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Miss Frances Horowitz, a blondined and thirtyish telegraph operator, paced & paced & paced her top floor flat at No. 914 51st St., Brooklyn. "I'm sick! I'm sick! I'm sick!" moaned Frances Horowitz. "I have nothing to say. Nothing to say, except that I'm sorry. Oh, I'm so sorry. I made a great mistake! A great mistake!"
Miss Horowitz' great mistake had been to sell her ticket on Commander III, now worth $75,000, to Sidney Freeman for $6,000. But in Swissvale, Pa. a drug clerk named James Taylor felt just as sick and sorry because he had turned down $16,800 for a ticket on a horse which failed to place.
In Washington, Mrs. Mary Booth, a young and pretty widow, was sitting at her typewriter in the office of the Comptroller of the Currency when she heard her ticket on Highlander had won her $50,000. Friends, newshawks, photographers poured in. Mrs. Booth was worried by such distractions from her work. "The Comptroller might not like it," said she. "In a few years I might need a job."
"I should say about $4.50 maybe," was the estimate of small John J. Holden, 39, of how much money he had ever owned at one time. For four years, since he lost his job in a knitting mill, he had earned almost nothing. He lived with his old mother in a ramshackle little house in Newton, Mass. Lately he put 3ยข on a number lottery, used his winnings to buy an Irish Sweepstakes ticket. When he heard that his ticket had won him $75,000 he thought first of an automobile, a store, some new clothes, college for the twin boys of his widower brother. Then he began to worry. Now that he was rich someone might kidnap the twins.
In his suite at the Ritz-Carlton newshawks found Sidney Freeman with a headache. He was busy now offering cash to prize-winners who would otherwise have to wait months for their money from overseas. He would pay $145,000 for a $150,000 ticket. Asked if he had bought any tickets on the winner, he remarked cheerfully, "I thought I had one, but I found I hadn't. Well, we take a loss of about $150,000. It does not matter so much. . . . I'll be back in January. . . ."