The _botteghini_, or lottery-shops, are constantly filled with the most idle and miserable of the population, who come to risk the few bajocchi they have stolen from the urgent wants of their families upon the numbers they may have dreamed of, or seen written upon a wall, or picked up on a slip of paper in the street, or that have been given them by some person supposed to be skilled in this species of divination. But this dangerous propensity is not confined to the lower classes—all seem to play with reckless infatuation: the rich prelate, with the aim of still further augmenting his hoarded wealth; the speculative trader, to gratify his love of hazard and excitement; and the poor working-man, with the more simple motive of relieving the sharp penury of the moment, or realizing some vision of prosperity. The young artist ventures his quarter of a dollar every week on the _terno_ selected by his lady-love, in the hope of a prize sufficient to enable him to gratify his dream of foreign travel and excitement; the servant-girl has faith in the numbers given her by a white-bearded Capuchin, and plays them in the fond delusion of winning a dowry and a husband; and that worn and wretched-looking woman, with three or four tattered children at her heels, and a puling swaddled infant in her arms, gaunt famine stamped on every feature, comes to stake five or six copper coins on the numbers she has dreamed her dead husband brought her in the night, and goes back to the damp cellar she inhabits, to indulge in restless anticipations of plenty and success.
The prevalence of the lottery tends to keep up superstition of the most debasing kind: omens, dreams, lucky or unlucky days, are noted, and the corresponding numbers eagerly sought for in books published for the purpose, a tattered copy of which is sure to be possessed by any family who can boast of a member sufficiently a scholar to decipher it. If a bat flies in at a window, the number analogous to this portent is looked out and played; if a favourite dish is dreamed of, the cabalistic volume is again consulted. On occasion of a criminal being executed, half the town plays numbers corresponding to the event itself, the culprit's age, and the nature of his crime.