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, 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.
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