PART V.

CONTENTS: CHAPTER VIII.

(_Commences on page 279._)

SAVING LIFE;

or, How to Deal with Accidents.

HINTS TO INSTRUCTORS.

CAMP FIRE YARNS.

23.--BE PREPARED FOR ACCIDENTS: The Knights Hospitallers of St. John; Boy Heroes; Girl Heroines; Life-Saving Medals.

24.--ACCIDENTS AND HOW TO DEAL WITH THEM: Panic; Fire; Drowning; Horses; Mad Dog; Miscellaneous.

25.--AID TO THE INJURED: First Aid; Prevention of Suicide.

PRACTICES, GAMES, and DISPLAYS IN LIFE-SAVING.

BOOKS TO READ.

CONTENTS: CHAPTER IX.

(_Commences on page 309_).

PATRIOTISM;

or, Our Duties as Citizens.

HINTS TO INSTRUCTORS.

CAMP FIRE YARNS.

26.--OUR EMPIRE: How it Grew; How it must be Maintained.

27.--CITIZENSHIP: Duties of Scouts as Citizens; Duties as Citizen Soldiers; Marksmanship; Helping the Police.

28.--UNITED WE STAND, DIVIDED WE FALL: Our Flag; Our Navy and Army; Our Government; Our King.

BOOKS TO READ.

CONTINUATION OF PART IV. SOBRIETY.

Remember that drink never yet cured a single trouble; it only makes troubles grow worse and worse the more you go on with it. It makes a man forget for a few hours what exactly his trouble is, but it also makes him forget everything else. If he has wife and children it makes him forget that his duty is to work and help them out of the difficulties instead of making himself all the more unfit to work.

A man who drinks is generally a coward--and one used to see it very much among soldiers. Nowadays they are a better class and do not drink.

Some men drink because they like the feeling of getting half stupid, but they are fools, because once they take to drink no employer will trust them, and they soon become unemployed and easily get ill, and finally come to a miserable end. There is nothing manly about getting drunk. Once a man gives way to drink it ruins his health, his career, and his happiness, as well as that of his family. There is only one cure for this disease, and that is--never to get it.

PRACTISE OBSERVATION.

A well-known detective, Mr. Justin Chevasse, describes how with a little practice in observation you can tell pretty accurately a man's character from his dress.

He tells the story of a Duke who used to dress very shabbily. One day this nobleman was travelling by train with a friend of his, Lord A. A commercial traveller who was in the carriage got into conversation with them. At one station the Duke got out, and after he was gone the commercial traveller asked "Who is the gentleman who has just got out?" "Oh," said Lord A, "that is the Duke of X." The commercial traveller was quite taken aback and said, "Fancy that! Fancy him talking so affably to you and me. I thought all the time that he must be a gardener."

I expect that that commercial traveller had not been brought up as a scout and did not look at people's boots: if he had he would probably have seen that neither the Duke's nor Lord A's were those of a gardener.

The boots are very generally the best test of all the details of clothing. I was with a lady the other day in the country, and a young lady was walking just in front of us. "I wonder who she is" said my friend. "Well," I said, "I should be inclined to say I wonder whose maid she is." The girl was very well dressed but when I saw her boots I guessed that the dress had belonged to someone else, had been given to her and refitted by herself--but that as regards boots she felt more comfortable in her own. She went up to the house at which we were staying--to the servants' entrance--and we found that she was the maid of one of the ladies staying there.

Dr. Gross relates the story of a learned old gentleman who was found dead in his bedroom with a wound in his forehead and another in his left temple.

Very often after a murder the murderer, with his hands bloody from the deed and running away, may catch hold of the door, or a jug of water to wash his hands.

In the present case a newspaper lying on the table had the marks of three blood-stained fingers on it.

The son of the murdered man was suspected and was arrested by the police.

But careful examination of the room and the prints of the finger-marks showed that the old gentleman had been taken ill in the night--had got out of bed to get some medicine, but getting near the table a new spasm seized him and he fell, striking his head violently against the corner of the table and made the wound on his temple which just fitted the corner. In trying to get up he had caught hold of the table and the newspaper on it and had made the bloody finger-marks on the newspaper in doing so. Then he had fallen again, cutting his head a second time on the foot of the bed.

The finger-marks were compared with the dead man's fingers, and were found to be exactly the same. Well, you don't find two men in 64,000,000,000,000 with the same pattern on the skin of their fingers. So it was evident there had been no murder, and the dead man's son was released as innocent.

FORTITUDE.

In Japan, whenever a child is born, the parents hang up outside the house either a doll or a fish, according as the child is a girl or boy. It is a sign to the neighbours: the doll means it is a girl, who will some day have children to nurse; the fish means it is a boy, who, as he grows into manhood, will, like a fish, have to make his way against a stream of difficulties and dangers. A man who cannot face hard work or trouble is not worth calling a man.

Some of you may have heard the story of the two frogs. If you have not, here it is:

Two frogs were out for a walk one day and they came to a big jug of cream. In looking into it they both fell in.

One said: "This is a new kind of water to me. How can a fellow swim in stuff like this? It is no use trying." So he sank to the bottom and was drowned through having no pluck.

But the other was a more manly frog, and he struggled to swim, using his arms and legs as hard as he could to keep himself afloat; and whenever he felt he was sinking he struggled harder than ever, and never gave up hope.

At last, just as he was getting so tired that he thought he _must_ give it up, a curious thing happened. By his hard work with his arms and legs he had churned up the cream so much that he suddenly found himself standing all safe on a pat of butter!

So when things look bad just smile and sing to yourself, as the thrush sings: "Stick to it, stick to it, stick to it," and you will come through all right.

DUTY BEFORE ALL.--You have all heard of "Lynch-Law," by which is meant stern justice by hanging an evil-doer.

The name came from Galway in Ireland where a memorial still commemorates the act of a chief magistrate of that city named Lynch who in the year 1493 had his own son Walter Lynch executed for killing a young Spaniard.

The murderer had been properly tried and convicted. His mother begged the citizens to rescue her son when he was brought out from the jail to suffer punishment, but the father foreseeing this had the sentence carried out in the prison, and young Lynch was hanged from the prison window.

The elder Lynch's sense of duty must have been very strong indeed to enable him to make his feelings as a father give way to his conscience as a magistrate.

General Gordon sacrificed his life to his sense of duty. When he was besieged at Khartum he could have got away himself had he liked, but he considered it his duty to remain with the Egyptians whom he had brought there although he had no admiration for them. So he stuck to them and when at last the place was captured by the enemy he was killed.

NOTES TO INSTRUCTORS

RELIGION.

CHARLES STELZLE, in his "Boys of the Streets and How to Win Them," says:

Sometimes we are so much concerned about there being enough religion in our plans for the boy that we forget to leave enough boy in the plans. According to the notions of some, the ideal boys' club would consist of prayer meetings and Bible classes, with an occasional missionary talk as a treat, and perhaps magic lantern views of the Holy Land as a dizzy climax.

Religion can and ought to be taught to the boy, but not in a milk-and-watery way, or in a mysterious and lugubrious manner; he is very ready to receive it if it is shown in its heroic side and as a natural every-day quality in every proper man, and it can be well introduced to boys through the study of Nature; and to those who believe scouting to be an unfit subject for Sunday instruction, surely the study of God's work is at least proper for that day. There is no need for this instruction to be dismal, that is, "all tears and texts." Arthur Benson, writing in the _Cornhill Magazine_, says there are four Christian virtues, not three. They are--Faith, Hope, Charity--and Humour. So also in the morning prayer of Robert Louis Stevenson:

The day returns and brings us the petty round of irritating concerns and duties. Help us to play the man--help us to perform them with laughter and kind faces. Let cheerfulness abound with industry. Give us to go blithely on our business all this day. Bring us to our resting beds weary and content and undishonoured, and grant us in the end the gift of sleep.

THRIFT.

A very large proportion of the distress and unemployedness in the country is due to want of thrift on the part of the people themselves; and social reformers, before seeking for new remedies, would do well to set this part of the problem right in the first place; they would then probably find very little more left for them to do. Mr. John Burns, in a recent speech, pointed out that there is plenty of money in the country to put everyone on a fair footing, if only it were made proper use of by the working man. In some places, it is true, there is thrift--workmen save their pay and buy their own houses, and become prosperous, contented citizens in happy homes. It is estimated that £500,000,000 of working-men's money is invested in savings banks and friendly societies. But there is a reverse to the medal. This great balance represents savings of many years, whereas it could be doubled in two or three years were men to give up drinking and smoking.

Where we deposit £4 per head per annum in savings banks, other countries deposit far more, although earning lower wages, and in Denmark such deposits amount, on an average, to £19 per head.

£166,000,000 were spent last year on drink, and £25,000,000 on tobacco. This alone would be enough, if divided amongst our thirty-five millions of poor, to give £22 a year to each family; and we know that this is only part of the extravagance of the nation. From £8000 to £10,000 a week is estimated to go into the pockets of the bookmakers at Liverpool and its surrounding towns at football. Holiday, or "Going Off" clubs, are common in Lancashire, where workers save up money to spend on their holidays. In Blackburn alone £117,000 was thus expended last year. At Oldham £25,000 was saved to be expended in festivities at the "Wakes."

The wastefulness in Great Britain is almost inconceivable, and ought to be made criminal. Men draw big wages of £3 and £4 on Saturday nights, but have nothing to show for it by Monday night. If they had thrift a large majority of our working-men and their families might be in prosperous circumstances to-day, but they have never been taught what thrift may be, and they naturally do as their neighbours do. If the rising generation could be started in the practice of economy, it would make a vast difference to the character and prosperity of the nation in the future.

In Manchester the school children are encouraged to save up their money by means of money-boxes, and 44,000 of them now have deposits in the savings banks. It has been found a very successful way of encouraging thrift. For this reason we have instituted money-boxes for Boy Scouts.

POLITENESS.

An instance of politeness in war occurred at the Battle of Fontenoy, when we were fighting against the French.

The Coldstream Guards coming up over a hill suddenly found themselves close up to the French Guards. Both parties were surprised, and neither fired a shot for a minute or two.

In those days when gallant men quarrelled, they used to settle their differences by fighting duels with pistols. At a duel both combatants were supposed to fire at the same moment when the word was given, but it often happened that one man, in order to show how brave he was, would tell his adversary to fire first. And so in this case. When both parties were about to fire, the officer commanding the British Guards, to show his politeness and fearlessness, bowed to the French commander, and said, "You fire first, sir."

When the French Guards levelled their rifles to fire, one of the soldiers of the Coldstreams exclaimed, "For what we are going to receive may the Lord make us truly thankful." In the volley that followed, a great number of our men fell, but the survivors returned an equally deadly volley, and immediately charged in with the bayonet, and drove the French off the field.