ar yours; hence, while he's talking you
are simply thinking over what you are going to say as soon as you
get a chance.

Altogether, I would try to make my personality pleasing, so that
people would in turn endeavour to be pleasing to me.

IX

IF I WERE TWENTY-ONE I WOULD DETERMINE, EVEN IF I COULD NEVER BE
ANYTHING ELSE IN THE WORLD, THAT I WOULD BE A THOROUGHBRED

Thoroughbred, as it is currently used, is a word rather difficult to
define, perhaps entirely non-definable. Yet we all know what it
means--it is like Love.

But it implies being several things: One, being a good sport, by
which I mean the kind of a man that does not whine when he fails,
but gets up smiling and tackles it again, the kind of man whose fund
of cheer and courage does not depend upon success, but keeps brave
and sweet even in failure.

Let me quote what I have written elsewhere on this point:

In one of the plays of this season, "The Very Minute," one
of the characters says something to this effect: You go on
till you can go no further, you reach the limit of human
endurance, and then--you hold on another minute, and that's
the minute that counts.

The idea is a good one. That last minute, the other side of
the breaking point, is worth thinking about.

It is that which marks the thoroughbred.

There is a something in the hundredth man that bespeaks a
finer quality. It is unconquerableness, heroism,
stick-to-it-iveness, or whatever you have a mind to call it.

We have a way of attributing this to breeding, after the
analogy of horses and dogs; but while there's something in
blood I doubt if it is a very trustworthy guaranty of
excellence. So many vigorous parents have children that are
morally spindling, and so many surprising samples of
superiority come from common stock, that heredity is far
from dependable.

But the quality exists, no matter how you account for it--a
certain toughness of moral fibre, an indestructibility of
purpose.

Any mind is over matter, but there are some wills so
imperial, so dominant over the body, that they keep it from
collapse even after its strength is spent.

We see it physically in the prize fighter who "doesn't know
when he is beaten," in the race horse that throws an
unexpected dash into the last stretch even after his last
ounce of force is gone, in the Spartan soldier who