Help Other People At All Times

(Have two plates, an apple on one; a few apple seeds on the other.)

If I gave you a choice, which of these plates would you rather have? Well, I guess most of us would choose the one with the apple, wouldn't we? 

About a hundred and fifty years ago, there was as a fellow, though, who would have taken the seeds. He was a nut on apple seeds, so much so that people called him Johnny Appleseed. He walked across hundreds of miles of our frontier lands year after year, until he died, and everywhere he went he planted apple seeds. The trees that grew from those seeds fed thousands of people with their fruit. All because of a screwball called Johnny Appleseed!

Most of us seem to be interested only in the present. We haven't time to plant seeds. We want just the brightest fruit, and we want it right now.

But you know it would be easy for us to plant a few seeds along the way, seeds that would bring good to many people for years to come. How? Just by living our slogan, "Do a Good Turn Daily." Every time we help another person we are planting a little seed of good feeling. Just one such seed can start the growth of a tree of good deeds in each person you help. You can see how important your Good Turn is. It can lead to thousands of good deeds throughout many years of the future, affecting the lives of thousands of people.

Remember your Good Turn every day!

Found in the 1958 printing of ideas and stories for the Scoutmaster's Minutes