Pushing on the Lines by Annie Laurie

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · May 6, 1913

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 40, No. 18.

Pushing on the Lines

By Annie Laurie

(By Annie Laurie in San Francisco Examiner)

JUST a year ago it was that I saw her last until yesterday. A little, thin, nervous, worried-looking woman, with eyes too bright, mouth too set, firm little hands too tightly clasped, going up-hill in an old-fashioned wagon, pushing on the lines.

There was a good driver in the front seat, and a good steady horse in the shafts, a good smooth road under the wheels, a fine green landscape all around to see, but my friend didn't see it; she was too busy pushing on the lines.

Up, up, up the long hill climbed the straining wheels. “Gid-dap,” said the driver as he spit contentedly into the splendid gulf of green below the bluff; “gid-dap.” And the patient, steady old horse “gid-dapped” quietly, calmly, steadily, to the top of the long hill.

At the top my friend leaned back on the cushions. “There,” she said, and sighed in great relief. The driver turned in his seat and spoke with all the freedom of the Western spirit.

“Tired, ain't you?” he said.

“Tired?” echoed my friend. “Why, yes, I guess I am.”

“Well, now,” said the driver, soothingly, “you hadn't ought to be. The old horse, he did all the pulling. I wouldn't push so hard on the lines when we come to the next hill.”

The woman's face relaxed, her bright eyes softened a little. “That's so,” she said; “I believe that's good advice.” And she waved us a good-humored good-by as she and the driver and the old horse and the old-fashioned mountain wagon started down the hill.

Yesterday I met my friend for the first time since then. Her back was toward me, and I didn't know her till she turned.

Such a young back it was, and so was her face, young and rested and pleasant and full of a kind of calm joy that had been missing when last I saw her.

“What in the world has happened to you?” said I. “You look like a girl again.”

My friend smiled. “I am,” she said; “and yet it is all so simple.

“I learned it from the driver on the mountain road. I've stopped pushing on the lines, that's all, and you can't think how much easier the road is to climb.”

Stopped pushing on the lines; that was it.

My friend has a good husband—kind, devoted, successful in a quiet sort of way; not so clever as my friend, not so ambitious, not so full of energy, but the man of the family, without a doubt. I have often wondered if her constant pushing and prodding and reminding and spurring didn't get on his nerves. My friend told me about it.

“You know Joe as well as I do,” she said. “Poor fellow, he's had a time of it with me. I was always pushing on the lines, and thinking I was helping, and all the time it didn't do a thing but make me tired before we got to the top of the hill.

“Joe never hurries; he never goes into things with his heart and soul; he just does the best he can and lets it go at that.

“It used to fairly kill me to get him off to the office. I wanted him to hurry. I wanted him to get to work. I wanted him to do things, and hustle. And he never would; he couldn't. He had just so much strength, just so much energy, and just such a hill to climb, and all the pushing I did didn't make a particle of difference to him or to me or to the load.

“I worried, and fretted, and nagged, and was irritated, ‘pushing on the lines’ all the way, and we didn't get to the top a bit quicker for all my pushing.

“Suddenly, last year, when the driver told me that about the lines, it all was clear to me, and I've never done it since—not once.

“When I feel like hurrying Joe, when I wish he'd do something quicker than he does, or put more life into the doing of it, I just lean back, and untie my face, and say to myself, ‘Don't push on the lines,’ and it's all right.

“I'm ten years younger, and so is Joe. I take time to enjoy things. I don't worry over what I can't help, and in the long run I guess we get over the road about as well as we did before, if not a good deal better.”

Don't push on the lines. I wish every woman who nags would learn that lesson. She needs it, and so does her husband.