tly refuses good offers or even small chances of work because
they are not good enough for him. He expects that Luck will suddenly
bestow on him a ready-made position or a gorgeous chance suitable to the
high opinions he holds of his own capacities. After a time people tire
of giving him any openings at all. In wooing the Goddess of Luck he has
neglected the Goddess of Opportunity.

These men in middle age fall into a well-known class. They can be seen
haunting the Temple, and explaining to their more industrious and
successful associates that they would have been Lord Chancellor if a big
brief had ever come their way. They develop that terrible disease known
as "the genius of the untried." Their case is almost as pitiful or
ludicrous as that of the man of very moderate abilities whom drink or
some other vice has rendered quite incapable. There will still be found
men to whisper to each other as he passes, "Ah, if Brown didn't drink,
he might do anything."

Far different will be the mental standpoint of the man who really means
to succeed. He will banish the idea of luck from his mind. He will
accept every opportunity, however small it may appear, which seems to
lead to the possibility of greater things. He will not wait on luck to
open the portals to fortune. He will seize opportunity by the forelock
and develop its chances by his industry. Here and there he may go
wrong, where judgment or experience is lacking. But out of his very
defeats he will learn to do better in the future, and in the maturity of
his knowledge he will attain success. At least, he will not be found
sitting down and whining that luck alone has been against him.

There remains a far more subtle argument in favour of the gambling
temperament which believes in luck. It is that certain men possess a
kind of sixth sense in the realm of speculative enterprise. These men,
it is said, know by inherent instinct, divorced from reasoned knowledge,
what enterprise will succeed or fail, or whether the market will rise or
fall. They are the children of fortune.

The real diagnosis of these cases is a very different one from that put
forward by the mystic apostles of the Golden Luck. Eminent men who are
closely in touch with the great affairs of politics or business often
act on what appears to be a mere instinct of this kind. But, in truth,
they have absorbed, through a careful and continuous study of events
both in the present and the past, so much knowledg