Determination and opportunity:

                                               Our talk at the club one day was of opportunity and determination. Some said opportunity was required for success, and millions never had it; others that only determination was needed. And then our friend Jockeys joined in all for determination if a man was determined to get anything, and stuck to it long enough, he got it, said our friend Jockeys.

            'Anything?' asked turbot.

             'Anything,' jockeys replied, 'so long as he sticks to it, and sticks to it hard enough and long enough.

Anything whatever.'

            Turbot disagreed.

             'Life is like a race.' our friend Jockeys went on, 'in which they tire after a while and sit down, or get interested in something else instead. The man who keeps on wins the race'.

           And suppose a man wanted to be skating champion of the Sahara,' said Turbot, 'and couldn't afford the money to get there.'

                       'He'd make the money,' said jockeys. 'And he'd build a skating-rink in the Sahara and organize a competition there. He'd be the skating  champion, all right, if he really gave all his time to it.'

              'Could you tell us a case like that?'asked one of us.

               'As a matter of fact, I can,' said Jockeys,' a very similar case.'

        'Let's, hear it,' said Turbot. 

 'There was a young fellow', said Jockeys,' to whom his parents probably used to say the very things that we have been saying now; and very likely he, as many young fellows do, may have wanted to prove them wrong. I don't know: it was a long time ago. But, whatever his motive was, he hit on a most extraordinary ambition, and stuck to it. It was nothing less than the appointed Court acrobat.'

    'What?' Said Turbot.

      'Acrobat,' Jockeys went on,' to the court of the country in which he lived.'

       'What kind of country was that?' asked Turbot.

'Never mind what country it was,' said Jockeys. 'And, as a matter of fact, its customs weren't so silly as you suppose. They had no post of a court acrobat, and never had. But that didn't stop young Georgios. That was his name, He was a good athlete when he came by his wild idea at about the age of sixteen, and won the high jumps and hurdles and the hundred yards at his school.'

'Well, there was opportunity,' argued Turbot,' if he was born a good athlete.'

      'But wait a moment,' said jockeys. 'You don't remain an athlete all your life, and he still had to get the post created.'

              'How did he do that ?'

    Simply by sticking to it,' said Jockeys. 'He went into politics. They all do in that country. But he went into them harder than anyone else and never gave up his ambition. Of course, he made speeches, and fine ones, on many subjects; but all the while he stuck to his one idea. The years went by, and the day came when he had power to preach his ambition openly. His life ambition achieved. It must have taken him more than sixty years to do it, since first he came by that strange ambition of his. But he did it. Not many stick to  a thing for so long.'

        And Jockeys uttered a quiet sigh, so clearly mourning over some lost ambition that he him self had given up, that not even Turbot asked him what it was.