In an enchanting forest clearing, Polly the Parrot flapped her colorful wings with glee. “Oh, my dearest Benny!” she chirped to Benny the Bear, who was gazing at her in admiration, “Wouldn’t it be lovely to have a Grand Dance this evening? But oh dear, I can’t think of any special theme for it.”
Benny scratched his head in thought. He was quite the thinker that Benny, although his heart was sometimes a bit too big for his body. “A theme,” he said slowly, “wait a moment while I just think over the different themes I heard at the last dance.” So while he thought, Polly bobbed her head up and down to the music of the birds, which was very gay and delightful.
Benny came out of his reverie at last. “Of course,” he exclaimed suddenly, “I know what our theme spelling will be! It will be
‘FRIENDSHIP AND COOPERATION’!”
“Wonderful! Delighted!” screamed Polly, nearly upsetting herself in her excitement. “Come along! Call all the birds and animals. We’ve no time to lose. Come quickly!”
So off hurried Polly as fast as her legs could carry her, while Benny plodded sedately along behind, looking not unlike a threecylindered machine going up an incline. These two soon collected all the friends that lived in the neighborhood and in a short time had a big crowd about them.
“Dear friends,” Polly began, “Benny and I have been having such ideas about our dance that I am dying to tell them to you, and am glad to see you in such numbers to hear them.” Then she prettily bowed to the animals and birds of the forest who stood round and blinked up at her.
“We have decided,” she went on, “to have our grand performance on cooperation and friendship, so that means you must all help in some way. Do you understand? Do you really understand what I mean?”
Then she asked each one the special knowledge of his or her profession, for of course you know how many different people and animals were really needed for such a performance.
Then there was a pause, as though for breath, because each one of them put a little thought into the means of spreading themselves out over the entire area of the forest, so that their dances, songs, and instrumental music could be rendered and yet hearing distributed so the audience come in a body at the dance and then regain proper positions for hearing the remainder of the performance.
“Well,” said Polly, after a little time, “have you thought?”
“Yes,” answered a dozen tones. “Yes, I think I can arrange it,” answered nearly all round the circle.
Then the deer and the squirrels went on ahead, gently prancing and dancing about, up and down the hills and away among the trees in the dim shadows till there was not a deer left in one place, but they had made it their business to know that the appetite in forerunners had begun on the lunch that Captain Wasps had arranged beforehand.
Polly and Benny had gratefully subsisted out of Captain Wasps’ larder, but they were again dancing about in the clearing betwixt the deer, who were lying about quietly listening to the finale of the songs of the birds, for a restful interval had been needed after the lunch, and so supper served this purpose. At last, moved by the spirit of their surroundings, all began to alternately study and do, and dance, eventually the spirit of our earth’s greatest ‘Cooperation and Friendship’ had been pleased to sit and watch her children knit closer still the widening bonds of fellowship.
With the good deeds done in a shady London square, we put away the beautiful thoughts we have gathered there, and carry home the sunshine in the blessings that abide, where love’s best gift is needed on a friend’s unbounded heart. You know what she meant, did you not?
It was a kind thought of Polly and Benny to have named their performance after what we hope are the two chief omens of their little woodland stage.
Inspiration as brotherly as was his life had pointed it out to the friends, and the little forest nestled safely in the arms of a beneficent heaven rolled happiness all about its few little dwellers, while the great world of men outside was quite silly and blindly still unknowingly partaking of the good guidance from Nature.
Whatever is set down here is as merely old news to every one of us as picks of wisdom scattered among the quaintest fancies that ever heart wrought in writing.