He had portraits of celebrated racers, both quadruped and biped, and he could tell the fastest time ever made by either.  His manipulation of cards was, as his friends averred, one of the fine arts; and in all the games he had wrought out problems of chances, and knew the probability of every contingency.  A stock-list was always tacked above his secretary, and another constantly in his pocket.  And this evening he had brought home a revolving disk, having figures of various values engraved around its edge, carefully poised, with a hair-spring pointer, like a hand on a dial-plate.

“What have you got, John?” asked his wife.

“Only a toy, a plaything, deary.  See it spin!” and he gave the disk a whirl.

“But what is it for?”

“Oh, nothing in particular.  I thought we could amuse ourselves in turning it for the largest throws.”

“Is that all?  It is a heavy thing, and must have cost a good lot of money.”

“Not much.  Now see!  You know I have tried to show you how chance rules the world; and if you once get the chances in your favor, all is right.  Now suppose we take this wheel, and on the number 2,000 we paste ‘Michigan Central,’ ‘Western’ over 1,000, ‘Vermont and Massachusetts’ over 500, ‘Cary Improvement’ over 400, and so on.  Now, after a certain number of revolutions, by keeping account, we get the chance of each stock to come up.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I don’t suppose you do; you don’t give your mind to it, as I do.”

“But you know you had the same notion once about cards, and pasted the names of the stocks on the court cards; and then you shuffled and cut and dealt and turned up, night after night.”

“Little doxy! small piece of property! you’d best attend to that baby, and other matters that you know something about.”

The “little doxy” felt strongly inclined to cry, but she kept back the sobs and said, “You know, John, how sullen and almost hateful you were before, when you were bewitched after those mean stocks.  I don’t think you should meddle with such things; they are too big for you.  Let the rich fools gamble, if they want to; if they lose, they can afford it, and nobody cares but to laugh at them.  Oh, John, you promised me you wouldn’t gamble any more.”

“Well, I don’t gamble.  I haven’t been to a faro bank for a year.  I stay away just to please you, although I know all the chances, and could break the bank as easy as falling off a log.”

“You don’t gamble, you say, but you are uneasy till you put all your money at risk on those paper things.  I don’t see the difference.”

“You needn’t see the difference; nobody asked you to see the difference.  Gamble, indeed! there isn’t a man on the street that doesn’t keep an eye on the paper things, as you call them.”

“You see what I told you.  You are cross.  You like anything better (a sob) than your poor (another) neglected wife.”