When these gentlemen join the church, they make things go along vigorously.  The roof stops leaking; a new carpet blooms on the church floor; the fresco is retouched; the high pulpit is lowered till it comes into the same climate with the pew; strangers are courteously seated; the salary of the minister is paid before he gets hopelessly in debt to butcher and baker; and all is right, financially and spiritually, because Push & Pull have connected themselves with the enterprise.

A new parsonage is to be built, but the movement does not get started.  Eight or ten men of slow circulation of blood and stagnant liver put their hands on the undertaking, but it will not budge.  The proposed improvement is about to fail when Push comes up behind it and gives it a shove, and Pull goes in front and lays into the traces; and, lo! the enterprise advances, the goal is reached!  And all the people who had talked about the improvement, but done nothing toward it, invite the strangers who come to town to go up and see “our” parsonage.

Push & Pull are wide-awake men.  They never stand round with their hands in their pockets, as though feeling for money that they cannot find.  They have made up their minds that there is a work for them to do; and without wasting any time in reverie, they go to work and do it.  They start a “life insurance company.”  Push is the president, and Pull the secretary.  Before you know it, all the people are running in to have their lungs sounded, and to tell how many times they have had the rheumatism; how old they are; whether they ever had fits; and at what age their father and mother expired; and putting all the family secrets on paper, and paying Push & Pull two hundred dollars to read it.  When this firm starts a clothing house, they make a great stir in the city.  They advertise in such strong and emphatic way that the people are haunted with the matter, and dream about it, and go round the block to avoid that store door, lest they be persuaded in and induced to buy something they cannot afford.  But some time the man forgets himself, and finds he is in front of the new clothing store, and, at the first gleaner of goods in the show window, is tempted to enter.  Push comes up behind him, and Pull comes up before him, and the man is convinced of the shabbiness of his present appearance—­that his hat will not do, that his coat and vest and all the rest of his clothes, clean down to his shoes, are unfit; and before one week is past, a boy runs up the steps of this customer with a pasteboard box marked, “From the clothing establishment of Push & Pull.  C.O.D.”

These men can do anything they set their hands to—­publish a newspaper, lay out a street, build a house, control a railroad, manage a church, revolutionize a city.  In fact, any two industrious, honorable, enterprising men can accomplish wonders.  One does the out-door work of the store, and the other the indoor work.  One leads, the other follows; but both working in one direction, all obstacles are leveled before them.