488 
MAGICK WITHOUT TEARS 
hun dred percent 
red-blooded , clean-living, heir of the 
Eternities , takes his young fiancee and female counterpart to 
the "Old Absinthe House" in New Orleans to show her the 
terrible results of Wrong-Doing. They are going to avoid all 
that ; their child is going to be the Quintessence of 
Americanism. 
They marry and take a cottage by Lake Pasquaney . 
Presently , he being (so she said) away on a business trip, the 
tradesmen complained that she seemed to need very little 
pabulum. Somehow, people got suspicious , and sure enough, 
when they broke in, they found that she had pickled him! 
This story is founded on fact ; damn it, why did the MS have 
to get lost? 
Even suicide is not a "dead bird." I knew a creature 
once - careless observers often mistook him for a man- who 
tried three times, pistol, rope and poison. Something always 
went wrong. (Like the Babbacombe murderer, who went to 
the scaffold three times, and lived to a green old age!) Finally 
he did poison himself , by accident, when he had no intention 
whatever of doing anything of the sort. 
Where's that Book of Lies? Ah, here we are. "It is chance, 
and chance only, that rules the Universe; therefore , and 
therefore only, life is good." 
Then, is it mere fatuity and folly to make plans? Was not 
the IXth Atu, the Hermit, also at one time called 
"Prudence"? Of course . Abstract philosophy rarely coincides 
with common-sense. We should plan as carefully as we can; 
but we should always allow a margin for every conceivable 
accident . 
Nor should we trust to luck, like England, when she goes 
to war. Bret Harte has an admirable story "The Outcasts of 
Poker Flat" in which the "bad man," the crooked gambler, 
gives his life for the safety of the rest of his party , and winds 
up all with the remark: "Life isn't in having the luck of the 
cards, but in playing a poor hand well." 
Yes, I daresay, all very fine; but what you wanted to know 
was about the propriety of taking risks in Magick.