“Beats all,” he said, after awhile, “how folks lets go like that. Don’t seem to have no sense o’ religion. The Good Book says, ‘Go to the ant,’ you sluggers. Consider her ways and be wise. Now, there ain’t no p’ints about a ant that’s worth considerin’, ’cept their almighty stick-to-it-iveness. Stands to reason, it means fer us to keep peggin’ away till we git there. ’F Si Walker’d on’y pegged like the ants does, he mought ’a’ been rich an’ respected. “There was Pete Kenney that dropped off’n a boat here some thirty year ago an’ just stayed. There didn’t seem to be no reason why he should ’a’ come here in the first place, or why he should ’a’ stayed after he arrove, but he did. Some said he must ’a’ dropped on to the boat by accident somewheres up the river, an’ the captain put him off at the first landin’, him not havin’ the regulation fare in his jeans. However ’twas, he come, an’ he remained. More’n that, he’s well fixed now an’ pays taxes. “There warn’t no reason fer it, fer as anybody could see, ’ceptin’ Pete’s all-fired persistency. He was a bright enough sort o’ man an’ might ’a’ settled down in business fer himself, fer he got a job as bartender down to the hotel an’ made money. They do say as how a steady, industrious bartender in a hotel where there’s a good run o’ business an’ a boss that drinks some himself, can have a saloon of his own in a few years, an’ I reckon it’s pretty near true. I kept bar in a hotel myself when I was young. “That wa’n’t Pete’s lay, though. Pete used to say that there was one way of establishin’ yourself in life that laid over any other, an’ that was to hold a royal flush in a good stiff game o’ draw-poker. Then, he says, it’s on’y a question o’ how much the others has got to inspire their confidence, an’ how much they has to bet with that fixes the amount to be gathered in, so’s’t a man can retire an’ be respectable fer the rest of his natural life. “Some on us reasoned with Pete at times about this. We told him that royal flushes was sca’ce game, an’ that four of a kind was good enough fer a careful player to get rich on, but Pete ’lowed that a royal flush was the on’y thing a man could be dead sure of. Seems he’d had four queens beat when he was young, an’ he’d l’arned consid’able caution from th’ experience. “‘As to a royal flush bein’ sca’ce,’ Pete says, ‘it stands to reason that a man’s goin’ to get it sometime, if he plays long enough. Stick to it,’ he says, ‘an’ sooner or later yer goin’ to git a royal flush. The on’y thing needed is to stick to it.’ “Consequences was that Pete, havin’ found his theory of business success, devoted himself to the workin’ on it out, with a persistency that would ’a’ growed wool on a nigger’s heel ’f he’d devoted hisself to that particular form of effort. Why, Pete’d give his nights an’ days to poker. He never allowed business to interfere with a game, long’s he’d money to play with.