CHAPTER II

THE SELF-COMMENCER

There's nothin' the world loves so much as a good tryer. I don't mean
the birds that havin' everything in their favor, includin' a ten-mile
start, finishes first in the Big Race--I'm talkin' about the guys that
never get better than second or third, but generally land in the money.
The old Consistent Charlies that, no matter how many times they're
beaten, figures the time to quit is when you're dead and buried!

Did you ever stop to think that the tryers which never get nowhere is
responsible for the other guys' success? They're the babies that make
a race or a fight out of it, and if it wasn't for them dubs there'd be
no successes at all. In order to have winners, we got to have
_losers_, don't we? And don't forget that yesterday's losers are
to-morrow's winners and vice-president or vice versa, whatever it is.

A fighter knows that these birds which come up smilin' no matter how
many times he drops 'em for the count is as dangerous as dynamite,
until he knocks 'em cold. No matter how bad this loser may be battered
up, he's always got a chance while he's tryin'. I've seen guys that
was winnin' by two miles curl up and quit before a dub they had beaten
till the crowd was yellin' for mercy, simply because this poor
bunged-up simp kept comin' in all the time--battered, bloody, drunk
with wallops--_but tryin' up to the last bell_!

Now these guys may never get nowhere, but they're the birds that's put
most of the guys that _do_ where they are. Why? Think it over! You
gotta be _good_ to beat them birds, don't you? They make competition
keen, they keep the other guys on their toes, they're the gasoline that
keeps the old world goin' forward on high and the birds that get over
are only the chauffeurs. You gotta have both to run the car and the
universe wouldn't move forward six inches if we didn't have one failure
for every success.

So if you've failed to set the world on fire up to date, don't walk out
on the dock to see what kind of a jump it is. If you can't be a
winner, you can be a good loser and it's a toss-up which is the bigger
thing! A guy who can beat the yellah streak we all pack somewheres,
every time he fails to register a win, and will keep rememberin' that
to-morrow has got yesterday beat eighty-seven ways, is no loser! On
paper he mightn't be a winner, but he _is_. He's a bigger winner than
the bird that gets over, because he's whipped the quit in