changing after each unsuccessful experiment.  A French gentleman in Havana assured me that his tickets had already cost him seven thousand dollars.  “And now,” said he, “I cannot withdraw, for I cannot lose what I have already paid.  The number has not been up once in eight years; its turn must come soon.  If I were to sell my ticket, some one would be sure to draw the great prize with it the week after.”  This, perhaps, is not very unlike the calculations of business risks most in vogue in our great cities.  A single ticket costs an ounce (seventeen dollars); but you are constantly offered fractions, to an eighth or a sixteenth.  There are ticket-brokers who accommodate the poorer classes with interests to the amount of ten cents, and so on.  Thus, for them, the lottery replaces the savings-bank, with entire uncertainty of any return, and the demoralizing process of expectation thrown into the bargain.  The negroes invest a good deal of money in this way, and we heard in Matanzas a curious anecdote on this head.  A number of negroes, putting their means together, had commissioned a ticket-broker to purchase and hold for them a certain ticket.  After long waiting and paying up, news came to Matanzas that the ticket had drawn the $100,000 prize.  The owners of the negroes were in despair at this intelligence.  “Now my cook will buy himself,” says one; “my calesero will be free,” says another; and so on.  The poor slaves ran, of course, in great agitation, to get their money.  But, lo! the office was shut up.  The rascal broker had absconded.  He had never run the risk of purchasing the ticket; but had coolly appropriated this and similar investments to his own use, preferring the bird in the hand to the whole aviary of possibilities.  He was never heard of more; but should he ever turn up anywhere, I commend him as the fittest subject for Lynch-law on record.

Well, as I have told you, all these golden chances wait for you at the Dominica, and many Americans buy, and look very foolish when they acknowledge it.  The Nassauese all bought largely during their short stay; and even their little children held up with exultation their fragments of tickets, all good for something, and bad for something, too.

If you visit the Dominica in the evening, you find the same crowd, only with a sprinkling of women, oftenest of your own country, in audacious bonnets, and with voices and laughter which bring the black eyes upon them for a time.  If it be Sunday evening, you will see here and there groups of ladies in full ball-dress, fresh from the Paseo, the volante waiting for them outside.  All is then at its gayest and busiest; but your favorite waiter, with disappointment in his eyes, will tell you that there is “no mas” of your favorite granizada, and will persuade you to take, I know not what nauseous substitute in its place; for all ices are not good at the Dominica, and some are (excuse the word) nasty.  People