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46 DAYS IN THE SUN
out; then follows the stage of petty jobbery between
man and man, in which large or small fractions of a
single ticket pass from hand to hand at prices that are
constantly increasing. All trade, all business enter-
prise, centers about the lottery; if any one really does
any serious work, that is, if he steals something or
commits some other offense, you may be sure that el
gordo is behind it, the fat morsel of over five million
pesetas ($1,000,000) for which the whole country,
standing on its toes, is gaping and gnashing its teeth.
With a tension that is driven to fever heat by means of
artificial excitation, the days pass until Christmas Eve,
the hour when the drawings are made. Now certain
ones will be transported to heaven; thousands will col-
lapse in despair. And the Christmas holidays will
drag by in dull apathy until Twelfth Night—the Festi-
val of the Three Kings—when the first drawing of the
new year is made, and life again becomes worth while
to mortals.
There are three drawings every month in the Span-
ish lottery, all a matter of tense excitement to the
whole nation. But no drawing is so exciting as this
one on Christmas Eve, for which forty thousand
tickets at two hundred dollars each sell like hot cakes.
This drawing costs the people of the country about
eight million dollars; to many of those who play the
lottery, the loss of their investment is not more serious
than the drooping of an eyelid; but some sacrifice the
warm feathering of their nests; others, the nest itself.
Of this sum of eight million dollars, about three mil-
lion remain in the national treasury, while the rest is
distributed by the wheel of fortune in the form of
winnings that are so large as to pour oil on the fire of
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