some days after, below this in the clerk's hand. "Letter received from Easton; story true; ticket issued." _Probably_ that boy re-invested the whole five dollars. Drawing the money, his hope would naturally be excited; and now that he could buy a ticket in a larger "drawing," he probably sent the five dollars back, and lost them of course. Widows, with large families, and who wrote most mournful stories, sending on every cent they could save (while half-starving their families in order to do so, probably), were among the number of correspondents. Clergymen of poor parishes sent for tickets, with long letters, in which they commented piously upon the matter of hazard and lotteries, in a manner to excuse themselves for sending, and hoping that they should draw something to help them out of their poverty and misery, and expressing their belief that "God would pardon them if they were doing wrong," were also of the number. Many letters were of a comical nature, the writers half-laughing at themselves for doing so foolish a thing as buying tickets in a lottery; but yet unable to resist the temptation. By some of the letters it was evident to me that the writers told abominable lies about their sufferings and trials, in order to excite the sympathy of the "agents," and induce them to use their best efforts to secure for them winning tickets. Some of the correspondents offered to give the "agents" half their prize money, in order to bribe them to select a successful ticket. Some of them sent counterfeit money. I found such notes as this at bottom of several letters, "One dollar counterfeit, two dollars good. Send tickets in Scheme No. 8." "Counterfeit; send back." These were evidently directions to clerks. If the writing in these letters which contained only counterfeit money had been good, I might have suspected the writers of perpetrating an appropriate joke; but the letters were evidently from ignorant people, some of whom, perhaps, knew that the bills they sent were counterfeit, and hoped that the great banking company, in their vast press of business, would fail to detect the bills. Many of the letters were written in excellent mercantile hand; but I noticed some badge of ignorance about all these, as well as about the poorly-written and misspelled ones. Probably ninety-nine in a hundred of the victims were made such through their ignorance of the world and the wicked men in it.