wanted was the right numbers!"

"Exactly so: but it's no use to cry over spilt milk, you know; and
besides, that fellow the manager has failed, so that it's all blanks
and no prizes, and I am as well off as others. But if I could dream as
well as that Mr. Clark did, with his eyes open, in Richmond, I should
like to go into Yates & M'Intyre's next scheme. It's well enough to
have honest managers, you know."

"Very true, friend Wheelwright; but even then, it is the last 'way to
wealth,' in my opinion, that any sensible man would take--on
calculation."

"Yes: but then it's well enough to be in luck's way, _arnt it_?"

It will readily have been perceived from the language and bearing of
Wheelwright, that his spirits were far less depressed than his
circumstances. Indeed he was as cheerful and as full of good nature as
ever,--indifferent as to the past,--not much troubled at the
present,--and yet unconcerned and full of hope for the future.

On making the necessary inquiry into the state of his affairs, it
appeared that, not having a superabundance of visible means for his
support, his landlord, on hearing that he had missed drawing the high
prize, had very unkindly seized upon his clothes for his board, and
shut him up so that he could earn nothing to pay the balance. But, so
that it is a part of the contract that in default of the payment of a
debt, the delinquent promises to go to jail, it is all right. The
wisdom of sending him there, is another matter, which there is not time
now to discuss, and we proceed. My friend's object in sending for me,
was merely to obtain the means of procuring "a little something to
eat," since his only food for the week preceding had been given him by
one of the prisoners--a venerable man, with snow-white hair, who had
been an inmate of the prison upward of thirty years, and who, to the
day of his death, refused to leave the prison, although the creditors
who had imprisoned him, had long since paid the debt of nature. If
deeds of charity, or the voice of mercy, or the requirements of
business, have in former days called any of the readers of these pages
to the old prison, they will remember this ancient prisoner. The old
man had perhaps read the pathetic tale in the school-books, of the aged
prisoner released from the Bastile, and he cared not to return to a
world by which he was unknown, or had long since been forgotten. If,
perchance, any of those whom he had once taken by the hand,