Looking Out For Number Two

1900

A Storyette

Written for The Ram's Horn
By VINCENT Van MARTER BEEDE

Queer, isn't it, that the more hole you take away, the more hole there should be! Just as queer is the fact that the more of oneself he gives away, the more he has. It takes a long time to find this out. The general run of us seem to be born greedy. Nurse sets us down at the table, and what a gobbling takes place. With what jealous eyes do we watch Tommy for fear his slice of bread have more area, or greater thickness of jelly upon it, than ours.

Two little cousins met in the hallway. The laughing cousin saw in the hand of the petulant cousin a stick of candy — a gay, red-and-white stick. Big eyes of want glowed at the stick. Advances the laughing one; frowns and retreats the petulant one. Says one of the mothers, "Why, Winnie, aren't you going to give Ruddy a taste?" "No!" :— then, after a fierce inward battle — "He can have just one tuck." The laughing one was now open both as to eyes and mouth. Alas for that tuck! It was of such vast proportions as to comprise seven-eights of the stick. No wonder a tangled heap of kilts was the result.

"Disgusting little wretch, that Ruddy!" you say. Quite right. But in this world there are a number of Ruddys and Winnies, big and little, are there not?

Number 1! Dear, darling Number 1!

Supposing Congress were to declare a Day of Unselfishness. Weeks before its coming ministers would tell of it in their pulpits, teachers from their desks, fathers under the evening lamp. Newspapers would jest over or extol it; men would shake their heads in anticipation of it. The first holiday of the kind is clear as crystal — a real, warm-hearted, flower-steeped May day. The President in his Proclamation has implored the people prayerfully to endeavor, in every detail of the day's pursuits, to think first of the neighbor and secondly of self. Thousands, hundred-thousands, millions of folks sneer at the suggestion, daubing another coat of love-proof varnish on their withered hearts. Millions of people, on the other hand, can try very little harder to be more unselfish than usual on this day; they have been trying so hard these many days! There are still the millions who will try to look out for Number 2 on this day.

Egbert does lend Albert the new fishing-rod — and even the new reel. Jenny takes the Poore family out driving, queer old clothes and all, in preference to the Chummy Crones, her four-cornered club of very special friends. Mrs. Flitter actually decides to have her boy at home from boarding-school for the holidays, even though he is such a nuisance; and Marcus Magnate, the Coal King, omits to foreclose on the mortgage of the Widow Peters.

If there is any of the fabled music left in the spheres, it is sounding today. There is a swelling cry of hope, and love, and gladness, from Atlantic to Pacific, from Gulf to Border, and the sky is smiling — yes, laughing. Trade is good, very good; the children are very well today, thank you; and Grandmother's rheumatiz is much improved. Pessimists and croakers are crawling into their holes and pulling the holes in after them.

Glory of glories, the day after the Day of Unselfishness is another Day of Unselfishness! And the day after the day after that is a good deal like the legal one! And never again will this land be so selfish as it was before the dawning of that Day.

Only a dream. The bubble has burst. Never mind: cannot each one of us, in communion with that little Christ-child who showed us, and is now showing us, what love can do, what unselfishness can be — cannot each one of us quietly celebrate a Day of Unselfishness — and many another Day like it?

—The Ram's Horn, Nov. 17, 1900, p. 7.