safest way is to believe in the Lord on
Sunday, an' on Monday to go to work as if you wa'nt quite so
sartain-sure."

A long finger of sunshine stretched from beyond the chimneys across the
street, and pointed straight to the vegetables on John Chitling's
counter, until the onions glistened like silver balls, and the turnips
and carrots sent out flashes of dull red and bright orange.

"I'll let you overhaul a barrel of apples, sonny," said the big man to
me; "have you got a sharp eye for specks?"

When I replied that I thought I had, he pointed to a barrel from which
the top had been recently knocked. "They're to be sorted in piles,
according to size," he explained, and added, "For such is the
contrariness of human nature that there are some folks as can't see the
apple for the speck, an' others that would a long ways rather have the
speck than the apple. I've one old gentleman for a customer who can't
enjoy eatin' a pippin unless he can find one with a spot that won't keep
till to-morrow."

Kneeling down on the bricks, as he directed, I sorted the yellow apples
until, growing presently faint from hunger, I began to gaze longingly, I
suppose, at the string of fish hanging above my head.

"Maybe you'd like to run across an' get a bite of somethin' befo' you go
on," suggested John, reading my glances.

But I only shook my head, in spite of my gnawing stomach, and went on
doggedly with my sorting, impelled by an inherent determination to do
with the best of me whatever I undertook to do at all. To the possession
of this trait, I can see now in looking back, I have owed any success or
achievement that has been mine--neither to brains nor to chance, but
simply to that instinct to hold fast which was bred in my bone and
structure. For the lack of this quality I have seen men with greater
intellects, with far quicker wits than mine, go down in the struggle.
Brilliancy I have not, nor any particular outward advantage, except that
of size and muscle; but when I was once in the race, I could never see
to right or to left of me, only straight ahead to the goal.

Overhead the sun had risen slowly higher, until the open spaces and the
brick arches were flooded with light. If I had turned I should have seen
the gay vegetable stalls blooming like garden beds down the dim length
of the building. The voices of the market men floated toward me, now
quarrelling, now laughing, now raised to shout at a careless negro or a
prowling d