Let me illustrate this with a story.
I remember, long years ago, at a little school that I
attended in the country, we had a schoolmaster, who used
perpetually to write on the blackboard, in a copperplate
hand, the motto that I have just quoted:
"If at first you don't succeed,
Try, try, again."
He wore plain clothes and had a hard, determined face.
He was studying for some sort of preliminary medical
examination, and was saving money for a medical course.
Every now and then he went away to the city and tried
the examination: and he always failed. Each time he came
back, he would write up on the blackboard:
"Try, try again."
And always he looked grimmer and more determined than
before. The strange thing was that, with all his industry
and determination, he would break out every now and then
into drunkenness, and lie round the tavern at the
crossroads, and the school would be shut for two days.
Then he came back, more fiercely resolute than ever. Even
children could see that the man's life was a fight. It
was like the battle between Good and Evil in Milton's
epics.
Well, after he had tried it four times, the schoolmaster
at last passed the examination; and he went away to the
city in a suit of store clothes, with eight hundred
dollars that he had saved up, to study medicine.
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