after you touch the pillow!

CHAPTER XXII.

PUSH & PULL.

We have long been acquainted with a business firm whose praises have never
been sung. I doubt whether their names are ever mentioned on Exchange. They
seem to be doing more business and have more branch houses than the
Stewarts or Lippincotts. You see their names almost everywhere on the door.
It is the firm of Push & Pull. They generally have one of their partners'
names on outside of the door, and the other on the inside: "Push" on the
outside and "Pull" on the inside. I have found their business-houses in New
York, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Boston, London and Edinburgh. It is under my
eye, whether I go to buy a hat, a shawl, or a paper of pins, or watch, or
ream of foolscap. They are in all kinds of business; and from the way they
branch out, and put up new stores, and multiply their signboards on the
outside and inside of doors, I conclude that the largest business firm on
earth to-day is Push & Pull.

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,