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.
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