When you have made these reflections, you have only got to
tell the clerk what sum of money you want to stake, and on what numbers.
The smallest contribution (from eleven baiocchi or about sixpence
upwards) will be thankfully received. A long whity-brown slip of paper
is given you, with the numbers written on it, and the sum you may win
marked opposite. No questions whatever, about name or residence or
papers, are asked, as they are whenever you want to transact any other
piece of business in Rome; and all you have to do, is to keep your slip
of paper, and come back on the Saturday to learn whether your numbers
have been drawn or not.
There is, in truth, a ludicrous side to the Papal Lotteries; but there is
also a very sad one. It is sad to see the offices on a Thursday night,
when they are kept open till midnight, hours after every other shop is
closed, and to watch the crowds of common humble people who hurry in, one
after the other; servants and cabmen and clerks and beggars, and, above
all, women of the poorer class, to stake their small savings--too often
their small pilferings--on the hoped-for numbers. When one speaks of the
disgrace and shame that this authorized system of gambling confers on the
Papal Government; of the improvidence and dishonesty and misery it
creates too certainly among the poor, one is always told, by the
advocates of the Papacy, that the people are so passionately attached to
the lottery, that no Government could run the risk of abolishing it.
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