Surely no man who is engaged in the intelligent pursuit of happiness will put himself in that position! I do not forget the pleasure of the game. That will be considered on a later page. But there is no need to argue that a pleasure which leads to the habitual disregard of reason as a monitor cannot be trusted as a permanent contributor to happiness. One important practical point remains to be noted. Neither in the gambling room, nor outside, is there half so much mere luck in affairs as most people imagine. The cards are stacked, the dice are loaded, the balls are weighted. Only the gulls believe the game is fair. Shrewd men in business transactions like to conceal their hands, and persuade their clients and associates that much is the result of accident which they themselves have brought about. The plan has many advantages, and plays successfully on the most responsive chords of human weakness. It is said that the late Baron Rothschild of London declined to embark in an enterprise unless its promoters were known as lucky men. Do not imagine that he was governed by any foolish superstition. He knew, perhaps better than any one, what is the real significance of constant luck in the stock market; and would have been the last to have accepted it in the sense of the guileless gambler. Much that in the lives of others we are apt to attribute to luck turns out on closer examination to be the natural though infrequent result of certain cultivated qualities. I have heard of several persons who have had handsome legacies left them by strangers in unexpected acknowledgment of kindness shown. Uniform courtesy is almost sure to be followed sooner or later by some such reward. People who are what we call “quick-witted,” whose judgment is cool and action prompt, are apt to be lucky even in misfortune. William of Normandy, landing for the conquest of England, tripped and fell on the sand. It was an evil presage, and his soldiers shrank back in terror. But William, seizing a handful of the soil, cried――“Thus I grasp this earth, and, by the splendor of God, I shall keep it.” With this he turned the gloomy portent into one the most auspicious. Moderate luck with good sense will repair any blunder, while folly will spoil the best of chances. “Fortune favors the bold,” simply because they have the courage to act; but she rarely favors them when they act without knowledge and prudence. When Shakespeare in the familiar passage says, “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood leads on to fortune,” he assumes that the fortunate man knows when flood-tide arrives.