The Touchstone of Fortune

Excerpt from The Touchstone of Fortune: Being the Memoir of Baron Clyde, Who Lived, Thrived, and Fell in the Doleful, Reign of the So-Called Merry, Monarch, Charles II

Goddess Fortune seems to delight in smiling on a man who risks his all, including life, perhaps, on a desperate chance of, sat one to one hundred. If her Ladyship frowns and he loses, his friends call him a fool; if he wins, they say he is a lucky devil and are pleased to share his prosperity if he happens to be of a giving disposition. Lucky? No He has simply minted his courage.

The most remarkable illustration of these truths that has ever come to my knowledge is my friend George Hamilton, the second son in this generation of the illustrious House of Hamilton, Count Anthony being its present head. The younger son was penniless save for the crumbs that fell from his elder brother's table, and Count Anthony was one who kept an eye on the crumbs.

George, who was of an independent nature, accepted Anthony's grudging help reluctantly.

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