Although the practice of holding lotteries may never have been entirely free from criticism there were times in which they met the approval of the best men in the colonies. The diary of the Rev. Samuel Seabury, father of Bishop Seabury, contains the following entry:

"The ticket No. 5866 in the Light House and Public Lottery of New York, drew in my favor, by the blessing of Almighty God, 500 pounds sterling, of which I received 425 pounds, there being a deduction of fifteen per cent; for which I now record to my posterity my thanks and praise to Almighty God, the giver of all good gifts." 1

John Hancock, Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington are to be counted among those who gave their support to lotteries. The following copy is taken from a ticket which was issued by the lottery of the Cumberland Mountain Road:

Number

176

1768

This Ticket (No. 176) sha (11) entit (1) e the Person to whatever Prize may happen to be drawn against its Number in the Mountain Road Lottery.

Go. Washington.

An announcement of a lottery projected for the benefit of Leicester Academy at Lancaster, Mass., asked for the support of the clergy in the following words:

"As the design of this lottery is for promoting Piety, Virtue, and such of the liberal Arts and Sciences as may qualify the Youth to become useful Members of Society, the Managers wish for and expect the aid of the Gentlemen Trustees of the Academy, the Reverend Clergy, and all persons who have a taste for encouraging said Seminary of Learning." 2 One of the active promoters of a lottery organized to provide for the rebuilding of Faneuil Hall was John Hancock. The following advertisement of the Faneuil Hall lottery appeared in a Boston paper November I, 1762:

1 Historical Magazine, New Series, VI, 245.

2 Boston and Salem papers, June, 1790.

"SCHEME OF A LOTTERY

For raising a Sum of Money for Rebuilding Faneuil Hall; agreeable to an Act of the General Court, wherein Messieurs Thomas Cushing, Samuel Hewes, John Scollay, Benjamin Austin, Samuel Sewall, Samuel Phillips Savage, and Ezekiel Lewis, or any three of them, are appointed Managers, who are sworn to the faithful Discharge of their Trust."

The colleges of New England received a liberal share of the money that was raised by lottery. The following advertisement from the Salem Gazette is typical of the newspaper announcement of a lottery: 3

"DARTMOUTH COLLEGE LOTTERY, CLASS SECOND

The Managers of the Dartmouth College Lottery present to the Public the following Scheme of the Second Class, in which they have aimed to meet their wishes by making a larger proportion of valuable prizes than usual; they flatter themselves that the same Public Spirit will be displayed, by encouraging the sale of Tickets in this, that was so fully manifested. in the former Class,

6000 Tickets, at 4 Dollars each are 24000. Subject to a deduction of twelve and one half per cent. Of the above prizes of 500 Dollars one will be placed to the first drawn blank, and the other three to the last three drawn blanks."

Harvard, Yale, and Brown were also recipients of liberal grants of money by means of the lottery.

In the days when lotteries flourished the United States Government also embarked upon this means of raising money. Up to 1820 the Government had authorized seventy lotteries for various purposes. The first lottery under national control was one granted by the Continental Congress to raise money for the troops in the field. Agents were appointed to sell the tickets in the states. The drawing of the lottery was postponed from time to time until finally the whole scheme failed. In 1792 Congress authorized a lottery to assist in the development of the City of Washington. The particular purpose of the lottery was to build a hotel in Washington. Fifty thousand tickets were issued at seven dollars apiece. The first prize was the hotel itself; other cash prizes from $25,000 to $10 dollars were offered. The lottery dragged along until the people of Georgetown bought up the tickets. Another lottery national at least in its scope was the Washington Monument Lottery. It was advertised to be drawn in Baltimore, September 4, 1811. There were capital prizes ranging from $50,000 to $5,000.

4 Journal of Continental Congress, Nov. 1, 1776. Four hundred thousand tickets were authorized to be issued. The sum to be raised was $10,000,000.

5 Advertised in the Boston papers of 1811.

(To be continued.)

SIXTY YEARS AGO

SOME THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY AN ENGRAVING OF THOMAS HICKS'S

A

MONG the many engravings showing groups of distinguished Americans, that were once so popular and that may still be purchased, none has more interest for the bookman than the reproduction of Thomas Hicks's painting, "Authors of the United States," a copy of which recently attracted attention here. The original picture dates from about 1850, and the authors deemed of sufficient note to merit inclusion number no less than forty-four. Story writers aside, one may hazard the conjecture that to group an equal number to-day the artist would have to be even more catholic than was Mr. Hicks, comparatively few of whose celebrities were mainly or solely writers of fiction. Yet the picture affords a striking illustration of the evanescent nature of some literary fame and the fallibility of contemporary judgment.

The center of the group is appropriately given to the veterans of those days-James Fenimore Cooper in the post of honor, with Bryant on his right and Irving on his left, while just behind are Fitz-Greene Halleck and R. H. Dana, whose "Buccaneer" crusty Christopher North had hailed as "by far the most powerful and original of American poetical compositions." Longfellow and Emerson, Holmes and Whittier are in the print, of course, not in the guise of sedate old men, as the present generation is accustomed to seeing them depicted, but as stalwarts in the full strength of middle life. The dreamy-eyed Hawthorne is here, and a bushy-bearded young Lowell, and a Poe in theatrical posture. Here, too, are the historians Prescott, Bancroft, and Motley, Bayard Taylor and George William Curtis, N. P. Willis and J. G. Saxe, and among those who but a few years ago were of the living-Parke Godwin and R. H. Stoddard.

So far so good. No one will question the right of these to a place among the authors of the United States, nor perhaps that of Beecher, of

ΙΟΙ

the Southern novelist William G. Simms, of the poet and diplomatist George H. Boker, of Channing, of Henry T. Tuckerman, connoisseur of art and literature, or even possibly of George P. Morris, for Father Time, the woodman, will spare for another generation or two that slender tree. But how many now read the fiction of John Pendleton Kennedy, Secretary of the Navy under Fillmore, or the humorous "Sparrowgrass Papers" of Frederick S. Cozzens? How many remember those New Englanders who became Southern editors-George D. Prentice of the Louisville Journal, author of witticisms, and George W. Kendall of the New Orleans Picayune, historian of the Mexican war? Perhaps the name of Charles Fenno Hoffman of New York, lawyer, editor, and song writer, founder of the Knickerbocker Magazine and author of "Greyslaer," a novel, who lost a leg in early life and later became deranged, may be familiar to a wider circle; but certainly for the poems of P. Pendleton Cooke of Virginia, dead since 1850, and of William D. Gallagher, who died in Kentucky a few years ago in his nineties, one would ask at the book counter in vain.

Not the least interesting feature of the picture is the galaxy of nine "authoresses" who, much beskirted and beringleted, add to the awkwardness of masculine posing their touch of grace. Margaret Fuller and Harriet Beecher Stowe are certainly not forgotten, nor, by the children at any rate, is Alice Cary, whose sister Phoebe strange to say is not included in the group. Mrs. Lydia H. Sigourney of "Pocahontas" fame, and Mrs. Anna Cora Mowatt-Ritchie, actress and dramatist, are more than names to many; but it is to be feared that Catherine M. Sedgwick's improving tales and Caroline M. Stansbury's 1 sketches of early Michigan are to most of us as unknown as the poems that Amelia B. Welby contributed under her Christian name to the Louisville Journal. The manifold works of the ninth lady, though she rests from her labors, still flourish mightily, for she is the popular Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth,

1

1 Miss Stansbury is easier remembered by her married name, Mrs. William Kirkland. She wrote "A New Home" (1839), "Forest Life" (1842), "Western Clearings" (1845).

Griswold said of them, "No works of their class were ever more brilliantly successful that these original and admirable pictures of frontier scenery, woodcraft and domestic experience (for Mrs. Kirkland was a resident of Michigan when they were written, and drew on her own experience for her descriptions.)

It is remarkable that Lydia Maria Child and Sarah J. Lippincott—“ Grace Greenwood" -were not included in this group. They were certainly as worthy of inclusion as Mrs. Sigourney and Mrs. Ritchie, and a New York publisher is now considering the re-issue of several of their juvenile books.-[ED.]