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.
Showing posts with label selfishness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label selfishness. Show all posts
Monday, March 31, 2008
Saturday, May 5, 2007
No Good Deed or Sacrifice is Wasted
1895
God Will Use It
"No good deed, no genuine sacrifice, is over wasted. If there be no good in it, God will use it for His own holy purposes, and whatever of ignorance or weakness or mistake was mingled with it will drop away as the withered petals drop away when the full flower has blown." — Frederic W. Farrar.
A Deadly Sin
What makes selfishness such a deadly sin is that it is a self-deceiving sin. A thief knows that he is a thief; a liar that he has told falsehoods; but a selfish man does not know he is selfish, hence he never repents of his sin and it grows with his growth, strengthens with his strength.
The Current of Life
Keep the current of your life broad and full. To do this your thoughts must be full. Share your thoughts with others in different as well as in the same walks of life, and open your mind to share in their plans, aims, feeling, troubles and joys.
God Will Use It
"No good deed, no genuine sacrifice, is over wasted. If there be no good in it, God will use it for His own holy purposes, and whatever of ignorance or weakness or mistake was mingled with it will drop away as the withered petals drop away when the full flower has blown." — Frederic W. Farrar.
A Deadly Sin
What makes selfishness such a deadly sin is that it is a self-deceiving sin. A thief knows that he is a thief; a liar that he has told falsehoods; but a selfish man does not know he is selfish, hence he never repents of his sin and it grows with his growth, strengthens with his strength.
The Current of Life
Keep the current of your life broad and full. To do this your thoughts must be full. Share your thoughts with others in different as well as in the same walks of life, and open your mind to share in their plans, aims, feeling, troubles and joys.
The Scarlet-Tufted Woodpecker — A Legend
1874
Tap, tap, tap!
What a busy little creature, the brown birdie with, a scarlet crown! See her running up the trunk of the large elm by our door, striking the rough, bark with her long beak — tap, tap, tap! — stopping a moment, her pretty head held sideways as if listening, then hopping so fast half around the tree, and tapping again, with now and then a blithe chirp. Pretty, useful little woodpecker! While she gets her daily food she is keeping, tiny as she is the great elm sound and fair. Well may we love the birdies, one and all, for their beauty and song and the many sweet lessons they bring us, as they wing their way from bough to bough, seek their daily bread and nurse their tiny broods in wind-rocked cradles — lessons of love and kindness and industry and trust in a Father's care.
There is a northern legend of the woodpecker that, though it is hardly fair toward the bird, is yet a pretty story. It runs in this way:
Long ago, when St. Peter was traveling about and teaching the people, he was poor, and often went hungry. One morning at sunrise he came to a cottage where a woman in a brown dress and scarlet cape was making cakes. He asked her for a single one, and at first she said yes, and rolled out a small cake. She put it down to bake, but kept looking at it, and soon concluded it was more than she wanted to give. So she kneaded out another, a smaller one; but when it was baking, that, too, seemed large to her. All this time Peter was waiting quietly, patiently, though faint with hunger. She took the tiny bits of dough, put them together and rolled out a tiny cake, thin as a wafer; but when it was baked, she wanted even that.
"My cakes seem small when I eat them myself," said she, "but they are too large to give away, for all that." So she put even the wafer-like cake on the shelf.
Then Peter made indignant answer: "Thou art far too selfish, too mean, to wear a human form, to have a home to shelter thee, clothes and food and fire. Thou shalt live hereafter as the birds do, build in the trees, and get thy living by constant labor, boring, boring, all day in hard, dry wood."
Then up through the chimney went she without a word. Out from the top flew a woodpecker. The little scarlet cap was still on her head, and her dress, changed to feathers, was covered with soot. And from that day to this — so runs the legend — she has been in the wood tapping trees for a scanty living, and every child knows her sooty dress and scarlet hood.
Now, though it is only a legend, and the woodpecker is as good as she is pretty, it will be worth something to us, when we see her, to remember that story, if it lead us to shun every form of selfishness, and pity and help the needy as far as in our power.
You may not be changed to a bird, though you live as selfishly as you can, but you will be changed to a smaller thing, a mean and selfish man. — Children's Hour.
Tap, tap, tap!
What a busy little creature, the brown birdie with, a scarlet crown! See her running up the trunk of the large elm by our door, striking the rough, bark with her long beak — tap, tap, tap! — stopping a moment, her pretty head held sideways as if listening, then hopping so fast half around the tree, and tapping again, with now and then a blithe chirp. Pretty, useful little woodpecker! While she gets her daily food she is keeping, tiny as she is the great elm sound and fair. Well may we love the birdies, one and all, for their beauty and song and the many sweet lessons they bring us, as they wing their way from bough to bough, seek their daily bread and nurse their tiny broods in wind-rocked cradles — lessons of love and kindness and industry and trust in a Father's care.
There is a northern legend of the woodpecker that, though it is hardly fair toward the bird, is yet a pretty story. It runs in this way:
Long ago, when St. Peter was traveling about and teaching the people, he was poor, and often went hungry. One morning at sunrise he came to a cottage where a woman in a brown dress and scarlet cape was making cakes. He asked her for a single one, and at first she said yes, and rolled out a small cake. She put it down to bake, but kept looking at it, and soon concluded it was more than she wanted to give. So she kneaded out another, a smaller one; but when it was baking, that, too, seemed large to her. All this time Peter was waiting quietly, patiently, though faint with hunger. She took the tiny bits of dough, put them together and rolled out a tiny cake, thin as a wafer; but when it was baked, she wanted even that.
"My cakes seem small when I eat them myself," said she, "but they are too large to give away, for all that." So she put even the wafer-like cake on the shelf.
Then Peter made indignant answer: "Thou art far too selfish, too mean, to wear a human form, to have a home to shelter thee, clothes and food and fire. Thou shalt live hereafter as the birds do, build in the trees, and get thy living by constant labor, boring, boring, all day in hard, dry wood."
Then up through the chimney went she without a word. Out from the top flew a woodpecker. The little scarlet cap was still on her head, and her dress, changed to feathers, was covered with soot. And from that day to this — so runs the legend — she has been in the wood tapping trees for a scanty living, and every child knows her sooty dress and scarlet hood.
Now, though it is only a legend, and the woodpecker is as good as she is pretty, it will be worth something to us, when we see her, to remember that story, if it lead us to shun every form of selfishness, and pity and help the needy as far as in our power.
You may not be changed to a bird, though you live as selfishly as you can, but you will be changed to a smaller thing, a mean and selfish man. — Children's Hour.
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