Courteous - Raleigh's Cloak
| Category: | Scout Law |
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| Props: | An old jacket or rain fly to lay on the ground (optional) |
| Notes: | Works any time, and especially well on a rainy campout or after a meeting where someone held a door, gave up a seat or carried someone else's gear. If you bring a jacket, spread it on the ground at "laid it right across the puddle." See also courteous-to-those-who-serve-you. |
About four hundred and fifty years ago, Queen Elizabeth the First of England was out walking with her court. It had rained, and right across her path was a big, sloppy mud puddle.
Everybody stopped. Nobody knew what to do. Then a young man named Walter Raleigh stepped forward. He took off his cloak, his brand-new, very expensive velvet cloak, the best thing he owned, and laid it right across the puddle. And the Queen walked over it without getting a speck of mud on her shoes.
The Queen never forgot it. Raleigh became one of her favorites, and later, Sir Walter Raleigh, one of the most famous men in England.
Now, I'll be honest with you. Historians aren't sure that story ever happened. Nobody wrote it down until more than forty years after Raleigh died. But people have been telling it for more than three hundred and fifty years anyway, because everybody understands what it means.
And here's what I think it means. Everybody else in that crowd saw the same puddle. Raleigh was the only one who did something about it.
That's what courtesy is. It isn't fancy manners or knowing which fork to use. It's noticing what's in front of someone else, and doing something about it before they have to ask.
You probably won't ever need to throw a cloak over a puddle. But you'll have a hundred chances a week to do the same thing. Holding a door when somebody's hands are full. Giving up your seat. Grabbing the other end of the dining fly. Saying "go ahead" when two of you reach the same spot on the trail. Making room on the bench for the new Scout who's standing alone.
None of those cost you a velvet cloak. Most of them cost you about three seconds. But they're the things people remember about you, for a long, long time.
A Scout is courteous. So this week, keep an eye out for the puddle in front of somebody else. And be the one who steps forward.