The first drawing of the Loterie de La Presse, to which I referred in a former letter, took place this week. It was undoubtedly the event of the day, so far as France was concerned. Everyone (except the philosophers, who are always in the minority) was on the look-out for the winning numbers; and many ingenious though unscrupulous hawkers did a lively trade in fictitious lists which they rushed all over the city immediately the drawing was over, and long before any correct list could possibly have been printed. It would be hard to estimate the number of people in one's own circle who were not fondly counting on gotting, if not the big prize of a million francs, at least a modest thousand. the drawing took place in
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.