160 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[May 1, 1888. 



plan is this : For sixpence any one can buy a ticket mai-ked 



tkus 



or sets of several tickets at a slight reduction, 



the average of the various prices being as neaily as possible 

 five pence. On receiving a ticket the victim marks in a 

 letter of the alphabet in each of the four divisions of his 

 ticket, putting in any letter he likes. (The conditions say 

 that any letter can be marked in in each square, so that 

 the same letter, if the " competitor " pleases, might be 

 mai'ked in more than once ; and as the " society " is simi- 

 larly free to mark in any letter on each square, this possi- 

 bihty must be taken into account in considering the value 

 of each probability.) The "competitor" posts his ticket, 

 lettered according to his guessing, on Friday, and on the 

 same day the " society " sends out to him by post a corre- 

 sponding ticket, lettered as they please, so that his guess 

 and their selection cross on their way. 



If none of the competitor's letters correspond with the 

 society's letters, he simply loses his sixpence. If one letter 

 of his only is the same as the letter mai'ked in the same 

 square on the society's ticket, the competitor receives a 

 shilling, or twice his stake. If two letters of his correspond 

 with two, square for square, in the returned ticket, the com- 

 petitor i-eceives ten shillings. If three letters similarly cor- 

 respond, the competitor receives 'Al. or 5^., according to the 

 position of the squares thus correspondingly tilled — a dis- 

 tinction for which there is no real reason so far as the 

 probabilities are concerned : we may conveniently put \l. 

 as the average price paid for this triple success. Lastly, if 

 all four squares are rightly lettered the " competitor " 

 receives lOOZ. 



Not one in a thousand probably of those who buy tickets 

 in this lottery has any clear idea of the value of his chances 

 for the respective prizes. The promoters of such schemes 

 know this, though the Louisiana Lottery schemei-s daringly 

 decline to clothe their iniquity, so confidently do they trust 

 in the general idiocy of their victims. As a matter of fact, 

 the calculation of the chances oflered by the " National 

 Prize Competition Society " is sufficiently simple. But 

 those among the I'eaders of these lines for whom it would 

 be easy could make it for themselves, and those for whom 

 it would not, could not easily follow any explanation ; so I 

 simply give the results. 



Assuming the power of putting any letter whatsoever out 

 of our English twenty-six on each square, there are 45(),97(J 

 possible ways of filling in the ticket. Comparing these with 

 any definite ticket filled in by the society, 390,025 will be 

 wrong as to all letters ; G2,500 will be right as to one letter ; 

 3,750 wUl be right as to two letters ; 100 will be right as to 

 three letters; and one only will be right as to all four 

 letters. 



To determine the extent of the swindle, suppose these 

 results, which represent the average proportions in any 

 long series of trials, all duly paid for at the rates above men- 

 tioned, then there will be paid out : — 



G2,.">00s. for single correct letters. 

 37,oOOs. for two „ „ 



8,000s. for three „ „ 



2,000s. for lour 



Total . lOO.oOOs. paid on prizes. 

 The sum paid in, at 5J. for each of the 456,976 tickets, 

 would be 190,407 shillings, and it is Ln this degree that the 

 public, in purchasing large numbers of tickets on this plan, 

 are wronged. That is, they pay 190,407 shillings, and get 

 back on tlie average only 100,000 .shillings on each set of 

 456,976 trials. But the promoters of the scheme have to 

 pay one halfpenny for each ticket issued, and charge a penny 

 for postage — according, at least, to their circular ; so that 



they actually make 228,488 pence, or 19,041 .shillings, more, 

 by this seemingly slight overcharge for postage. At a 

 moderate computation of the expense for printing tickets, 

 advertising, etc., the " National Prize Competition Society " 

 make the usual proportion of profit on the lottery they 

 conduct, viz., between eighty and one hundred per cent 1 

 It is at this rate that the Louisiana Lottery Company get the 

 better of their foolish victims. The Geneva, Hamburg, 

 Brandenbui-g, and other lotteries, get similar gains. 



The " National Prize Competition Society " advertise 

 their lottery scheme as " a novel system of money-making " 

 — and truly, in one sense. The deluded public suppose the 

 money-making is for them, but the society attends to that 

 part of the business, and, though the system is in reality 

 old enough, yet it has been so clothed in a new garb that it 

 tiikes in the weaker sort just as thoioughly as though it 

 were altogether new. 



How it has come to pass that, as I am told, the law has 

 not yet stopped the " novel system of money-making," and 

 punished the law-breakers, I know no more than I know how 

 it comes to pass that respectable serials have pei'mitted the 

 " National Prize Competition Society" to advertise in their 

 columns. 



THE RELIGION OF THE ANCIENT 

 BRITONS.* 



ROFESSOK EHYS'S satirical reproach in his 

 preface that " of course it is not pretended 

 thaD anything connected with the history of 

 religion among the Celts — or among the 

 Teutons, if it comes to that — could vie in 

 popularity with the pedigree of the last idol 

 unearthed in the East, or even with the dis- 

 covery of a new way of spelling Nebuchadnezzar's name," is 

 fully warranted. For we have been indolently content to 

 remain in shameful ignorance concerning the question of 

 the religion of the races dominant in these islands before 

 the lloman inva.sion. Our training, both at home and school, 

 on Sundays as well as on week-days, has fostered this ignor- 

 ance. Classical studies have usurped, and still unduly usurp, 

 the scholar's time, as if all of value in the history of mankind 

 is confined to a strip of Mediterranean seaboard. Romulus 

 and Remus, Cecrops and Pisistratus, are f imiliar uames to 

 the student ; perchance he has heai'd of Arthur, but not of 

 Nud and Manannan MacLir. He knows the Iliad and 

 the Odyssey, but not the songs of Edda and the breezy, 

 bracing sagas, the Volsung and the Niblung, which, as 

 William Morris says, " should be to all our race what the 

 Tale of Troy was to the Greeks." And, in like manner, as 

 the old artificial division of history into " profane " and 

 " sacred " shows, instruction in the religious development of 

 mankind rarely, except to point a false moral or a mis- 

 leading contrast, passes beyond the age and races covered 

 by the Bible. 



For the larger number of folk, the political history of 

 Britain begins with the invasion of Julius Ca?.sar, and its 

 religious history with the mission of Augustine. Out of 

 the material gathered by the famous emperor, as the result 

 of jjersonal observation, and by Tacitus, whose information 

 was, however, secondhand, a few sentences describing the 

 general features and mode of life of the " ancient Britons " 

 were spun, and then the story of the successive invasions 

 which resulted in the " making of England " was woven 

 according to regulation pattern. Whether the wild tribes 



* " Lectures on the Oriyin and Growth of Religii.n, as illustrated 

 by Celtic Heathendom." Ey John Rhys, Professor of Celtic in the 

 University of Oxford. (Williams & Norgate: 1888.) 



