"It's all a matter of luck!" he says, bitterly. "A man who tries these days is not an ambitious hustler, but a _pest_ to the powers above him! I defy a man to stand on his own feet and make good without influence. It's not _what_ do you know any more, but _who_ do you know! I've been a bookkeeper, a printer, a salesman, a chauffeur, a bank clerk, and, yes, even a chorus man. At every one of those things I gave the best I had in stock to get to the front. Did I get there? Not quite!" he throws away the cigarette he's hardly had a puff of. "Why?" he asks me. "Because in every trade or profession there's somebody with half the sand and ability, who don't know the job's requirements but knows the boss's son! I'm not a quitter or I wouldn't be here, but I'm sick and disgusted with this thing called life and--"
"And that's why you never got nowhere!" breaks in a voice behind us--and there's Eddie Duke. Adams flushes up and starts away, but Eddie pulls him back.
"Listen to me, young feller!" he says. "I happened to hear your moan just now and your dope is all wrong. There ain't no such thing as luck; if there was, a blacksmith is the luckiest guy in the world and oughta make a million a minute, because he's handlin' nothin' but horseshoes all day long, ain't he? Forget about that luck stuff! Makin' good is all in the way you look at it, anyways. A bricklayer makin' thirty bucks a week, raisin' a family and bringin' home his pay every Saturday night in his pocket instead of on his breath, is makin' good as big as J. P. Morgan is--d'ye get me? Yes, sir, that bird can say he's got over! Makin' good is like religion, every other guy has a different idea of what it means, but there's many a feller swingin' a pick that's makin' good just as much as the bird that owns the ditch--in his own way! You claim a guy's got to know somebody these days to get over, eh? Well, you got that one right, I'll admit it!"
"Of course!" says Adams, brightenin' up. "That's my argument and--"
"That ain't no argument, that's a whine!" sneers Duke, cuttin' him off short. "Listen to me--you bet you gotta know somebody to get anywheres, _you gotta know yourself_! That's all! Just lay off thinkin' how lucky the other guy is, and give Stephen X. You a minute's attention. You may be the biggest guy in the world at _somethin'_, if you'll only check up on yourself and see what that somethin' is! Remember Whosthis says, 'Full many a rose is born to blush unseen--' Well, don't be one of them desert flowers; come into the city and let 'em all watch you blush. Get me? How did you happen to meet this big stiff De Vronde?"