throat in self-defence, he would never walk under a ladder; and if the
13th fell on a Friday, he would starve that day rather than obtain a
loaf by the method he best understands. He consults the omens with as
patient a divination as the augurs of old; and so long as he carries an
amulet in his pocket, though it be but a pebble or a polished nut, he is
filled with an irresistible courage. For him the worst terror of all is
the evil eye, and he would rather be hanged by an unsuspected judge than
receive an easy stretch from one whose glance he dared not face. And
while the anthropologist claims him for a savage, whose civilisation has
been arrested at brotherhood with the Solomon Islanders, the politician
might pronounce him a true communist, in that he has preserved a
wholesome contempt of property and civic life. The pedant, again, would
feel his bumps, prescribe a gentle course of bromide, and hope to cure
all the sins of the world by a municipal Turkish bath. The wise man,
respecting his superstitions, is content to take him as he finds him,
and to deduce his character from his very candid history, which is
unaffected by pedant or politician.

Before all things, he is sanguine; he believes that Chance, the great
god of his endeavour, fights upon his side. Whatever is lacking to-day,
to-morrow's enterprise will fulfil, and if only the omens be favourable,
he fears neither detection nor the gallows. His courage proceeds from
this sanguine temperament, strengthened by shame and tradition rather
than from a self-controlled magnanimity; he hopes until despair is
inevitable, and then walks firmly to the gallows, that no comrade may
suspect the white feather. His ambition, too, is the ambition of the
savage or of the child; he despises such immaterial advantages as power
and influence, being perfectly content if he have a smart coat on his
back and a bottle of wine at his elbow. He would rather pick a lock than
batter a constitution, and the world would be well lost, if he and his