It would be impossible to define precisely or even approximately just what sort of a mental state the word "luck" stands for, but one element in its composition is a more or less naïve belief in supernatural and occult influences which at one time work for and at another time against the believer. In its more pronounced forms, the belief in luck lifts itself into a sort of a blind dependence upon some ministering spirit which interposes between rational causes and their effects. In a way one may say that the more or less vague and shadowy notions of luck which float in the minds of people to-day are but the emaciated and famishing forms of a once all-embracing superstition, and that these shadows possess a potency over life and action oftentimes beyond our willingness to believe. There is another interesting and somewhat curious thing to be noticed in connection with these guesses. There is a persistent tendency to the duplication of digits, or, if one thinks of the numbers as at first conceived in terms of language, a tendency to alliteration. For example, the numbers 111, 222, 333, 444, 555, 666, 777, 888, and 999 occur oftener by sixty-seven per cent than any other combination possible in the tens thus represented. That is to say, other things equal, one would have a right to expect 334 or 332 to occur as often as 333. But the fact is, in this particular case, 333 occurred forty-eight times, while the other two put together occurred only three times. Here, however, we have the combined influence of the preference for the odd over the even and the digital sequence. Still, if we select 444, we find that this number, made up though it is of three digits in general least selected of all, the preference for alliterative effect is strong enough to make the number occur 28 times to 14 times for both 443 and 445. If we take 777, we find that it was used more times than all the other combinations from 770 to 779 inclusive, put together. Therefore, under conditions similar to those presented for these guesses, one would be safe to expect these duplicative or alliterative numbers to occur much oftener than any other single number in the series.