UNLUCKY MEN.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
Sin,—Is it allowable to express some modest doubts about year very interesting article in the Spectator of October 14th concerning unlucky men ? Where ill-luck is really ill-lack, and not the untraced result of some hidden fault or flaw, does it at all resemble a physical blemish, as you contend ? For such blemishes are constant, whereas variability is of the essence of chance. Thus, we were taught in College that if, by some strange chance, an honest coin, honestly spun, fell ten times running with " Heads " up, there are no odds for or against its falling on either side when next it is spun. And so, if Captain Dreyfus has been "markedly unlucky" (and not rather the target for malicious design, which upsets a reckoning exactly as a loading of the coin would upset it), this run of bad luck should leave him with exactly the same chances to-morrow as any other man. The gambler is demon- strably mistaken who argues that his "luck must turn"; but he is only mistaken for reasons which make it equally a mistake to reckon that his luck must last. I even venture to think that the two cases which you quote do really look the other way. The man whose run of good luck made him expect a corresponding future was disap- pointed; and since Esau's luck turned, as you say, after he was thirty, it would have been no mistake to entrust him with responsible employment. May I add a line or two upon a kindred subject ? You quote Archdeacon Diggle as accepting "Mr. Herbert Spencer's description of gambling as gain without merit, and through another's lose." As one who lately expressed public doubts whether a satisfactory defini- tion could be framed for the sin, the admitted sin, of gambling, I venture to object to this one, unless indeed piracy and the picking of pockets are forms of gambling, and one's own hazard is no element in it.—I am, Sir, &c.,
GEO. A. DERRY.
The Palace, Londonderry, October 16th.
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