“‘I had always been lucky before,’ he says, ‘and I have not had a day’s luck since.’ And the fact is, that whereas he was formerly well-to-do, he is not so now, poor man. “I suppose everybody who plays poker believes in luck. Certainly I do, and I have seen certain things at the card table that in their way were as remarkable as the runs of a single number at roulette, that make up the pretty little romances that go out from Monte Carlo at times, and that used to be dated Baden Baden. I sat watching a game one night at a friend’s house in St. Nicholas Avenue, in which only intimate friends were playing, and two of them were ladies. I did not join, as there were six at the table, and I don’t like a game with seven in. There was absolutely nothing in the game to distinguish it from any other of the hundreds of games that go on in the family circles of up-to-date New Yorkers every night. The limit was five cents. There wasn’t a player in the game who knew enough of card manipulation to deal a crooked hand, and there wasn’t one there who would have done it under temptation. And, moreover, there wasn’t anything like temptation. “Yet one woman in that game held a succession of hands that would have made a fortune for an ordinarily good player if he were lucky enough to hold them in a stiff game. She had been playing with indifferent success for perhaps half an hour, and I was amusing myself by noticing her essentially feminine style of play, when she suddenly began holding flushes. Five times in succession she held a flush before any special remark was made. Of course, there was the usual chatter and chaffing, but when she showed down the fifth flush in five deals, there was a general outburst of comment, and a confession by her that it did seem uncanny. “‘It will give me the shivery creeps if I get any more,’ was the way she expressed it, and I could see that she really was nervous. That, naturally, amused me, for it was not so very extraordinary, though it was certainly unusual. “The next hand she held nothing. Then she got a four flush and filled. Then she got a pat flush; then, drawing to the ace and king of spades, she got three more spades. The next hand was nothing, and the next was a pat flush. By this time I was excited myself, as was everybody in the game, and I made a memorandum of the last eleven hands, and began jotting down each hand as she held it.