No; I did not go into the coal holes. My father forbade it, and I lacked the inclination as well. By nature I was a speculator, a gambler if you will. I like uncertainties; I would not lend money at five hundred per cent., merely because one knows in advance the measure of one’s risks and profits. I want a chance to win and a chance to lose; for I hold with the eminent gamester Charles Fox that while to win offers the finest sensation of which the human soul is capable, the next finest comes when you lose. Congenitally I was a courtier of Fortune and a follower of the gospel of chance. And this inborn mood has carried me through a score of professions until, as I tell you this, I have grown rich and richer as a stock speculator, and hang over the markets a pure gambler of the tape. I make no apology; I simply point to the folk who surround me. My vocation of a gambler--for what else shall one call a speculator of stocks?--has doubtless fattened my tendencies towards the superstitious. I’ve witnessed much surely, that should go to their strengthening. Let me tell you a story somewhat in line with the present current of my thoughts; it may reach some distance to teach you with Horatio that there be more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy. After all, it is the cold record of one of a hundred score of incidents that encourage my natural belief in the occult. ***** There is a gentleman of stocks--I’ve known him twenty years--and he has a weakness for the numeral three. Just how far his worship of that sacred number enters into his business life no one may certainly tell; he is secretive and cautious and furnishes no evidence on the point that may be covered up. Yet this weakness, if one will call it so, crops up in sundry fashions. His offices are suite three, in number thirty-three Blank street; his telephones are 333 and 3339 respectively; his great undertakings are invariably deferred in their commencements until the third of the month. His peculiar and particular fetich, however, is a chain of three hundred and thirty-three gold beads. It is among the wonders of the street. This was made for him and under his direction by Tiffany, and cost one workman something over a year of his life in its construction. It is all hand and hammer work, this chain; and on each bead is drawn with delicate and finished art a gypsy girl’s head. Under a microscope this gypsy face is perfect and the entire jewel worthy the boast of the Tiffany house as a finest piece of goldbeater’s work turned out in modern times.