This dream of felicity,
by degrees, took possession of my imagination. The great delight of my
solitary hours was to purchase an estate, and form plantations with
money which once might have been mine, and I never met my friends but I
spoiled all their merriment by perpetual complaints of my ill luck.
At length another lottery was opened, and I had now so heated my
imagination with the prospect of a prize, that I should have pressed
among the first purchasers, had not my ardour been withheld by
deliberation upon the probability of success from one ticket rather than
another. I hesitated long between even and odd; considered the square
and cubick numbers through the lottery; examined all those to which good
luck had been hitherto annexed; and at last fixed upon one, which, by
some secret relation to the events of my life, I thought predestined to
make me happy. Delay in great affairs is often mischievous; the ticket
was sold, and its possessor could not be found.
I returned to my conjectures, and after many arts of prognostication,
fixed upon another chance, but with less confidence. Never did captive,
heir, or lover, feel so much vexation from the slow pace of time, as I
suffered between the purchase of my ticket and the distribution of the
prizes.
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