a Parisian lottery bureau which employed Madame Agatha Bridau, about the same time. ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe

... veritable hero? Well, perhaps. But I know an Indian who is called Le Blanc; that means white. And a white man who is called Lenoir; that means black. It is very droll, this affair of the names. It is like the lottery." ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke

... so,' answered the priest, 'unless it's a sign of a lottery office, or a caution against blasphemy up and down the pavement. Those are the only signs we have in the country, except the government salt and cigar shops.' ... He took a snuff-box from a pocket in his sleeve, and with a bow offered a pinch to Mr. Caper. ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various

... a year. It is good for a poor curate that there should be splendid bishops at Fulham and Lambeth: their lordships were poor curates once, and have won, so to speak, their ribbon. Is a man who puts into a lottery to be sulky because he does not win the twenty thousand pounds prize? Am I to fall into a rage, and bully my family when I come home, after going to see Chatsworth or Windsor, because we have only two little drawing-rooms? Welcome to your garter, my lord, and shame upon him ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... to carry in the winter's coals. Nor could he, for some time, bring himself to regard literature as a profession to live by. His first care was, to secure an honest livelihood by his business, and to put into the "lottery of literary success," as he termed it, only the surplus of his time. At length, however, he devoted himself wholly to literature, more particularly in connection with the Wesleyan body; editing one ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles

... Angelo were in earnest conversation about something, and, as my mind began to wander from the artichokes (here again they resembled the Litany) and was able to attend more to what was going on, I became aware that they were talking about the lottery. Selinunte depends for news upon chance visitors and Angelo had brought the winning numbers which he had got from a cousin of his in one of the lottery offices at Castelvetrano. The brigadier had lost and in giving his instructions ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones

... what might be called either a widening of a street, or a small piazza. The neighborhood comprised a baker's oven, emitting the usual fragrance of sour bread; a shoe shop; a linen-draper's shop; a pipe and cigar shop; a lottery office; a station for French soldiers, with a sentinel pacing in front; and a fruit-stand, at which a Roman matron was selling the dried kernels of chestnuts, wretched little figs, and some bouquets of yesterday. A church, of course, ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... are many male visitors. Speculators, victims of the gaming table and the lottery, come to ask for advice, which is given at random. The woman knows but little of her visitors, and has no means of learning anything about them. Sometimes her statements are found to be true; but it is by the merest accident. The clairvoyants do not hesitate to confess ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin

... spirit of avarice. The arts so common at a later day were had recourse to. Project begat project, copper was to be turned into brass. Fortunes were to be realized by lotteries. The sea was to yield the treasures it had engulfed. Pearl-fisheries were to pay impossible percentages. "Lottery on lottery," says a writer of the day, "engine on engine, multiplied wonderfully. If any person got considerably by a happy and useful invention, others followed in spite of the patent, and published printed proposals, filling the daily newspapers ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... nature added to that love all the perfections that adorn our sex, it had availed me nothing in your soul: there is a chance in love as well as life, and often the most unworthy are preferred; and from a lottery I might win the prize from all the venturing throng with as much reason, as think my chance should favour me with Sylvia; it might perhaps have been, but it was a wondrous odds against me. Beauty is more uncertain than the dice; ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn

... the First Consul. I then covered them over with those which; judging from their envelopes and seals, appeared to be of that trifling kind with which the First Consul was daily overwhelmed: these usually consisted of requests that he would name the number of a lottery ticket, so, that the writer might have the benefit of his good luck—solicitations that he would stand godfather to a child—petitions for places—announcements of marriages and births—absurd eulogies, etc. Unaccustomed to open the letters, he became impatient at their number, and he opened ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... is a deeply interesting piece of portraiture, and probably substantially accurate. The painful fact is that Byron was a very ill-bred person. He had drawn a prize in the lottery of life, and had obtained, so to speak, by accident of birth, a position that gave him fortuitously the consequence which numbers of ambitious men spend their lives in trying to obtain. And then, too, we must not lose sight of Byron's genius, ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson

... solid than glory. A war with Spain was a war of plunder. In the present conflict with regicide, Mr. Pitt has not hitherto had, nor will, perhaps, for a few days have, many prizes to hold out in the lottery of war, to attempt the lower part of our character. He can only maintain it by an appeal to the higher; and to those, in whom that higher part is the most predominant, he must look the most for his support. Whilst he holds out no inducements to the wise, nor ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... convenience' sake, rarely dines during the busy season: he is the martyr of his profession. He has a house exquisitely decorated and arranged, but he lives alone, his daily commerce with women having disinclined him to risk the lottery of marriage. Nevertheless, he is much effeminized; and his employees will assure you that he wears cambric nightcaps bordered with lace, and a lace jabot on his night-shirts. His life is entirely devoted ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various

... [eaten] her, an' the first week efter Maister Teends mairrit us, I juist danced I was that fond o' her. But in anither month, faith, I thocht that she wad hae etten me, an' afore the year was oot I wussed she had. Aye, aye, sir, it's waur nor a lottery, mairriage—it's a ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett

... by it. A judicious distribution of money and liquors, a notoriety for street fights, a singular talent for profanity, and an unstinted adulation of the basest classes of the community, won for him, in succession, some of the best prizes of the Municipal lottery. He has his small, sunken eyes now fixed on one of the highest offices of the State; and it will take a strong combination to defeat a candidate backed by such ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... the regular forces (including the United States Marine Corps) at the time the present appointments or promotions were made; second, by reference to former rank therein taken away by derangement or disbandment; third, by reference to former rank therein given up by resignation; fourth, by lottery. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... know how it is that I have kept the following story so long untold. It is one of the curious things that stop in the bag from which Memory draws out stories at haphazard, like numbers in a lottery. There are plenty of tales just as strange and just as well hidden still left; but some day, you may be sure, their ...
— Facino Cane • Honore de Balzac

... pity draws after it the renewal of his love. If the hope of what is not yet be so potent with Bigot, what will not the reality prove ere long? The annihilation of all my brilliant anticipations! I have drawn a blank in life's lottery, by the rejection of Le Gardeur for his sake! It is the hand of that shadowy babe which plucks away the words of proposal from the lips of Bigot, which gives his love to its vile mother, and leaves to me the mere ashes of his passion, words which mean ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... Who would believe they beheld the orator and statesman, only second, if second, to Peel in the House of Commons, and on whom the destiny of the country perhaps depends? There he was, as if he had no thoughts but for the turf, full of the horses, interest in the lottery, eager, blunt, noisy, good-humoured, 'has meditans nugas et totus in illis;' at night equally devoted to the play, as if his fortune depended on it. Thus can a man relax whose existence is devoted to great objects and serious thoughts. I had considerable ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville

... marriage is the common and acceptable destiny of both boys and girls; but I must complain because girls do not regard it sufficiently before they enter into it. In the distress which follows their hastiness, in the despair which sometimes hardens their hearts, women call marriage a lottery, and ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder

... man, who is now reported to be worth three hundred thousand pounds, was originally a piece-broker in Bedford- bury, and afterwards kept a low public house in Vinegar- yard, Drury-lane; from whence he merged into an illegal lottery speculation in Northumberland-street, Strand, where he realized a considerable sum by insurances and little goes; from this spot he was transplanted to Norris-street, in the Haymarket, managing partner in a gaming-house, when, after a run of ill luck, an affair occurred that would have ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... solvent again. Gaily he signed cheques, and the foreman did all he could to keep pace with him on the cheque-book block; but as no one, excepting the accountant in the Darwin bank, knew the state of his account from day to day, it was like taking a ticket in a lottery to accept a cheque from ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... it will soon get to be a habit—and give you a heavy heart. If you smile your face will be attractive, no matter how unlucky you were in the lottery of beauty. ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter

... Still later, intent upon this great work, they had induced Virginia to take from her own beloved William and Mary one-sixth of all surveyors' fees in the district and contribute them. The early Kentuckians, for their part, planned and sold out a lottery—to help along the incorruptible work. For such an institution Washington and Adams and Aaron Burr and Thomas Marshall and many another opened their purses. For it thousands and thousands of dollars were raised among friends scattered ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen

... the sum of fourteen guineas each! The March of the Guards to Finchley, so admirable in composition, so full of incident and character, so rich in humor, could not be sold by the artist, and he disposed of it in a lottery, in which many tickets were left on his hands. And while this was the fate of works which still stand unsurpassed in their peculiar field, the amateurs were paying enormous prices for worthless pictures of second-rate Italian masters, and talking about their "Correggios and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... God. For, if I did not believe in God, what would the people be to me? I should enjoy at ease that lucky throw of the dice, which chance had turned up for me, the day of my birth; and, with a secret, savage joy, I should say, 'So much the worse for the losers!—the world is a lottery. Woe to the conquered!'" I cannot, indeed, say this without shame and cruelty,—for, I repeat it, ...
— Atheism Among the People • Alphonse de Lamartine

... not an oath: if not the face of men, The sufferance of our souls, the time's abuse,— 115 If these be motives weak, break off betimes, And every man hence to his idle bed; So let high-sighted tyranny range on, Till each man drop by lottery. But if these, As I am sure they do, bear fire enough 120 To kindle cowards and to steel with valour The melting spirits of women, then, countrymen, What need we any spur but our own cause To prick us to redress? what ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare

... if I'd backed that winner, I could have got out of trouble. The business is practically in pawn; I'm getting a police inspection once a week. I've got a job now which may save my bacon, if I can dodge the 'splits'—an order for a million leaflets for a Hamburg lottery house. And I want the money—bad! I owe ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace

... Snake-Man. "We embarked at Havre," continued Don Alonso, "on a vessel called the Navarre, and we were in Havana for about eight months; while we were performing there we struck it big, Perez and I, and won twenty thousand gold pesos in the lottery." ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja

... Fontainebleau during bad weather by seeing good players at tennis, in which he had formerly excelled; and at Marly by seeing mall played, in which he had also been skilful. Sometimes when there was no council, he would make presents of stuff, or of silverware, or jewels, to the ladies, by means of a lottery, for the tickets of which they paid nothing. Madame de Maintenon drew lots with the others, and almost always gave at once what she gained. The ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... have refrained from dwelling upon, as being no more than events of secondary importance, are by Mr. Mill invariably recognised at their full worth or even above it, and invariably spoken of as fortunate accidents, happy turns in the lottery of life, or in some other quiet fatalistic phrase, expressive of his deep feeling how much we owe to influences over which we have no control and for which we have no right to take any credit. His saying that 'it would be a blessing if the doctrine of necessity could be believed by all quoad ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley

... the young explorer for the moment felt himself in the position of the man who drew an elephant in a lottery—he didn't know what to do with his prize. It had come to him so unexpectedly ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis

... was always in a good temper when there was a prospect of sport, he promised each of them to do all that he could for them, at the same time pointing out that it was always quite a lottery which way the tiger ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty

... darky with his lottery ticket," laughed Bill. "His boss reproved him for spending money on a mere chance. 'Oh, I dunno, boss,' the old fellow answered. 'T'ree dollars ain't much to spend fur a ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport

... of Parliament of that date) for the vast collections of natural history made by Sir Hans Sloane, with which were associated certain valuable libraries and collections of manuscripts, of coins, and antique marbles. A large part of the money required for the undertaking was raised by a public lottery, over which the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chancellor, and the Speaker presided (according to the custom of those days in regard to State lotteries), and it is thus that this remarkable group of great officials became, and ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester

... contain! Fashion from Moorfields, honor from Chick Lane; Bankers from Paper Buildings here resort, Bankrupts from Golden Square and Riches Court; From the Haymarket canting rogues in grain, Gulls from the Poultry, sots from Water Lane; The lottery cormorant, the auction shark, The full-price master, and the half-price clerk; Boys who long linger at the gallery-door, With pence twice five—they want but twopence more; Till some Samaritan the two-pence spares, And sends them ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... what to do should there be a sudden death in the street, should the roadway subside, should a street collision occur, should a gas explosion occur, should he be assaulted. He is initiated into the mysteries of the Dogs Act, the Highways Act, the Vagrancy Act, the Aliens Act, the Lottery Act, the Licensing Act, the Larceny Act, the Motor-Car Acts, the Locomotive Acts, the Children's Act, ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot

... my wife was for a short time sick, in consequence of her labor and the excitement in moving, and her excessive joy. I told her that it reminded me of a poor shoemaker in the neighborhood who purchased a ticket in a lottery; but not expecting to draw, the fact of his purchasing it had passed out of his mind. But one day as he was at work on his last, he was informed that his ticket had drawn the liberal prize of ten thousand dollars; ...
— The Narrative of Lunsford Lane, Formerly of Raleigh, N.C. • Lunsford Lane

... likely so to run that they may obtain this veritable prize of our high calling? Setting aside such lucky numbers, drawn as it were in the lottery of immortality, which I have referred to casually above, and setting aside also the chances and changes from which even immortality is not exempt, who on the whole are most likely to live anew in the affectionate thoughts of those ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler

... with a scornful laugh. "With five thousand francs you had better play at the lottery. After all, if ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford

... December 3, booths were open on every side for the entertainment of the crowd. Adulation assumed every guise, even the humblest; and every form of language, even that of the markets, was employed to flatter the new sovereign. There was sung, "The joyous round on the lottery of thirteen thousand fowls, with an accompaniment of fountains of wine." It was a description of the food distributed to the poor people of Paris. This song was sung in every street and place, as the Ca ira was ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... occasion demanded, into blades of Toledo steel. In the streets were priests and bare-legged mule drivers, and ragged ranchmen with red-caped cloaks hanging to their sandals, and negro women, with bare shoulders and long trains, vending lottery tickets and rolling huge cigars between their lips. It was an old story to Clay and King, but none of the others had seen a Spanish-American city before; they were familiar with the Far East and the Mediterranean, but not ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis

... the streets of Rio, or any other city of Brazil, is the lottery ticket seller. These venders are more numerous and more insistent than are the newsboys in the United States. There are all sorts of superstitions about lotteries. Certain images in one's dreams at night are said to correspond to certain lucky numbers. Dogs, cats, horses, cows and many other animals ...
— Brazilian Sketches • T. B. Ray

... is lost. On the other hand, the "Cliff" and "Minnesota" mines have returned over two millions of dollars in dividends. The latter is said to have paid, in 1858, a dividend of $300,000 on a paid-up capital of $66,000. Mining is a lottery, and this brilliant prize cannot conceal the fact that blanks fall to the lot of by far the more numerous part of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various

... Christians denominated as belonging to the Methodist Protestant Church; and also unlawfully and maliciously intending to insinuate and cause it to be believed, that the said William Apes was a deceiver and impostor, and guilty of crimes and offences, and of buying lottery tickets, and misappropriating monies collected by him from religious persons for charitable purposes, and for building a Meeting-house ...
— Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts - Relative to the Marshpee Tribe: or, The Pretended Riot Explained • William Apes

... without anything of the ability which might reasonably entitle him to expect to rise; and without the private means which are necessary for the support of most married men in a profession which, if it is not (as it is sometimes called) a lottery, has very great inequalities of income, and to the vast majority of those who follow it gives very little indeed. Mr. Barton is not a gentleman—a defect which the farmers and tradespeople of his parish are not slow to discover, and for which they despise him. He is without any ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... opportunity has come also but I would never be the first to say that even such should not be sacrificed most gladly for the love of a true kind husband and dear little children though marriage is but a lottery at best and especially when affections are fixed upon their object in ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet

... thick as gnats in summer eveningtide. Baleful Alecto, prythee, stay awhile, Till with my verses I have rack'd his soul; And when thy soul departs, a cock may be No blank at all in hell's great lottery— Shame sits and howls upon thy loathed grave, And howling, vomits up in filthy guise The hidden ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... hoofs upon the veld. Troops of Mounted Infantry were evidently moving to take up a new position at the bidding of the Master Player. The sound was like the rub-a-dub of muffled hammers. The thought forced itself on her mind that here were men secretly hastening to take part in the grim lottery of life and death, from which some, and maybe many, would draw the black ticket of doom, and so pass from the game before the game ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... knickers. It gev me a turn, that did. An' then, you took another twist at me by sayin' you'd never bin to sea. I knew things was goin' to happen after that. It must ha' bin, wot d'ye call it—second sight—for I knew then an' there I'd got a prize in the lottery—" ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy

... the Dollar Magazine, commenced January 25, 1843, that offered the prize in June, 1843, for the best story, and, as already related, Edgar Allan Poe entered the lists of fame, and drew the prize in the lottery with the "Gold-Bug." Hawthorne published here, in 1851, "The Unpardonable Sin." The publishers of the Dollar Newspaper were the publishers of the Ledger. When Mr. George W. Childs purchased the Ledger he bought also the Dollar Magazine, and changed its ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth

... florin, worth two pauls and a half. Gold we rarely saw, but golden sequins (zecchini) were in existence, and were traditionally used, as it was said, for I have no experience in the matter, in the payment by the government of prizes won in the lottery. ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... in the "queer," the handlers of lottery tickets, the pool-sellers, the oily green-goods man, and many a velvet-voiced, silken clad Delilah knew the pathway to ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage

... one," the moon "the spy," a purse "the saint," alms "the rogue," a sermon "the tedious one," etc. Many words are formed as among savages, by onomatopoeia, as "tuff" (pistol), "tic" (watch), "guanguana" (sweetheart), "fric frac" (lottery). ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero

... matters, a knowledge of the language is indispensable in any country. Naturally, very few possess this knowledge in Russia, where it is most indispensable of all. There are guides, but they are a lottery at best: Russians who know very little English, English who know very little Russian, or Germans who are impartially ignorant of both, and earn their fees by relating fables about the imperial family and things in general, when they are not candidly ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... but what was not was the call-up of those who had already taken part in the ballot for conscription and whose names had not been drawn. These people, to whom this lottery had given the legal right to remain civilians, were nevertheless compelled to take up arms if they were less than thirty years old. This levy produced a large number of men fit to support the hardships of war. There ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot

... Still, they were not happy, for a painful anticipation was constantly dwelling on their minds and souring every moment of their existence. Henri, their only boy, had reached his twentieth year, and the time had come when he must "draw for the conscription;" that is, stake upon the chances of a lottery-ticket the seven best years of his own life and all the happiness of theirs. This thought it was which, like a heavy storm-cloud, was day and night hanging over their peace, and throwing them into ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various

... it in a lottery ticket an' pray for the capital prize—but we won't. Ain't it dawned on you, Mac, that it's up to you an' me to find the steamer Maggie an' git back to work quick an' no back talk? Scraggs has new men in our jobs an' these new men has got to be got rid of, otherwise there's no tellin' how ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne

... would have rendered him capable of really grand achievements in various departments of art, examined our skulls as a phrenologist or read aloud his last drama. Here, too, I met Major Serre, the bold projector of the great lottery whose brilliant success called into being and insured the prosperity of the Schiller Institute, the source ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... loan office having failed to bring in as much money as was needed, Congress, toward the close of 1776, was driven to seek some other way, and resorted to a lottery. A certain number of tickets were sold, after which a drawing took place, and all who drew prizes were given certificates payable at the ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster

... leave your boat with that man? You should have known better. Didn't you know Pold was an old lottery sharp?" ...
— The Rover Boys in Southern Waters - or The Deserted Steam Yacht • Arthur M. Winfield

... used-up theatre scenes, to guess at all the scene-shifting that will be accomplished, and to take its stand, be it only in the emotion of an instant, as witness of the vague phantasmagoria of the future. Why despair? Why be impatient? only give time, only secure all the possible tickets in the lottery of chance, and our hopes must at last be realised, all will be all right. 'Tis only our miserable impatience, our miserable sense of our own impotent mortality, which makes us fret: and Rome bids us ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee

... preliminaries. The ladies appear to like this celerity. Perhaps they are unwittingly philosophic, and reflect that, with months of courting, they can really know little more of a man than they did the first hour they met him, because he is naturally on his best behaviour then. Marriage is a lottery any way you can work it. It is only afterwards that each partner can obtain a true knowledge of the other. And I am bound to say that you will not find better wives or better husbands anywhere, than you will ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay

... work upon them, and will act most powerfully on the best and most moral men. Those who are most firmly persuaded that the future is immutably bound up with the present in which their work is lying, will best husband their present, and till it with the greatest care. The future must be a lottery to those who think that the same combinations can sometimes precede one set of results, and sometimes another. If their belief is sincere they will speculate instead of working: these ought to be the immoral men; the others have the strongest spur ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler

... scarcely had he arrived there when Vastolla cried out without thinking, "That is my Knight of the Faggot." When the King heard this he tore his beard, seeing that the bean of the cake, the prize in the lottery, had fallen to an ugly lout, the very sight of whom he could not endure, with a shaggy head, owl's eyes, a parrot's nose, a deer's mouth, and legs bare and bandy. Then, heaving a deep sigh, he said, "What can that jade of a daughter of mine have seen to make her take a fancy to this ogre, or strike ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile

... consisting of what are commonly termed Coincidences: in other words, those combinations of chances which present some peculiar and unexpected regularity, assimilating them, in so far, to the results of law. As if, for example, in a lottery of a thousand tickets, the numbers should be drawn in the exact order of what are called the natural numbers, 1, 2, 3, etc. We have still to consider the principles of evidence applicable to this case: whether there is any ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... generally writes for money. He says he wants it to bribe the secretaries of the Treasury, in order to find out really where the alloyed ducats come from; but, in fact, he wants it to play of evenings, when he makes his party with Calsabigi, the lottery-contractor, the Russian attaches, two from the English embassy, my Lords Deuceace and Punter, who play a jeu d'enfer, and a few more. The same set meet every night at supper: there are seldom any ladies; those who come are chiefly French ladies, members ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... domestic surroundings of Chinese homes, therefore there is nothing to curb the imagination. The truth is that just as much may be said on one side as on the other. Domestic happiness is in China—as everywhere else the world over—a lottery. The parents invariably select partners in marriage for their sons and daughters, and sometimes make as great blunders as the young people would if left to themselves.—Harold E. ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland

... course of post, and shall be glad to treat with you for the M.S. which I have delivered to your friend Mr Behn; but can by no means comply with the terms proposed. Those things are so uncertain — Writing is all a lottery — I have been a loser by the works of the greatest men of the age — I could mention particulars, and name names; but don't choose it — The taste of the town is so changeable. Then there have been so many letters ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... few actually attain to them. All live and die believing that they have known love, thinking it a common thing, because they confuse it with animal satisfaction; but love is a privilege, love is a lottery of fate, like wealth, like beauty, which only a small minority enjoy.... And when love comes more than half way to meet you, Luna, Lunita,—when fate places happiness right in your hands, you turn your back upon it and walk off!... Consider it well! There is yet time! Today, ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... MARTHA. The price of lottery tickets has gone up again, my dear. I have never known such a state of affairs. The first issue is already worth two hundred and seventy and the second nearly two hundred and fifty. This ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov

... miserable sort that dares not mingle with another's. But if he has been more happily gifted he will decide that the magnificent adventure is worth plunging into; the ineradicable and fine gambling instinct in him will urge him to take, at the first chance, a ticket in the only lottery permitted by the British Government. Because, after all, the mutual sense of ownership felt by the normal husband and the normal wife is something unique, something the like of which cannot be obtained without marriage. I saw a man and a woman at a ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett

... held you, Nancy, When I showed you all my heart; When I told you I would always Be your friend and take your part. Oh, I thought that in life's lottery I had drawn the biggest prize, When I kissed you there that evening And looked down into your eyes; For I never had such feelin's Fill my hide clean through and through Such a hungry, starving longing, To be always close to ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker

... man support his hopes by a dependence on that ticket which he had so dearly purchased of one who pretended to manage the wheels in the great state lottery of preferment. A lottery, indeed, which hath this to recommend it—that many poor wretches feed their imaginations with the prospect of a prize during their whole lives, and never discover they ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding

... rude way in which we went to work. At the same time, I am now thankful you are at home. It is easy to get gold here, but it is very difficult to keep it. In fact, after all, the affair is a hazardous lottery; and those who may succeed in getting off with their pounds of gold dust and flakes to Europe, or to the States, will be the few who will win the ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks

... are going to have a lottery about the ship's run, to-day," replied Hilbert, "and I want a ticket. The tickets are half a sovereign apiece, and the one who gets the right one will have all the half sovereigns. There will be twenty of them, and ...
— Rollo on the Atlantic • Jacob Abbott

... prosecuting), a lot in the town of Manchester (opposite to Richmond), No. 265, drawn on my sole account, and also the tenth of one or two hundred-acre lots, and two of three half-acre lots, in the city and vicinity of Richmond, drawn in partnership with nine others, all in the lottery of the deceased William Byrd, are given; as is also a lot which I purchased of John Hood, conveyed by William Willie and Samuel Gordon, trustees of the said John Hood, numbered 139, in the town of Edinburgh, in the County of ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... paper was printed, to which the several states added nearly $210,000,000 of their own notes. Then came interest-bearing bonds in ever increasing quantities. Several millions were also borrowed from France and small sums from Holland and Spain. In desperation a national lottery was held, producing meager results. The property of Tories was confiscated and sold, bringing in about $16,000,000. Begging letters were sent to the states asking them to raise revenues for the continental treasury, but the states, burdened with ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard

... Wurtemberg took a personal interest in his subject's uphill struggle, and the Wurtemberg Government granted him the proceeds of a lottery. With this money, and with what he succeeded in raising by hook and by crook, and by mortgaging his remaining property, a round L20,000 was obtained. With this capital a third ship was taken in hand, and in 1905 it was launched. It was a distinct improvement upon its ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot

... Miss Wrinklers should marry great fortunes, and her children get none. As this last argument was directed to me, I protested I could see no reason for it neither, nor why Mr Simpkins got the ten thousand pound prize in the lottery, and we sate down with a blank. 'I protest, Charles,' cried my wife, 'this is the way you always damp my girls and me when we are in Spirits. Tell me, Sophy, my dear, what do you think of our new visitor? Don't you think he seemed to ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith

... shackles on the feet of mankind. I have observed you looking persistently at that clock. Its face is that of a tyrant, its numbers are false as those on a lottery ticket; its hands are those of a bunco steerer, who makes an appointment with you to your ruin. Let me entreat you to throw off its humiliating bonds and to cease to order your affairs by that insensate ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry

... and rebels. The adventurers were next provided for. They claimed L960,000. This was divided into three lots, to be paid in lands in Munster, Leinster, and Ulster. All these were to be drawn by lot; and a lottery was held at Grocers' Hall, London, which commenced at eight o'clock in the morning, on the 20th of July, 1653, at which time and place men who professed the advancement of the Christian religion to be the business of their lives, openly and flagrantly ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack



Words linked to "Lottery" :   numbers pool, game of chance, fortuity, stroke, accident, tombola, numbers racket, numbers, sweepstakes, raffle



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