“Perhaps you can, if you keep on wrenching for a day or two longer.”
“I have done my best, and it won’t come out.”
“I don’t think it will under any such treatment,” added Mr. Brookbine. “You laugh, boys, because it is funny; but I doubt if the majority of you would have done any better. Here is a lesson to learn. Skill is better than strength, but skill and strength win the battle.”
“Good!” shouted Steve Baxter. “I will remember that as long as I live: skill and strength win the battle.”
“I hope you will all remember it, for it is just the motto for a carpenter. The ‘improvement,’ as the minister would say, upon the text, is this: When things don’t work right, and won’t do as you want and expect them to do, don’t yank, twist, jerk, and wrench at them. Something is the matter, and you must see what it is. That chisel would not come out. Why not?”
“It is in too tight,” replied Dick Short.
“Right, Dick: what is to be done?”
“Loosen it, if you can.”
“Dory, you may try your hand at it, taking the chisel as you find it.”
Dory had been studying the situation, and had made up his mind what to do. Taking the hatchet, he inserted the edge of it in the crack, near the chisel, and drove it in with the mallet. The chisel dropped out of itself. But the hatchet stuck as hard as the chisel had.