ence."

Then one day he got afraid that he might be found out. So he went out to
a quiet place and got on a bicycle, at the top of a slope, to learn to
ride it. The bicycle ran away with him. But for the skill and daring of
one of his pupils, who saw him and rode after him, he would have been
killed.

This story, as the reader sees, is endless. Suffice it to say that the
man I speak of is now in an aviation school teaching people to fly. They
say he is one of the best aviators that ever walked.

According to all the legends and story books, the principal factor in
success is perseverance. Personally, I think there is nothing in it. If
anything, the truth lies the other way.

There is an old motto that runs, "If at first you don't succeed, try,
try again." This is nonsense. It ought to read, "If at first you don't
succeed, quit, quit, at once."

If you can't do a thing, more or less, the first time you try, you will
never do it. Try something else while there is yet time.

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. Now it happened that he had a brother who was not a bit like
himself, but was a sort of ne'er-do-well, always hard-up and sponging on
other people, an