I had never visited a hotel or a country-house as curious as the one presided over by Mr. Barross. It was entirely original in its decoration, unique in its sources of entertainment, and its business office, unlike most business offices, possessed a peculiar fascination. The stationery for the use of the patrons, and on which I wrote to innocent friends in the North, bore the letter-head of the Honduras Lottery Company; the pictures on the walls were framed groups of lottery tickets purchased in the past by Mr. Barross, which had _not_ drawn prizes; and the safe in which the guest might place his valuables contained a large canvas-bag sealed with red wax, and holding in prizes for the next drawing seventy-five thousand dollars. Wherever you turned were evidences of the peculiar business that was being carried on under the roof that sheltered you, and outside in the garden stood another building, containing the printing-presses on which the lists of winning numbers were struck off before they were distributed broadcast about the world. But of more interest than all else was the long, sunshiny, empty room running the full length of the house, in which, on a platform at one end, were two immense wheels, one of glass and brass, and as transparent as a bowl of goldfish, and the other closely draped in a heavy canvas hood laced and strapped around it, and holding sealed and locked within its great bowels one hundred thousand paper tickets in one hundred thousand rubber tubes. In this atmosphere and with these surroundings my host and hostess lived their life of quiet conventional comfort--a life full of the lesser interests of every day, and lighted for others by their most gracious and kindly courtesy and hospitable good-will. When I sat at their table I was always conscious of the great wheels, showing through the open door from the room beyond like skeletons in a closet; but it was not so with my host, whose chief concern might be that our glasses should be filled, nor with my hostess, who presided at the head of the table--which means more than sitting there--with that dignity and charm which is peculiar to a Southern woman, and which made dining with her an affair of state, and not one of appetite.