VI.

“TRY THE OTHER END.”

The other day I came across a man who was tugging with all his might at the wrong end of a lever.  That is, he had a great crowbar, almost as large as he could lift, and was bearing down on one end of it, while the block of wood which he had put under it for a purchase, was at the same end.  He was trying to pry up a large stone in that way.  But the stone would not be pryed up.  It was a very obstinate stone, the good old farmer thought.  He had no notion of giving up the project, however.  So he pulled off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and went to work in right good earnest.  Still the stone did not stir; or if it did it was only just enough to aggravate the man.

What could be the matter?  The stone was not a very large one.  It did not look as if it could stand a great deal of prying.  What was the matter?

There happened to be a school-boy passing that way at the time.  He was not much of a farmer, and still less of a mechanic, I should think; but he thought he saw what the trouble was.  It did not seem to be so much the lever itself, or the farmer, or the stone to be moved, as in the way the man went to work.  The boy ventured to hint this idea to the farmer: 

“Why, my dear sir,” he said, “there is no use in your breaking your neck in that style.  You are at the wrong end of the lever.  You haven’t purchase enough.”

The good-natured farmer (for he was good-natured, and did not get into a passion because a mere boy, young enough to be his grand-child, attempted to help him out of his difficulty) the good-natured farmer stopped a moment, looked at the matter carefully, and frankly acknowledged that he had gone the wrong way to work.

“I wonder what on earth I was thinking of,” said he, in his usual blunt language.  Of course he shifted his crow-bar immediately, so as to get a good purchase.  The trouble was all over then.  The stone came up easily enough, of course.

It came into my mind while I was thinking about this farmer’s mistake in the use of his lever, that certain people—­myself included, perhaps—­might profit by this blunder.

A great many, for instance, use the lever of truth—­a very good crow-bar, the best to be had—­in overturning moral evils.  But they do not accomplish anything, because they take hold of the wrong end of the lever.  They have no purchase.

Here is a man, who, as I think, is in the habit of wrong doing every day.  Well, I settle it in my mind that I will talk to him, and see if I cannot make a better man of him.  I look him up, and go to prying at his sin, like a man digging up pine stumps by the job.  I call him hard names.  Why not?  He deserves them.  Everybody knows that.  I do not mince the matter with him at all.  But what I say seems to have no good effect upon him.  It makes him angry, and he advises me to mind my own business, assuring me, at the same time, that he shall take good care to mind his.