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cts for the other. As a matter of fact, there would be no such compensation. A run on one
color which would set one of the partners two or three hundred pounds to the bad, would perhaps gain for the other forty or fifty pounds at the outside. Then it mast be remembered that we not only have to consider the actual loss when an unfavorable color appears, but its effect on the operation of the system. During au unfavorable run the stakes are rising and the distance to be covered before (if ever) safety is reached is increasing. By the suggested improvements the rate of increase in the stakes is undoubtedly diminished, but the rate at which the desired goal is approached is diminished in equivalent degree. I scarcely recommend any one to test any of these systems experimentally, even though without any idea of putting them into actual practice. It is easy enough to apply such a test by tossing a coin or cutting a pack a sufficient number of times. For, as the essential principle of all such systems is that they depend on the improbability of an event whose occurrence--when it does happen--will involve a heavy loss--a loss more than canceling all preceding gains--it is naturally likely that any moderately long series of trials will seem to favor the theory, the fatal run not chancing to show in a series of trials too short to give it a fair chance of showing.
It has been thus indeed that many foolish folk have been tempted to trust in a system which has brought them to their ruin. Consider what an irony underlies the gambler's faith in such systems. When he starts with the hope of winning, say, 10/, he is perhaps to
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