THE LUCK OF LOTTERIES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2362, 1 June 1899, Page 55

THE LUCK OF LOTTERIES.

SOME STRANGE FREAKS OF FOR-

TUNE.

Fortune is never so capricious as when she is turning a lottery wheel ; and a whole library might be written of the strange pranks she has played with those who have wooed her in this guise. She was in a strangely capricious mood when it pleased her to convert a Dublin shop assistant into a man of fortune and the founder of p, noble family. Luke White, the father of the first Lord Annaly, was a poor Manxman, who had drifted to Dublin to serve behind the counte 1 * of a bookseller's shop. In the hope of adding to his scanty earnings he bought a ni.mber of lottery tickets for sale, but found himself unable to dispose of them all. At the last moment he decided to send the unsold tickets to Belfast, in the hope of finding a better market there ; but when the coach had been a day on its journey he received a letter informing him that the despised tickets had won valuable prizes.

Although the news came in the dead of night, Luke White got up immediately, saddled a horse, and raced madly in chase of the coach. He rode ' through the night and the whole of the following day, and overtook the coach within a few miles of Belfast. He rescued the bundle of tickets and returning home, exchanged them for prizes of the value of £20,000.

Fortune was less kind to Charles Rotter, a tobacconist of Chicago, who purchased a lottery ticket last year. Rotter thought so lightly of his prospect of winning; anything that lie gave his ticket, in a spirit of fun, to a friend, Joseph Dost, as a birthday present. On the very day on which he parted with the ticket its number was announced as having won a prize of £3000. Rotter felt the blow of his misfortune so keenly that he died from heart disease, from which he had suffered for some time, on the following day.

An amusing story is told of a wicked trick which fortune played a short time ago on a lady. The, lady and her husband, who were travelling, called at the shop of a country draper to make a few purchases. They were about to leave the shop when an attractive bonnet arrested the lady's attention, and she induced her husband to buy it for her.

When it came to payment, however, the husband found to his dismay that he had not sufficient money to pay for it. In this dilemma he offered the draper an eighth share ticket in a German lottery which he had in his purse, and finally induced him to accept it in part payment. A few days later the lady learned, to her disgust, that the lottery ticket had won an eighth of £15,000 ; and that her " darling bonnet " had thus cost her the record price of nearly £5900.

It was a happy inspiration that tempted a young lieutenant on the Italian battleship Lepanto to turn his attention to the Spanish Christmas lottery a couple of years; ago. The ship was cruising off the coast of Spain, and it occurred to the lieutenant to induce all on board, from captain to cabin boy, to join in purchasing a, lottery ticket. The ticket was bought, and, to the delight of all, was fortunate enough to win the first piize of £35,000, which was divided among the lucky owners on Christmas Day. A very curious piece of good fortune fell last year to the lot of a poor widow who kept a small shop in a suburb of Berliin. One evening she was serving a customer a working man stepped into the shop and begged permission to light his pipe. Drawing a piece oi paper from his pocket, he twisted it up, lit it at the gasjet, and, after lighting his pipe, threw down the spill and walked out with a word of thanks.

When sweeping the floor the next morning the widow took up the charred paper out of idle curiosity, and, unfolding it, saw that it was a lottery ticket, only a fraction of which had beea burnt. She folded it up, put it away in her pocket, and had almost forgotten it, when the result of a large lottery-drawing caught her eye in the paper. She then remembered the ticket in her pocket, and, on producing it, found to her amazement and delight that the rejected ticket had won a prize of £10.000. She claimed the prize, and although she advertised widely for its original owner with the intention ot sharing it with him, she has been left in undisturbed possession of her fortune.