FIFTY YEARS OF A SHOWMAN'S LIFE 



fear that, even with these advantages in my 

 favour, there was the remotest possibility of my 

 winning anything myself, thereby reducing other 

 people's chances of doing so, because my pro- 

 verbial ill-luck when lucky bags or their equiva- 

 lents were deciding factors rendered it absolutely 

 out of the question for Fortune to bestow upon 

 me anything but a blank. Soon after I had made 

 this remark my daughter took her place at the 

 wheel, and one of her first acts was to draw a 

 prize for her father ; a most suspicious circum- 

 stance, and one which discounted all I had said. 

 This incident does not properly come within the 

 area embraced by these reminiscences, except 

 that it points a moral equally applicable to Show- 

 men as to Mayors, viz., never, as Artemus Ward 

 has told us, to prophesy unless you know for 

 certain. 



252 



