What limit can we set to their achievement?
Of course he was the Fortunate Youth.

Of that there is no gainsaying.

He had his beauty, his charm, his temperament, his quick southern intelligence--all his Sicilian heritage--and a freakish chance had favoured him from the day that, vagabond urchin, he attended his first and only Sunday-school treat.

But personal gifts and favouring chance are not everything in this world.
On the day before his wedding he had a long talk with Barney Bill.
"Sonny," said the old man, scratching his white poll, "when yer used to talk about princes and princesses, I used to larf--larf fit to bust myself.

I never let yer seen me do it, sonny, for all the time you was so dead serious.