Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts Part 3

Now, the tales of their exploits have gone all over the world, and healthy, active people, and especially young people, have always delighted in just this sort of life and character. So, when you add the fact that the word "scout" has always been used, too, to describe the men sent out ahead of an army to gain information in the quickest, cleverest way, it is no wonder that the great organizations of Boy and Girl Scouts which are spreading all over the world today should have chosen the name we are so proud of, to describe the kind of thing they want to stand for.

Our British Scout-sisters call themselves "Girl Guides," and here is the thrilling reason for this t.i.tle given by the Chief Scout and Founder of the whole big band that is spreading round the world today, as so many of Old England's great ideas have spread.

WHY "GUIDES"?

On the North-West Frontier of India there is a famous Corps of soldiers known as the Guides, and their duty is to be always ready to turn out at any moment to repel raids by the hostile tribes across the Border, and to prevent them from coming down into the peaceful plains of India. This body of men must be prepared for every kind of fighting. Sometimes on foot, sometimes on horseback, sometimes in the mountains, often with pioneer work wading through rivers and making bridges, and so on. But they have to be a skilful lot of men, brave and enduring, ready to turn out at any time, winter or summer, or to sacrifice themselves if necessary in order that peace may reign throughout India while they keep down any hostile raids against it. So they are true handymen in every sense of the word, and true patriots.

When people speak of Guides in Europe one naturally thinks of those men who are mountaineers in Switzerland and other mountainous places, who can guide people over the most difficult parts by their own bravery and skill in tackling obstacles, by helpfulness to those with them, and by their bodily strength of wind and limb. They are splendid fellows those guides, and yet if they were told to go across the same amount of miles on an open flat plain it would be nothing to them, it would not be interesting, and they would not be able to display those grand qualities which they show directly the country is a bit broken up into mountains. It is no fun to them to walk by easy paths, the whole excitement of life is facing difficulties and dangers and apparent impossibilities, and in the end getting a chance of attaining the summit of the mountain they have wanted to reach.

Well, I think it is the case with most girls nowadays. They do not want to sit down and lead an idle life, not to have everything done for them, nor to have a very easy time. They don't want merely to walk across the plain, they would much rather show themselves handy people, able to help others and ready, if necessary to sacrifice themselves for others just like the Guides on the North-West frontier. And they also want to tackle difficult jobs themselves in their life, to face mountains and difficulties and dangers and to go at them having prepared themselves to be skilful and brave; and also they would like to help other people meet their difficulties also. When they attain success after facing difficulties, then they feel really happy and triumphant. It is a big satisfaction to them to have succeeded and to have made other people succeed also. That is what the Girl Guides want to do, just as the mountaineer guides do among the mountains.

Then, too, a woman who can do things is looked up to by others, both men and women, and they are always ready to follow her advice and example, so there she becomes a Guide too. And later on if she has children of her own, or if she becomes a teacher of children, she can be a really good Guide to them.

By means of games and activities which the Guides practise they are able to learn the different things which will help them to get on in life, and show the way to others to go on also. Thus camping and signalling, first aid work, camp cooking, and all these things that the Guides practise are all going to be helpful to them afterwards in making them strong, resourceful women, skilful and helpful to others, and strong in body as well as in mind, and what is more it makes them a jolly lot of comrades also.

The motto of the Guides on which they work is "Be Prepared," that is, be ready for any kind of duty that may be thrust upon them, and what is more, to know what to do by having practised it beforehand in the case of any kind of accident or any kind of work that they may be asked to take up.

MAGDELAINE DE VERCHeRES

"THE FIRST GIRL SCOUT"

It is a great piece of luck for us American Scouts that we can claim the very first Girl Scout for our own great continent, if not quite for our own United States. A great Englishman calls her "the first Girl Scout,"

and every Scout must feel proud to the core of her heart when she thinks that this statue which we have selected for the honor of our frontispiece, standing as it does on British soil, on the American continent, commemorating a French girl, the daughter of our Sister Republic, joins the three great countries closely together, through the Girl Scouts! Magdelaine de Vercheres lived in the French colonies around Quebec late in the seventeenth century. The colonies were constantly being attacked by the Iroquois Indians. One of these attacks occurred while Magdelaine's father, the Seigneur, was away. Magdelaine rallied her younger brothers about her and succeeded in holding the fort for eight days, until help arrived from Montreal.

The doc.u.ments relating this bit of history have been in the Archives for many years, but when they were shown to Lord Grey about twelve years ago he decided to erect a monument to Magdelaine de Vercheres on the St.

Lawrence. It was Lord Grey who called Magdelaine "The First Girl Scout,"

and as such she will be known.

The following is taken from "A Daughter of New France," by Arthur G.

Doughty who wrote the book for the Red Cross work of the Magdelaine de Vercheres Chapter of the Daughters of the Empire, and dedicated it to Princess Patricia, whose name was given to the famous "Princess Pat"

regiment.

"On Vercheres Point, near the site of the Fort, stands a statue in bronze of the girl who adorned the age in which she lived and whose memory is dear to posterity. For she had learned so to live that her hands were clean and her paths were straight.... To all future visitors to Canada by way of the St. Lawrence, this silent figure of the First Girl Scout in the New World conveys a message of loyalty, of courage and of devotion."

Our own early history is sprinkled thickly with brave, handy girls, who were certainly Scouts, if ever there were any, though they never belonged to a patrol, nor recited the Scout Laws. But they lived the Laws, those strong young pioneers, and we can stretch out our hands to them across the long years, and give them the hearty Scout grip of fellowship, when we read of them.

THE EXPLORER

If we should ever hold an election for honorary membership in the Girl Scouts, open to all the girls who ought to have belonged to us, but who lived too long ago, we should surely nominate for first place one of the most remarkable young Indian girls who ever found her way through the pathless forests,--Sacajawea, "The Bird Woman."

In 1806 she was brought to Lewis and Clark on their expedition into the great Northwest, to act as interpreter between them and the various Indian tribes they had to encounter. From the very beginning, when she induced the hostile Shoshones to act as guides, to the end of her daring journey, during which, with her papoose on her back, she led this band of men through hitherto impa.s.sable mountain ranges, till she brought them to the Pacific Coast, this sixteen-year-old girl never faltered. No dangers of hunger, thirst, cold or darkness were too much for her. From the Jefferson to the Yellowstone River she was the only guide they had; on her instinct for the right way, her reading of the sun, the stars and the trees, depended the lives of all of them. When they fell sick she nursed them; when they lost heart at the wildness of their venture, she cheered them. Their party grew smaller and smaller, for Lewis and Clark had separated early in the expedition, and a part of Clark's own party fell off when they discovered a natural route over the Continental Divide where wagons could not travel. Later, most of those who remained, decided to go down the Jefferson River in canoes; but Clark still guided by the plucky Indian girl, persisted in fighting his way on pony back overland, and after a week of this journeying, crowded full of discomforts and dangers, she brought him out in triumph at the Yellowstone, where the river bursts out from the lower canon,--and the Great Northwest was opened up for all time!

The women of Oregon have raised a statue to this young explorer, and there she stands in Portland, facing the Coast, pointing to the Columbia River where it reaches the sea.

These great virtues of daring and endurance never die out of the race; though the conditions of our life today, when most of the exploring has been done, do not demand them of us in just the form the "Bird Woman"

needed, still, if they die out of the nation, and especially out of the women of the nation, something has been lost that no amount of book education can ever replace. Sacajawea, had no maps to study--she _made_ maps, and roads have been built over her footsteps. And so we Scouts, not to lose this great spirit, study the stars and the sun and the trees and try to learn a few of the wood secrets she knew so well. This out-of-door wisdom and self-reliance was the first great principle of Scouting.

THE HOMEMAKER

But of course, a country full of "Bird Women" could not be said to have advanced very far in civilization. Though we should take great pleasure in conferring her well-earned merit badges on Sacajawea, we should hardly have grown into the great organization we are today if we had not badges for quite another cla.s.s of achievements.

In 1832, not so many years after the famous Lewis and Clark expedition, there was born a little New England girl who would very early in life have become a First Cla.s.s Scout if she had had the opportunity. Her name was Louisa Alcott, and she made that name famous all the world over by the book by which the world's girls know her--"Little Women." Her father, though a brilliant man, was a very impractical one, and from her first little story to her last popular book, all her work was done for the purpose of keeping her mother and sisters, in comfort. While she was waiting for the money from her stories she turned carpets, trimmed hats, papered the rooms, made party dresses for her sisters, nursed anyone who was sick (at which she was particularly good)--all the homely, helpful things that neighbors and families did for each other in New England towns.

In those days little mothers of families could not telephone specialists to help them out in emergencies; there were neither telephones nor specialists! But there were always emergencies, and the Alcott girls had to know what to put on a black-and-blue spot, and why the jelly failed to "jell," and how to hang a skirt, and bake a cake, and iron a table-cloth. Louisa had to entertain family guests and darn the family stockings. Her home had not every comfort and convenience, even as people counted those things then, and without a brisk, clever woman, full of what the New Englanders called "faculty," her family would have been a very unhappy one. With all our modern inventions n.o.body has yet invented a subst.i.tute for a good, all-round woman in a family, and until somebody can invent one, we must continue to take off our hats to girls like Louisa Alcott. Imagine what her feelings would have been if someone had told her that she had earned half a dozen merit badges by her knowledge of home economics and her clever writing!

And let every Scout who finds housework dull, and feels that she is capable of bigger things, remember this: the woman whose books for girls are more widely known than any such books ever written in America, had to drop the pen, often and often, for the needle, the dish-cloth and the broom.

To direct her household has always been a woman's job in every century, and girls were learning to do it before Columbus ever discovered Sacajawea's great country. To be sure, they had no such jolly way of working at it together, as the Scouts have, nor did they have the opportunity the girl of today has to learn all about these things in a scientific, business-like way, in order to get it all done with the quickest, most efficient methods, just as any clever business man manages his business.

We no longer believe that housekeeping should take up all a woman's time; and many an older woman envies the little badges on a Scout's sleeve that show the world she has learned how to manage her cleaning and cooking and household routine so that she has plenty of time to spend on other things that interest her.

THE PIONEER

But there was a time in the history of our country when men and women went out into the wilderness with no nearer neighbors than the Indians, yet with all the ideals of the New England they left behind them; girls who had to have all the endurance of the young "Bird Woman" and yet keep up the traditions and the habits of the fine old home life of Louisa Alcott.

One of these pioneer girls, who certainly would have been patrol leader of her troop and marched them to victory with her, was Anna Shaw. In 1859, a twelve-year old girl, with her mother and four other children she traveled in a rough cart full of bedding and provisions, into the Michigan woods where they took up a claim, settling down into a log cabin whose only furniture was a fireplace of wood and stones.

She and her brothers floored this cabin with lumber from a mill, and actually made part.i.tions, an attic door and windows. They planted potatoes and corn by chopping up the sod, putting seed under it and leaving it to Nature--who rewarded them by giving them the best corn and potatoes Dr. Shaw ever ate, she says in her autobiography.

For she became a preacher and a physician, a lecturer and organizer, this st.u.r.dy little Scout, even though she had to educate herself, mostly. They papered the cabin walls with the old magazines, after they had read them once, and went all over them, in this fashion, later. So eagerly did she devour the few books sent them from the East, that when she entered college, years later, she pa.s.sed her examinations on what she remembered of them!

They lived on what they raised from the land; the pigs they brought in the wagon with them, fish, caught with wires out of an old hoop skirt, and corn meal brought from the nearest mill, twenty miles away. Ox teams were the only means of getting about.

Anna and her brothers made what furniture they used--bunks, tables, stools and a settle. She learned to cut trees and "heart" logs like a man. After a trying season of carrying all the water used in the household from a distant creek, which froze in the winter so that they had to melt the ice, they finally dug a well. First they went as far as they could with spades, then handed buckets of earth to each other, standing on a ledge half-way down; then, when it was deep enough, they lined it with slabs of wood. It was so well made that the family used it for twelve years.

Wild beasts prowled around them, Indians terrified them by sudden visits, the climate was rigorous, amus.e.m.e.nts and leisure scanty. But this brave, handy girl met every job that came to her with a good heart and a smile; she learned by doing. The tests and sports for mastering which we earn badges were life's ordinary problems to her, and very practical ones. She never knew it, but surely she was a real Girl Scout!

It is not surprising to learn that she grew up to be one of the women who earned the American girl her right to vote. A pioneer in more ways than one, this little carpenter and farmer and well-digger worked for the cause of woman's political equality as she had worked in the Michigan wilderness, and helped on as much as any one woman, the great revolution in people's ideas which makes it possible for women today to express their wishes directly as to how their country shall be governed.

This seems very simple to the girls of today, and will seem even simpler as the years go on, but, like the Yellowstone River, it needed its pioneers!

In the Great War through which we have just pa.s.sed, the Scouts of all countries gave a magnificent account of themselves, and honestly earned the "War Service" badges that will be handed down to future generations, we may be sure, as the proudest possessions of thousands of grandchildren whose grandmothers (think of a Scout grandmother!) were among the first to answer their Country's call.

Let us hear what our British sisters accomplished, and we must remember that at the time of the war there were many Girl Guides well over Scout age and in their twenties, who had had the advantage, as their book points out, of years of training.

This is what they have done during the Great War.

In the towns they have helped at the Military Hospitals.

In the country they have collected eggs for the sick, and on the moors have gathered sphagnum moss for the hospitals.

Over in France a great Recreation and Rest Hut for the soldiers has been supplied by the Guides with funds earned through their work. It is managed by Guide officers, or ex-Guides. Among the older Guides there are many who have done n.o.ble work as a.s.sistants to the ward-maids, cooks, and laundry women. In the Government offices, such as the War Office, the Admiralty, and other great departments of the State, they have acted as orderlies and messengers. They have taken up work in factories, or as motor-drivers or on farms, in order to release men to go to the front.