There are but few things more unbalancing to the mind than the act
of suddenly winning or losing large sums of money. A few years ago
at Monte Carlo I was in company with a friend, a well known man of
affairs who while there played at roulette nearly every day, merely as
a pastime. He was of mature age, naturally methodical, conservative,
temperate and cool-headed. He made it an unalterable rule to limit
his losses to $200 at any one sitting, and on losing this amount he
always stopped playing. His bets were usually limited to two dollars
on the numbers, and never doubled except for one turn of the wheel
when his number won. He generally played three numbers at a time; never
more than four. For ten consecutive sittings luck was against him and
each time he had lost his stake of $200. I saw him get up and leave
the room, apparently in a state of disgust. An hour or so later I
discovered him at a roulette table in another room stacking his chips
in piles on a dozen or more numbers. Now and again when he exceeded the
limit the watchful croupier reduced his bets and pushed a few disks
back to him. In addition to betting on the numbers he was staking a
thousand franc note on one of the three columns, another thousand on
the colors, and a like amount on the center dozen. In one run he lost
seventeen consecutive bets on red, of a thousand francs each. His eyes
were bloodshot, his fingers twitched, and plainly he was under the
strain of great agitation. He continued to play for three hours or so,
when all of a sudden he got up, stood for a moment looking dazedly
about, then left the table. He afterwards told me that he lost twenty
thousand dollars; and that he hadn’t the slightest recollection of
anything that happened during the play, nor did he realize the amount
he was betting. In this connection, it is a fact not generally known,
that many rich men sign printed cards of instructions to the proprietor
of a certain well known gambling club in the South, directing him
to stop their play and refuse them further credit beyond a certain
specified sum on any one day or evening of play, and refusing to become
responsible beyond that amount. If men who trade in the stock market
were to impose like restrictions upon their transactions the losses
would in many cases be greatly minimized.