ct,
will vaguely attribute to me a mysterious power. Yet chance alone
would be responsible. If I did that six times running all the players
at the table would be interested in me. If I did it a dozen times all
the players in the Casino would regard me with awe. Yet chance alone
would be responsible. If I did it eighteen times my name would be in
every newspaper in Europe. Yet chance alone would be responsible. I
should be, in that department of human activity, an extremely
successful man, and the vast majority of people would instinctively
credit me with gifts that I do not possess.

If such phenomena of superstition can occur in an affair where the
agency of chance is open and avowed, how much more probable is it that
people should refuse to be satisfied with the explanation of "sheer
accident" in affairs where it is to the interest of the principal
actors to conceal the role played by chance! Nevertheless, there can
be no doubt in the minds of persons who have viewed success at close
quarters that a proportion of it is due solely and utterly to chance.
Successful men flourish to-day, and have flourished in the past, who
have no quality whatever to differentiate them from the multitude. Red
has turned up for them a sufficient number of times, and the universal
superstitious instinct not to believe in chance has accordingly
surrounded them with a halo. It is merely ridiculous to say, as some
do say, that success is never due to chance alone. Because nearly
everybody is personally acquainted with reasonable proof, on a great
or a small scale, to the contrary.

The second sort of success, B, is that made by men who, while not
gifted with first-class talents, have, beyond doubt, the talent to
succeed. I should describe these men by saying that, though they
deserve something, they do not deserve the dazzling reward known as
success. They strike us as overpaid. We meet them in all professions
and trades, and we do not really respect them. They excite our
curiosity, and perhaps our envy. They may rise very high indeed, but
they must always be unpleasantly conscious of a serious reservation in
our attitude towards them. And if they could read their obituary
notices they would assuredly discern therein a certain chilliness,
however kindly we acted up to our great national motto of _De mortuis
nil nist bunkum_. It is this class of success which puzzles the social
student. How comes it that men without any other talent possess