being considered as a profit which a speculator should without hesitation take, while a fall all round in a market of two or three per cent. in a day is of more common occurrence.[4] It may here, perhaps, be retorted that if a fall of 5 per cent. is nothing very extraordinary to happen in a few days, while a rise is, as a rule, gradual, why not speculate for the fall? The answer is, that the public are very seldom indeed bears. It goes against the grain. Speculation with the public, as a body, is a fair weather game. When the most potent influences are affecting the Stock markets downwards, ordinary people hold aloof. We shall go more into detail with reference to this peculiarity farther on. That it is so is a fact, and it is easily accounted for. When you are dealing with a die, a hexagonal body, you know that it must fall on one of its six sides, and that each side to a certainty will have its turn, and therefore a mathematician is able, from there being a limitation set to the risk incurred, to estimate to a fraction what amount a thrower of the die can afford to venture, five times out of six, on the chances of the ace turning up, so that in the long run he will not lose. A game of die-throwing for money, conducted by one of two players upon principles based upon the doctrine of probabilities, and upon conditions to give him a certain profit, can only be continued for a short time, as the absurdity of it becomes speedily evident to the other player, and play ends. Those with whom outside speculators deal in the Stock markets get all the profit also in the long run, much upon the same system that professional bettors on horse-racing always win in the long run by backing the field. In the die-throwing gambling there is no mystery, at least very little for the ordinary understanding. A person of average intelligence who is quite unable to comprehend that it is a mathematical certainty that a die will show the ace upwards, in the long run, one time in six, can be got by simple observations to see that in a great number of throws the ace will have appeared about as often as once in six throws. The fact of his losing his money through betting that it would not be so would, in any case, bring the truth home to him. The case, however, of speculation in the Stock markets is very different. Although so large a proportion of speculators speedily lose their money, a large proportion of them also, when quitting the arena through want of capital to go on with, seem to entertain a strong conviction that money is to be made at it. There is very frequently an impression left that if this and that, and the other, had been done instead of what was done, the result would have been otherwise. They regret that their purse was not longer that they might try again, feeling sure that with such a rich experience they would avoid the mistakes that had landed them losers. The Stock Exchange speculator has an innumerable number of influences arrayed