Ride on! Rough-shod if need be, smooth-shod if that will do, but ride on! Ride on over all obstacles, and win the race!

The line is a bracing exhortation to persistence: keep moving forward, adapting your methods to circumstances (“rough-shod” when force or urgency is required, “smooth-shod” when tact will suffice), but never surrender momentum. The repeated imperative “Ride on!” turns perseverance into a physical image—pressing ahead through resistance—while “over all obstacles” frames setbacks as terrain to be crossed rather than reasons to stop. The closing “win the race” casts life or ambition as a competitive course, emphasizing endurance and willpower more than elegance. Even without a verified Dickensian context, the rhetoric reads like Victorian moral encouragement aimed at fortitude and self-command.