LUCK.

Samoa Times and South Sea Gazette, Volume 2, Issue 57, 2 November 1878, Page 3

LUCK.

Richard H. Proctor, the astronomer, writes of " Luck" in a late uuuiber of the Loudon Echo: In Forstcr's " Life of Dickens," :i curious story is told of what Dickens called a " wouderful paralyzing coincidence," experienced on the Doncastcr racecourse. On the St. Leger Day, in IBSG, Dickens bought u card of the races; facetiously wrote down three names for the winners : " :he >urce ( li.i; ; races jisvi r ;■: h< lit; irr.-in- heard or thought of any of tho ~,■:■„.., ,-\r.-|,i that tho winner of the [l. ... proved to be nowhere, had !:iioneil to him); ami, "ifyoucan i.viiovt it '.vithoiit your hair standing on oud. those three races were won, one after another, by those three horse '. !*' (The notes of exclamation are his own.) Such cases as these seem to many to afford absolute convincing evidence nf the reality of what, is commonly called luck —that is the occurrence of events such as pure chance cannot account for. I suppose ninety-nine men in a hundred believe in luck of this sort. Some men are lucky, others unlucky; or else on some

occasions a man is lucky, or his luck is in the ascendant, while on others he is unlucky. Men who ought to know most about such matters —that is, Tiieu who very often try their luck—have the fullest faith in these ideas In Stcinuictz's treatise on'-The Gaming Table" we have tho axioms of a professional gambler) and blackleg, hut thai is detail); and among them we find the doctrines of good and bad luck, of lucky and unlucky seasons, set down as a sort of first principle, which none doubt or question. "A prudent player,'' he says, "before undertaking anything should put himself to the test to discover if he is 'in vein,' or in luck; in all doub! he should abstain. There arcseveralperson," he savs again, " who are constantly pursued "by bad luck; to such I say, "Never play.'" Lot any one cast a die sixty times, keeping a record of tin' result (or it will serv [ually well to cat a pair of dice thirty times:, and he icertain to tint] that every fuce—-ace,douce, trey, quart, quint, and size—will have shown several limes, and most probably about ten times. So with sixty who named at random a horse out of six engaged in a race. It is probable that about ten will select the winner, alia >st ,VI ,"" ■ '. ul „ '";""' il* ','."" ,'',!,''' and practically certain thai two or three will do so. Here, then, will he. certainly two or tinee, and probably nine or ten, to whom the paralyzing coincidence which so greatly astonished Dickons will have occurred at a Pint trial. When wo consider that probably not 10,000 but several hundred thousand make such experiments about every great race, and there are many great races in the year, and that gambling on races has been going on for many years, it will he seen that "coincidences'' far more surprising than Dickens' experience must occur many times each year, and that yet more startling " coincidences " must often have occurred since racing began. Add to these the millions of experiment yearly made in gambling transactions of other sorts, and also in more or less speculative business transactions, and wo seo that there must of necessity be an enormous mass of evidence apparently favouring the belief in luck, lucky persons, lucky seasons, and so forth. The marvellous stories (true stories, too) of men who, at Baden and Hamburg, in the bad old times, had wonderful runs of luck (some of them aro given in the essay on (Jumbling Superstitions in my " Borderland of Science ") are found, when thus considered, to be not marvellous at all. The wonder rather is that, among tho multiplied experiences at rouge ct noir, roulette, and so forth, still more curious cases have not occurred, or have not been noted. At a lirst view nqthing seems more certainly to demonstrate the reality of luck than tho success of those who have several timos '■ broken tin; bank," and have amascod in a short time enormous sums at the waning table. But so soon ue _\vc consider that, umong the

millions who gamble, tens of thousands must be very successful for awhile; thai amen;/" these hundreds must continue to be sin tsful yet longer; and that among these hundreds several must have a further spell of Success, we see how the stories oi great good luck, of amazing luck, and, lastly, paralysing luck, CaSttOt only be explained, but are necessary consequences of multiplied gambling experience.