in substance:-- "DEAR SIR: The drawing of the Grand C. U. Lottery took place at Baltimore, at twelve M., yesterday. Please to return us the tickets, Nos. --, --, --, --, --, now in your hands, at once, without fail, and _buy back any, if you can_, which you may have disposed of, and charge us, and ask no questions, and we will send you certified copy of drawing immediately on your reply. "Yours, most respectfully, "---- ----." This being an unusual way of doing business, excited the agent's suspicion. He reflected that probably some one of the tickets he held had drawn a great prize, and that the company meant to keep it, but he could not, of course, guess which; and so as to secure the prize himself, he would hold all the tickets, send on the money for them, with an apology for not having reported earlier, and frequently with a long lie about the trouble he had had, and naming this or that man to whom the tickets had been sold. So hundreds of them sent in, after the day of the alleged drawing, from thirty to fifty dollars apiece, according to the number of tickets they held, and received by return mail a "certified report" of the drawing, by which they discovered that the tickets they held were all blanks, each, perhaps, thinking that somebody else had drawn the "mammoth prizes." This trick was fruitful to the amount of a great many thousands of dollars, and cost the company only its expenses for printing, stationery, and postage. These same agents continued to act for the company, and I presume that not one of them to this day knows how he was taken in. But I trust that this narrative will fall into the hands of many a one of them, and open his eyes as to the fact of his having been made a tool of by designing scamps to cheat his neighbors, and to be cheated himself.