Young Knights of the Empire Part 15

By doing things which you would not care to do before your father or mother, you are becoming a bit of a sneak. You do these things secretly, you are not straight.

A fellow who is not straight at starting is pretty sure to go on being crooked for the rest of his career. He knows all the time in his inmost heart that he is a sneak, and he can therefore never take a pride in himself and others are bound to find it out sooner or later, so he never gets a real friend nor a good employer.

Then these things are likely to do him bodily harm.

Smoking is poison to a growing lad. It may not do you much harm if you take to it when you are grown up; but while you are still forming your muscles as a lad it is almost certain to do damage to your heart, your wind, your digestion, and very likely your eyesight and teeth.

I take it that most boys want to be good healthy runners and able to play at all the games, and I am certain that every Scout wants to Be Prepared to be a good healthy man for his Country.

Well, you can't do it if you begin by smoking as a boy.

Drinking begins, like everything else, in a small way; but it very soon grows on a fellow unless he is on the look out to stop it. More than half the crime in Great Britain is due to drink, and so is most of the poverty, and three-quarters of the insanity. And it is much the same with thoughts about women; they soon grow into wrong action, and if these are kept up they grow into habits which lead in an awful number of cases to misery, disease, and madness.

Brace up!

Be a man! Keep off these dangers.

If fellows around you are sw.a.n.king in dirt, leave them and go elsewhere.

Don't let yourself BEGIN loafing about, taking drinks, talking s.m.u.t, or doing what you know is wrong; give yourself bettor things to do--games, handicrafts, good turns, work, and you will grow up a clean, straight, and happy fellow, and, what is more--a _man_.

MANLINESS IS NOT DIRTINESS.

Not long ago there was a lot of argument about certain music-halls in London. Many people were disgusted at the low and dirty talk or hints made by some of the performers. Most of these rotten ideas of half-dressed women, dancing about trying to look pretty, come from abroad, and do not really please the ordinary British man.

Harry Lauder is delightfully funny, but he is funny without being dirty, and so is Chevalier, the coster singer. Dan Leno made you laugh, but he was never dirty--and that was why he and these other singers have been so popular.

I saw a performance not long ago, where a half-dressed woman came and danced about on the stage, but, though she was tremendously advertised as the great attraction of the place, she got very little applause.

Soon after her there came a bright-looking girl in ordinary clothes, who merely sang an English ballad, but she was cheered and applauded till she had to come on again and sing a second, and even a third time.

I believe that the proper, manly Britisher likes a good clean show on the stage; he likes to have a good hearty laugh, or to hear good music, but I believe it is only a very few (and those nearly all slackers and wasters) who care to go and see the nasty, half-indecent shows which come sometimes from other countries.

THE ORDER OF THE BATH.

In the old days when being made Knights, members of the Order of the Bath used to go and take a bath as part of the ceremony. I was very glad to see in Hull during a visit there that at the Boys' Club every boy on coming into the club has a bath.

In the first room he comes into on entering the club he takes off all his clothes and puts them in a rack made for the purpose. Then he goes into a big warm plunge bath, from which he goes into a drying-room, and beyond this is a dressing-room, where he gets a club shirt and pair of shorts to wear for the evening, till it is time to get into his own clothes to go home again.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BRITISH SOLDIERS SURPRISED THE FRENCH NATIVES BY THEIR EAGERNESS TO HAVE A WASH, EVEN ON ICY COLD MORNINGS.]

This daily bath is an excellent thing for keeping a fellow healthy and strong--and the most important part of it is the rubbing with the towel.

Well, it is often difficult for a Scout to get a bath. Sometimes in his home there are no means for doing it, and often out on the veldt or desert there is very little water, but if he has a towel, especially a damp one, he can always give himself a good rub down with it--he should scrub himself well all over! and that is what I should like every Scout to do every morning when he gets up. It will not only keep him clean, but will make him grow far more healthy and happy and strong, because it cleans the skin and wakes up the blood so that it rushes through his veins and brings him health.

So get yourself a towel, every Scout; and carry out your rubbing every day when you get up.

In the same way see that you clean your teeth regularly night and morning--not because it will help you to pa.s.s the time away, but because it will prevent your teeth from getting rotten, thus saving you from toothache.

SPITTING.

"Gentlemen _do_ not spit; men _must_ not spit" is a notice which may be seen in an American city; also there is a similar one which says: "If you _expect to rate_ as a gentleman, don't _expectorate_."

On the steamships to South America the English pa.s.sengers were often disgusted by the amount of spitting about the decks done by some of the foreigners on board.

One of the captains thought of a good idea; he ordered a sailor, carrying a mop, to follow each of these foreigners where-ever he went; whenever the foreigner spat, the sailor used the mop, and in a short time _all_ the foreigners learnt that if they behaved like other gentlemen and did not spit, they were spared having an attendant with a mop, so they soon gave up the dirty habit.

When I was in charge of a public building in Malta, which was guarded at night by Maltese watchmen, I soon found that I need not be always going round to see that they were alert, because their habit of constantly spitting showed me next morning whether they had been awake and where they had stood or walked during the night.

One day I found the pavement of one man's beat quite clean and dry, so I had him up and accused him of having been absent without leave. He did not know how I found it out, so confessed that he had been away to see a friend, thinking there was no harm in it, since the place was all locked up and secure.

Englishmen are fortunately not so dirty in their habits as to be always spitting, but, still; there is a little of it going on in our streets; and even a little is a bad thing.

It is not only a habit that is nasty to other people, but it is dangerous as well, for the following reason;

So many men are suffering from consumption or disease of the lungs even without knowing it. When they spit they throw out a number of tiny "germs," which, although too small to be seen, get into the air and are very easily breathed in again by other pa.s.sers-by; and these germs contain the seeds of the disease, which are thus sown in healthy people, and make them "consumptives" also.

Unhappily people are rather fond of spitting in railway carriages. A man doing this was fined ten shillings and two guineas costs not long since.

His excuse was that he had a bad cough.

Any Scout could have told him, apart from the dirty, disgusting part of the habit, how very dangerous to other pa.s.sengers it is for a person with a bad cough to indulge in this habit.

Little living seeds of disease are in this way let loose to get into other people's throats and lungs, and possibly to bring them illness and death.

THE WAR AGAINST CONSUMPTION.

Sixty thousand people die every year of consumption in Great Britain.

One death in every eight is from consumption.

Two hundred and fifty thousand people, or one in every two hundred, have the disease in them.

Consumption is caught through carelessness or ignorance, by breathing the germs, or in drinking them in milk.

The following are a few simple rules which, if followed, should help to prevent you from getting it:

1. Live much in the open air.

2. Sleep with the window open.

3. Breathe through the nose.

4. If you drink milk, be sure that it is pure.

5. Keep your blood healthy with exercise, good and plain food.