five in the morning
All this he had endured with admirable patience and good humour ; in short , so patiently and good-humouredly that all boys who had in them a spark of sense or honour very soon abandoned this system of torment , and made up for it as far as they could by respect and kindness , which always , however , took more or less the form of banter . It is not to be expected that boys will ever be made to see that steady , strenuous industry , even when it fails , is a greater and a better thing than idle cleverness , but those few who were so far in advance of their years as to have some intuition of this fact , felt for the character of Daubeny , a value which gave him an influence of a rare and important kind . For nothing could daunt this young martyr -- not even failure itself . If he were too much bullied and annoyed to get up his lesson overnight , he would be up by five in the morning working at it with unremitting assiduity . Very often he _ overdid _ it , and knew his lesson all the worse in proportion as he had spent upon it too great an amount of time . Without being positively stupid , his intellect was somewhat dull , and as his manner was shy and awkward he had not been quite understood at first , and no master had taken him specially in hand to lighten his burdens . His bitterest trial , therefore , was to fail completely every now and then , and be reproached for it by some master who little knew the hours of weary work which he had devoted to the unsuccessful attempt .