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to the man. A certain set of highly ingenious resources are, with the
Prefect, a sort of Procrustean bed, to which he forcibly adapts his
designs. But he perpetually errs by being too deep or too shallow, for
the matter in hand; and many a schoolboy is a better reasoner than he. I
knew one about eight years of age, whose success at guessing in the game
of 'even and odd' attracted universal admiration. This game is simple,
and is played with marbles. One player holds in his hand a number of
these toys, and demands of another whether that number is even or odd.
If the guess is right, the guesser wins one; if wrong, he loses one. The
boy to whom I allude won all the marbles of the school. Of course he
had some principle of guessing; and this lay in mere observation and
admeasurement of the astuteness of his opponents. For example, an arrant
simpleton is his opponent, and, holding up his closed hand, asks, 'are
they even or odd?' Our schoolboy replies, 'odd,' and loses; but upon the
second trial he wins, for he then says to himself, 'the simpleton
had them even upon the first trial, and his amount of cunning is just
sufficient to make him have them odd upon the second; I will therefore
guess odd;'--he guesses odd, and wins. Now, with a simpleton a degree
above the first, he would have reasoned thus: 'This fellow finds that in
the first instance I guessed odd, and, in the second, he will propose to
himself, upon the first impulse, a simple variation from even to odd,
as did the first simpleton; but then a second thought will suggest that
this is too simple a variation, and finally he will decide upon putting
it even as before. I will therefore guess even;'--he guesses even, and
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