er, and wishing
to be delivered from themselves by company and diversion.

I am, sir, yours,
EUPHELIA.

_Samuel Johnson._

THE HISTORY OF AN ADVENTURER IN LOTTERIES

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 o