George, that I was right--a hundred to one. I worked it out afterwards.
And here we are spiked on the off-chance. If I'd have only kept back a
little, I'd have had it on U.P. next day, like a shot, and come out on
the rise. There you are!"

His thoughts took a graver turn.

"It's where you'll bump up against Chance like this, George, that you
feel the need of religion. Your hard-and-fast scientific men--your
Spencers and Huxleys--they don't understand that. I do. I've thought
of it a lot lately--in bed and about. I was thinking of it this morning
while I shaved. It's not irreverent for me to say it, I hope--but God
comes in on the off-chance, George. See? Don't you be too cocksure of
anything, good or bad. That's what I make out of it. I could have sworn.
Well, do you think I--particular as I am--would have touched those Union
Pacifics with trust money at all, if I hadn't thought it a thoroughly
good thing--good without spot or blemish?... And it was bad!

"It's a lesson to me. You start in to get a hundred percent. and you
come out with that. It means, in a way, a reproof for Pride. I've
thought of that, George--in the Night Watches. I was thinking this
morning when I was shaving, that that's where the good of it all comes
in. At the bottom I'm a mystic in these affairs. You calculate you're
going to do this or that, but at bottom who knows at all WHAT he's
doing? When you most think you're doing things, they're being done right
over your head. YOU'RE being done--in a sense. Take a hundred-to one
chance, or one to a hundred--what does it matter? You're being Led."

It's odd that I heard this at the time with unutterable contempt, and
now that I recall it--well, I ask myself, what have I got better?