Whatever the moral aspect of Monte Carlo is or is not, there is no doubt but that it is one of the best paying enterprises in the amusement world, else how could M. Blanc have lived in a palace which kings might envy, and have kept the most famous string of race-horses in France. Certainly not out of a “losing game.” He himself made a classic bon mot when he said, “_Rouge gagne quelquefois, noir souvent, mais Blanc toujours_.” M. Blanc was a singularly astute individual. He knew his game and he played it well, or rather his tables and his croupiers did it for him, and he even welcomed men with systems which they fondly believed would sooner or later break the bank, for he knew that the best of “systems” would but add to the profits of the bank in the long run. He even answered an inquisitive person, who wanted to know how one should gamble in order to win: “_The most sensible advice I can give you is--‘Don’t.’_” One reads in a local guide-book that the chances between the player and the bank, taking all the varieties of games into consideration, is as 60 to 61, and that the winnings of the bank were something like £1,000,000 sterling per year. This would seem to mean that the players of Europe and America took £61,000,000 to Monte Carlo each year, and brought away £60,000,000, leaving £1,000,000 behind as the price of their pleasure. The magnitude of these figures is staggering, and so able a statistician as Sir Hiram Maxim refuted them utterly a couple of years ago as follows: “If the bank actually won one million sterling a year, and its chances were only 1 in 60 better than the players, it would seem quite evident that sixty-one millions must have been staked. However, upon visiting Monte Carlo and carefully studying the play, I found that instead of the players taking £61,000,000 to Monte Carlo, and losing £1,000,000 of it, the total amount probably did not exceed £1,000,000, of which the bank, instead of winning, as shown in the guide-book, about 1½ per cent., actually won rather more than 90 per cent.; therefore, the advantages in favour of the bank, instead of being 61 to 60, were approximately 10 to 1.” This ought to correct any preconceived false notions of percentages and sum totals. The law of averages is a very simple thing in which most people, in respect to gambling, and many other matters, have a supreme faith; but Sir Hiram disposes of this in a very few words. He says: “Let us see what the actual facts are.