A crutch is a staff with a top cross piece for the use of a cripple; a prop, or support to aid persons who are unable to walk without assistance. Grandpa Howard told the story that while he had no actual need for such equipment, he wanted to own a crutch for defensive purposes.
School children played a game in which two groups were stationed in two lines some distance apart. One feature of the play was to catch the boy as he ran between the bases and give him three pats on the back. A certain crippled boy deftly warded off opponents with his crutch, which gave Grandpa the incentive to make one for himself.
The available material consisted of a broomstick and a short piece of wood about two inches thick for the top. An axe and the hammer were the tools at his disposal. Attempting to make the circular cap-piece, Grandpa held the wood in one hand and the heavy axe in the other. The result was a very bad cut on the back of his left hand. His mother used flour and bandages to stop the bleeding; a doctor dressed the wound and placed his arm in a sling. Naturally left-handed, it became necessary to learn to write with the well hand.
The crutch was never finished, but the experience taught the lesson that necessity awakens faculties’ greater use. The ever-present scar on his hand was crescent-shaped like he wanted to make the top piece years prior. Grandpa said it’d been a constant reminder that many attractive, unnecessary things are too costly.
A crutch within itself is not an ornament of beauty, but it may reveal the hidden strength of the user. The little crippled boy was hobbling home from school in company with other children. Recent rain had caused a muddy place in the road. The boy in crutches was offered help, but he bravely said, “No, I can make it.”
William Wilberforce, an imminent statesman, had a serious physical handicap – so serious that when he was a boy, his parents thought of his future with many misgivings. His career was a striking illustration of the soul’s triumph over terrible odds. He exercised great influence over his fellows, and the way in which he championed noble causes made him one of the great moral forces of his generation. Frail and misshapen, a dwarf in body, Wilberforce was a giant in mind and soul.
(William Wilberforce, born August 24, 1759, Hull, Yorkshire, England, died July 29, 1833, London, British politician and philanthropist who from 1787 was prominent in the struggle to abolish the slave trade and then to abolish slavery itself in British overseas possessions.)