On Mr. Orde's return from the woods, he was promptly called upon to redeem his promise. He therefore, showed Bobby a few of the simpler wrestler's tricks which Bobby adopted and brooded over in his manner. The first game of robber and policeman thereafter, he tried one on Johnny, but bungled it and got sat on harder than ever. Bobby's trouble in the practice of such matters arose from the fact that he was too analytical. Before an idea could become part of his make-up, he had to revolve it over in his mind, examining it from all sides, understanding the relations of its component parts, making the mechanism revolve slowly, as it were, in order to comprehend all its correlations. This analytical thought naturally made him, to a certain degree, self-conscious in his movements. It destroyed the instinctive, superconscious accuracy valuable in all games of skill, but absolutely necessary to such things as skating, boxing, wrestling, wing-shooting, tennis and the like. Self-consciousness in such cases means awkwardness. Bobby, in learning a new thing, was awkward. But he possessed a wonderful persistence. In time he would think all around a thing. In more time he would have practised it sufficiently to have lost sight of the carefully considered "reason why" for each move. Thus the final, though delayed, result was apt to be more consistent performance than Johnny's brilliantly instinctive achievements.
For example, Bobby tried again and again to attain the quick twisting heave necessary to the common "grape-vine." At no time did he achieve more than partial success. But in his numerous attempts he, without knowing it, taught Johnny. That quick-witted youth caught the possibilities and at his first attempt sprawled Bobby. In fact, by the time Bobby had even a fair command of the three or four falls shown him by his father, Johnny was skilful in them all and could catch Bobby with them twice as often as Bobby could catch him. This kept Bobby humble-minded, and, as it in no way discouraged him from keeping at it, ............