Man, as a gambling animal, has the means of indulging in his hopeful propensity, as soon as he has acquired a property either real or personal, and can distinguish odd from even, or a short straw from a shorter. The first game that he played at, in the golden age of happy ignorance, would naturally be one of pure chance. We have no positive information about this identical game in any ancient or modern author; but we may fairly suppose, for no one can prove the supposition to be false, that it was either "drawing lots," or guessing at "odd or even."[14] Imagination suggests that the stakes might be acorns, or chesnuts; and though reason may "query the fact," yet she cannot controvert it. It is evident that at either of the two simple games above named, a player, when it came to his turn to hold, might improve his chance of winning, by means of a little dexterous management, vulgarly called cheating, and thus, to a certain extent, emancipate himself from the laws of blind Fortune,--a personification of chance which a gambler, most assuredly, first elevated to the rank of a divinity.[15] That cheating is nearly coeval with gaming, cannot admit of a doubt; and it is highly probable that this mode of giving an eccentric motion to Fortune's wheel was discovered, if not actually practised, at the first regular bout, under the oaks of Dodona, or elsewhere, before the flood of Thessaly.[16] Man, having left the woods for the meadows, progressing from the sylvan or savage state to that of a shepherd, now not only roasts his chesnuts, but also eats a bit of mutton to them; and after having picked the leg clean, forms of the small bones, between the shank and the foot, new instruments of gaming. Taking a certain number of those bones, three for instance, he makes on four sides of each a certain number of marks: on one side a single point, and on the side opposite six points; on another side three points, and on the opposite four. Putting these bones into a cow's horn, he shakes them together, and then throws them out; and accordingly, as the points may run high, or as the cast may be of three different numbers, so does he count his game.[17] Conventional rules for playing are now established; definite values, independent of the number of points, are assigned to different casts; some being reckoned high, while others are counted low, and sometimes positively against the player, although the chance of their turning up be the same as that of the former. The game now becomes more complicated; and the chances being more numerous, and the odds more various, a knowing gamester who plays regularly, and makes a calculation of the probability of any given number, or combination of points, being thrown, either at a single cast, or out of a certain number, has an advantage in betting over his more simple-minded competitors. "Luck is all!" exclaims the novice,--and guesses; the adept mutters, "Knowledge is power,"--and counts.