tables at Monte Carlo backing runs of good or
ill luck. It has been defined as a belief in the imagined tendencies of
chance to produce events continuously favourable or continuously
unfavourable.

The whole conception is a nightmare of the mind, peculiarly unfavourable
to success in business. The laws of games of chance are as inexorable as
those of the universe. A skilful player will, in the long run, defeat a
less skilful one; the bank at Monte Carlo will always beat the
individual if he stays long enough. I presume that the bank there is
managed honestly, although I neither know nor care whether it is. But
this at least is certain--the cagnotte gains 3 per cent. on every spin.
Mathematically, a man is bound to lose the capital he invests in every
thirty throws when his luck is neither good nor bad. In the long run his
luck will leave him with a balanced book--minus the cagnotte. My advice
to any man would be, "Never play roulette at all; but if you must play,
hold the cagnotte."

The Press, of course, often publishes stories of great fortunes made at
Monte Carlo. The proprietors there understand publicity. Such statements
bring them new patrons.

It is necessary to dwell on this gambling side of the question, because
every man who believes in luck has a touch of the gambler in him, though
he may never have played a stake. And from the point of view of real
success in affairs the gambler is doomed in advance. It is a frame of
mind which a man should discourage severely when he finds it within the
citadel of his mind. It is a view which too frequently infects young men
with more ambition than industry.

The view of Fortune as some shining goddess sweeping down from heaven
and touching the lucky recipient with her pinions of gold dazzles the
mind of youth. Men think that with a single stroke they will either be
made rich for life or impoverished for ever.

The more usual view is less ambitious. It is the complaint that Fortune
has never looked a man's way. Failure due to lack of industry is excused
on the ground that the goddess has proved adverse. There is a third form
of this mental disease. A young man spoke to me in Monte Carlo the other
day, and said, "I could do anything if only I had the chance, but that
chance never comes my way." On that same evening I saw the aspirant
throwing away whatever chance he may have had at the tables.

A similar type of character is to be found in the young man who
consisten