FAVOURITES OF FORTUNE.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XX, Issue XII, 19 March 1898, Page 364

FAVOURITES OF FORTUNE.

A commercial traveller, journeying through France, visited Monte Carlo, and, fascinated by pleasure and play, lingered until he had lost at the tables ail his own money and some belonging to his employer. Greatly embarrassed, yet reluctant to return until he had retrieved his losses he resolved to risk the remainder of his master’s money—£4o—on the colour most strongly suggested to him on the morrow. Next morning while walking out he found a red morocco diary; later on a child gave him a red rose; he also met several ladies robed in red. He went to the tables, placed all he possessed on the fateful colour, and had singular success, winning back all he had lost and a very substantial sum in addition, after which he wisely departed. A Manchester merchant, by reason of a ‘corner’ in cotton, found himself in serious financial straits, and desperately needed £2,000 to enable him to turn around. He was not a man of sporting proclivities, but for three nights in succession he dreamed that a certain horse had won the Derby. Swayed by a sudden impulse he realised all his available cash, amounting to £7OO, went to the Derby and laid the entire amount against heavy odds on the horse of which he had dreamed. The horse proved an easy winner, and the elated merchant returned home richer by £5,000. Singular to say, neither before nor since that occasion has he ever made a bet. Some years since, before the Dunlop type had attained its present popularity, a company was being established in its interests, and a friend of the writer was invited by an acquaintance to take a hundred £1 shares in the concern. He hesitated as to the wisdom of so doing, but finally decided it by tossing up a penny. If heads won he would have the century of shares. Heads won. He took the hundred shares, and a few years later they were worth £3O each, realising a profit of nearly £3,000. A city clerk who had saved some money was eating his luncheon in a

restaurant one day when he overheard two brokers at another table discussing the affairs of a certain New Zealand mine. ‘Rubbish!’ exclaimed one. ‘You are right,* responded his companion. ‘I have 1,000 shares in that concern I would sell to-day at a shilling each.’ Impelled by an impulse he could neither control nor explain, the clerk followed the brokers to their office, broached the matter of the New Zealand shares, and, after some conversation on the subject, agreed to take the 1,000 shares for £5O. Six months later a boom in the said shares placed them at £ 7 10/ each, and by promptly selling out the lucky clerk realised over £ 7,000.