If none of these
inducements are sufficient, you may fix on your choice by spinning round
the index on the painted dial-plate, and choosing the numbers opposite to
which the spin stops, thus making chance determine chance. Having, at
last, selected your combination somehow or other, you enter the office
with something of that shamefaced feeling which, I suppose, a man must be
conscious of the first time that he ever enters the back-door of a
pawnbroker's establishment.
The interior of these offices is the same throughout. A low, dark room,
with a long ink-stained desk at one side, behind which, pen in ear, is
seated an official, more grimy even, and more snuffy than the run of his
tribe. Opposite the desk there is sure to be a picture of the Madonna
with a small glass lamp before it, wherein a feeble wick floats and
flickers in a pool of rancid oil. On the wall you may read a list of the
virtuous maidens who are to receive marriage portions of from 5 pounds
downwards, on the occasion of the lottery being drawn at some religious
festival. Indeed, throughout, the lottery is conducted on a strictly
religious footing. The _impiegati_, or officials who keep them, are all
men of sound principles and devotional habits, fervent adherents of the
Pope, and habitual communicants. Lotteries too can be defended on
abstract religious grounds, as encouraging a simple faith in providence,
and dispelling any overwhelming confidence in your own unsanctified
exertions.
Pages:
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119