Page:Mystery Tales of Edgar Allan Poe.pdf/121

 the sad narrative of Marie from the epoch just mentioned, and in tracing to its the mystery which enshrouded her, it is my covert design to hint at an extension of the parellel, or even to suggest that the measures adopted in Paris for the discover of the assassin of a grisette, or measures founded in any similar rationcination, would produce any similar result.

For, in respect to the latter branch of the supposition, it should be considered that the most trifling variation in te facts of the two cases might give rrise to the most imporatnt miscalculations, by diverting thoroughly the two courses of events; very much as, in arithmetic, an error which, in its own individuality, may be inappreciable, produces, at length, by dint of multiplication at all points of the process, a result enormously at variance with truth. And, in regard to the former branch, we must not fail to hold in view that the very Calculus of Probabilities to which I have referred forbids all idea of the extension of the parallel:—forbids it witha positiveness strong and decided just in proportion as this parallel ahs already been long drawn and exact. This is one of those anomalous propositions which, seemingly appealing to thought altogether apart from the mathematical, is yet one which only the mathematician can fully entertain. Nothing, for example, is more difficult than to convince the merely general reader that the fact of sixes having been thrown twice in succession by a player at dice, is sufficient cause for betting the largest odds that sixes will not be thrown in the third attempt. A suggestion to this effect is usually rejected by the intellect at once. It does not appear that the two throws which have been completed, and which lie now absolutely in the Past, can have influence upon the throw which exists only in the Future. The chance for throwing sixes seems to be precisely as it was at any ordinary