Chapter 39

BALKY PEOPLE.

Passing along a country road quite recently, we found a man, a horse and wagon in trouble. The vehicle was slight and the road was good, but the horse refused to draw, and his driver was in a bad predicament. He had already destroyed his whip in applying inducements to progress in travel. He had pulled the horse's ears with a sharp string. He had backed him into the ditch. He had built a fire of straw underneath him, the only result a smashed dash-board. The chief effect of the violences and cruelties applied was to increase the divergency of feeling between the brute and his master. We said to the besweated and outraged actor in the scene that the best thing for him to do was to let his horse stand for a while unwhipped and uncoaxed, setting some one to watch him while he, the driver, went away to cool off. We learned that the plan worked admirably; that the cold air, and the appetite for oats, and the solitude of the road, favorable for contemplation, had made the horse move for adjournment to some other place and time; and when the driver came up, he had but to take up the reins, and the beast, erst so obstinate, dashed down the road at a perilous speed.

There is not as much difference between horses and men as you might suppose. The road between mind and equine instinct is short and soon traveled. The horse is sometimes superior to his rider. If anything is good and admirable in proportion as it answers the end of its being, then the horse that bends into its traces before a Fourth avenue car is better than its blaspheming driver. He who cannot manage a horse cannot manage a man.

We know of pastors who have balky parishioners. When any important move is to take place, and all the other horses of the team are willing to draw, they lay themselves back in the harness.

First the pastor pats the obstreperous elder or deacon on the neck and tells him how much he thinks of him. This only makes him shake his mane and grind his bit. He will die first before he consents to such a movement. Next, he is pulled by the ear, with a good many sharp insinuations as to his motives for holding back. Fires of indignation are built under him for the purpose of consuming his balkiness. He is whipped with the scourge of public opinion, but this only makes him kick fiercely and lie harder in the breeching-straps. He is backed down into the ditch of scorn and contempt, but still is not willing to draw an ounce. O foolish minister, trying in that way to manage a balky parishioner! Let him alone. Go on and leave him there. Pay less attention to the horse that balks, and give more oats to those that pull. Leave him out in the cold. Some day you will come back and find him glad to start. At your first advance he will arch his neck, paw his hoof, bend into the bit, stiffen the traces and dash on. We have the same prescription for balky horses and men: for a little while let them alone.