WINDING UP A HORSE.
Nineteen years ago I bought in Madras a peculiar kind of horse. He had to be wound up to make him go. It was not a machine, but a veritable live horse.
When breaking him to go in the carriage he had been injured. An accident occurred in starting him the first time and he was thrown and hurt and frightened. It made him timid; afraid to start. After he had once started he would never balk, until taken out of the carriage. He would start and stop and go on as many times as you pleased, but it was very difficult to get him started at first each time he was harnessed to the carriage.
He was all right under the saddle, an excellent riding horse, and would carry me long distances in my district work, so that I did not wish to dispose of him; but I could not afford to keep two, whatever I had must go in carriage as well as ride, and I determined that I would conquer.
How I have worked over that horse! At first it sometimes took me an hour to get him started from my door. At last, after trying everything I had ever heard of, I hit upon an expedient that worked.
I took a strong bamboo stick two feet long and over an inch thick. A stout cord loop was passed through a hole two inches from its end. This loop we would slip over his left ear down to the roots and turn the stick round and round and twist it up.
It is said that a horse can retain but one idea at a time in its small brain. Soon the twisting would begin to hurt. His attention would be abstracted to the pain in his ear. He would forget all about a carriage being hitched to him, bend down his head and walk off as quiet as a lamb. When he had gone a rod the horse boy would begin to untwist, soon off would come the cord, and the horse would be all right for the day. The remedy never failed.
After having it on two or three times he objected to the operation, and would spring about and rear and twitch and back; anything but start ahead, to keep it from being applied. We would have, two of us, to begin to pat and rub about his neck and head. He would not know which had the key. All at once it would be on his ear and winding up. The moment it began to tighten he would be quiet, stand and bear it as long as he could, and then off he would go. It never took thirty seconds to get him off with the key. It would take an hour without. After a little he ceased objecting to have it put on. He seemed to say to himself, “I have got to give in and may as well do it at once,” but he would not start without the key. In a few months he got so that, as soon as we got into the carriage, he would bend down his head to have the key put on, and one or two turns of the key would be enough.
Then the key became unnecessary. He would bend down his head, tipping his left ear to the horse boy, who would take it in his hand and twist it, and off he would go.
My native neighbors said, “That horse must be wound up or he cannot run.” And it did seem to be so.
When he got so that the “winding up” was nothing but a form, I tried to break him of that, but could not succeed. I would pat him and talk to him and give him a little salt or sugar or bread, and then step quietly into the carriage and tell him to go. “No.” Coax him. “No.” Whip him. “No.” Legs braced, every muscle tense for resistance. A genuine balk. Stop and keep quiet for an instant and he would hold down his head, bend over his ear and look around for the horse boy appealingly, saying very earnestly by his actions, “Do please wind me up. I can’t go without, but I’ll go gladly if you will.” The moment his ear was touched and one twist given, off he would go as happy and contented as ever horse could be.
Many hearty laughs have we and our friends had over the winding up of that horse. If I were out on a tour for a month or two and he were not hitched to the carriage, or if he stood in the stable with no work for a week or two during the monsoon, a real winding up had to take place the first time he was put in. We kept him six years. The last week I owned him I had to wind him up. I sold the patent to the man that bought the horse, and learned from him that he had to use it as long as the horse lived.
I was thinking about that horse the other night when it was too hot to sleep, and I suddenly burst into a laugh as I said to myself, “I have again and again, in the membership of our churches at home, seen that horse that had to be wound up, in all matters of benevolence.”
I had often thought of that horse as I went through our churches at home, and imagined that I recognized him, but the whole thing came upon me with such peculiar force the other night that I must write out my thoughts.
There are some Christians (yes, I believe they are Christians) who have to be wound up by some external pressure before they will start off in any work of benevolence. Others will engage in some kinds of benevolence spontaneously, but will not touch other benevolent efforts unless specially wound up. Free under the saddle, but balky in carriage.
I knew of one good member of our church who would never give a cent to our Domestic Missionary Board unless he happened to hear of some missionary in the West who was actually without the necessaries of life, and then he would send in liberally. It took that to wind him up.
Another would never give to the Board for educating young men for the ministry unless he happened to become acquainted with some candidate who was being aided. Then his gifts would come in for helping that man.
Another would never give to the Bible Society unless he chanced to hear of some particular town out West where but two Bibles could be found in a population of five hundred, although he knew perfectly well that there were hundreds of such communities among whom the American Bible Society was daily endeavoring to introduce the Divine Word. He must be wound up by a special case.
But it was especially of my visits through the churches in connection with our foreign missionary work that I was thinking when I said that I had so often recognized my horse that had to be wound up, in all the different stages of his training.
Thank God, I found hosts of noble-hearted men and women all through the Church that needed no winding up; whose conversion and consecration had extended down to their pockets; who were always at the forefront in every good work; who required no spasmodic appeals. They gave from a deep set principle and an intelligent love for Christ and His cause; some even pinching themselves in the necessaries of life, as I know, to be able to give. It is on such that the security and continuance of our missions depend. We know that we can rely on them. They never fail us.
But there are others that have to be “wound up,” willing or unwillingly, before they will do anything in the missionary work. Some are very willing to be wound up.
“Dominie,” said a good elder who had just introduced himself to me one day, “I have come in on behalf of our church at —— to see if you would not come out and give us a missionary talk. We ought to have sent in a collection to the Foreign Board months ago, but we neglected it, and now we have been talking it over and have made up our minds to do something handsome if you will come out there and give us a talk.”
“Well,” said I, “I shall be very glad to come and tell you something of our work just as soon as I can edge a day in between other engagements. But if you have made up your minds to do something handsome for the Board, why not do it at once and relieve their present pressing need, and I will come as soon as I can and give you the talk all the same.”
“O, no,” said he. “We can’t do that. We have made up our minds that we must give liberally, but we can start it easier if you come there and give us the talk first. You need not fear. We will give a good sum. That is settled, and it is mostly pledged. But you must come and talk to us first.”
I smiled and said to myself, “There is my horse in its third stage of training. That church is bending down its ear and entreating me to twist it, for it has made up its mind to go, only it requires to be wound up first.”
“Dominie,” said one of our earnest ministers to me one Wednesday, “we raised $1,000 for the Board last Sunday morning. It is more than usual, and we are all happy over it. Now we want you to come over the first Sunday of next month and give us a missionary address.”
“Good,” said I, “that church has got one stage further than my horse ever did in his training, for they start and do the work first and bend down the ear to be twisted afterwards.” Did it not give me an earnest joy to go and tell that church what the Lord’s war in India was, and how much they had helped it?
A Sunday-school superintendent came to me one day with smiling countenance, saying, “Our Sunday-school has raised $175 during the past year for missions, and we have determined to give it to the work in India. The year closed three months ago, and it is all in the hands of the treasurer, but we want you to come and give us a speech, and then it will be formally voted and sent at once to the Board. We have been waiting all this time because they told us at the rooms that you were engaged up till now. When can you come? The money is lying idle and we are waiting, and we know the Board needs the funds. So come as soon as you can.”
“Ah,” said I, “everything is ready, and the family are in the carriage, but they have to sit there half an hour because the horse boy is busy elsewhere, and the horse is holding down his ear all this time waiting for that particular horse boy to come and twist it.”
I was both pained and irresistibly amused by an incident that occurred not two hundred miles from New York, when the horse was in the first stage of training, and stoutly resisted allowing its ear to be touched.
The missionary was announced to speak in the church on a given Sunday, when the annual collection would be taken up. A good member of the church—the pastor says a sincere Christian—was very much put out about it; had heard enough of these old missionaries, and was not going to hear any more; did not believe in foreign missions—we had heathen enough at home.
The appointed Sunday came. Mr. A. and his family stayed away from church because they would not countenance the missionary address. They, therefore, missed the announcement which the pastor made, viz., that a telegram had been received that it was impossible for the missionary to be there. He would come next Sunday, and the annual collection would be deferred until then.
The following Sunday Mr. A. and family all filed into their pew, serene and happy in the thought that they had avoided the old missionary. As the organ was playing the voluntary, the pastor entered the pulpit from the vestry and a stranger with him. The pastor took the opening exercises and the second hymn was sung, when the pastor rose and said that Mr.——, the missionary, as announced last Sunday, would now address them.
Mr. A. was thunderstruck. He did not like to go out in the middle of a service, and so determined to sit it through. The missionary told his simple tale. The plates came in. The collection was unprecedentedly large. Mr. A.’s plethoric pocket-book had disgorged itself upon the plates, and no heartier worker for foreign missions is now found in that church. Mr. A. had tried his best to keep his ear from being twisted. Now it needs no twisting. He has learned to go and loves to go.
There was a church in our fold at home whose pastor was determined that it should not be wound up for foreign missions. He had succeeded, as he himself told me, in keeping all missionaries and secretaries and agents out of his pulpit during all the years of his pastorate. When the day came for collections for any of our Boards the fact was stated, the plates were passed, and those gave who wished. The collection, as a matter of course, under such a chill, was a minimum.
It required some of the very best and most wary and skillful manœuvring to get hold of the ear of that church; but it was obtained and twisted, and off it started on the trot in the missionary work, and since then it has annually held down its ear and begged to have it twisted, as it wanted to go more.
Scores of incidents which occurred in my own experiences among the churches in America, and which recalled my “horse winding,” come crowding into my mind, but I forbear.
For I remember the phalanx of noble churches that needed no such winding up, who were all alive and always on the alert; who gave regularly, generously, nobly; who, from the pastor, the head, to the humblest member, prayed from the lips, from the heart, from the pocket, “Thy Kingdom come.” They are always glad to get hold of the recruiting watchman, and ask him, “Watchman, what of the night?” but they never have to be wound up to start them giving.
God give us more and more of such churches and more such Christians and church members, so that no missionary or secretary need come to beg, but can come with radiant countenance and say, “Brethren, with the funds you are continually sending us for the work, we have done for the Master thus and thus.” Then in looking over our churches and our benevolent work we shall no longer have occasion to remember “the horse that had to be wound up.”
Rev. Jacob Chamberlain, D.D.
Mudnapilly, India, April 30, 1879.