“No, thank you! shouldn't know what to do with more than five hundred dollars. I'll only go five dollars this time.”
The “writer,” as a policy-seller is called, took the money and gave the usual written slip of paper containing the selected numbers; loudly proclaiming her good luck, the girl then went away. She was an accomplice to whom a “piece” had been secretly given after the drawn numbers were in.
Of course this hit was the sensation of the day among the policy-buyers at that office, and brought in large gains.
The wretched woman who had just seen five hundred dollars vanish into nothing instead of becoming, as under the wand of an enchanter, a great heap of gold, listened in a kind of maze to what passed around her—listened and let the tempter get to her ear again. She went away, stooping in her gait as one bearing a heavy burden. Before an hour had passed hope had lifted her again into confidence. She had to make but one venture more to double on the risk of the day previous, and secure a fortune that would make both herself and daughters independent for life.
Another sale of good stocks, another gambling venture and another loss, swelling the aggregate in this wild and hopeless “doubling” experiment to over a thousand dollars.
But she was not cured. As regularly as a drunkard goes to the bar went she to the policy-shops, every day her fortune growing less. Poverty began to pinch. The house in which she lived with her daughters was sold, and the unhappy family shrunk into a single room in a third-rate boarding-house. But their income soon became insufficient to meet the weekly demand for board. Long before this the daughters had sought for something to do by which to earn a little money. Pride struggled hard with them, but necessity was stronger than pride.
We finish the story in a few words. In a moment of weakness, with want and hard work staring her in the face, one of the daughters married a man who broke her heart and buried her in less than two years. The other, a weak and sickly girl, got a situation as day governess in the family of an old friend of her father's, where she was kindly treated, but she lived only a short time after her sister's death.
And still there was no abatement of the mother's infatuation. She was more than half insane on the subject of policy gambling, and confident of yet retrieving her fortunes.
At the time Pinky Swett and her friend in evil saw her come gliding up from the restaurant in faded mourning garments and closely veiled, she was living alone in a small, meagrely furnished room, and cooking her own food.
Everything left to her at her husband's death was gone. She earned a dollar or two each week by making shirts and drawers for the slop-shops, spending every cent of this in policies. A few old friends who pitied her, but did not know of the vice in which she indulged, paid her rent and made occasional contributions for her support. All of these contributions, beyond the amount required for a very limited supply of food, went to the policy-shops. It was a mystery to her friends how she had managed to waste the handsome property left by her husband, but no one suspected the truth.