SECTION IV 
WHO ARE THE SCOUTS? 
In the early days of this great country of ours, before 
telephones and telegrams, railroads and automobiles made 
communication of all sorts so easy, and help of all kinds 
so quickly secured, men and women — yes, and boys and 
girls, too !— had to depend very much on themselves and 
be very handy and resourceful, if they expected to keep 
safe and well, and even alive. 
Our pioneer grandmothers might have been frightened 
by the sight of one of our big touring cars, for instance, 
or puzzled as to how to send a telegram, but they knew 
an immense number of practical things that have been 
entirely left out of our town-bred lives, and for pluck and 
resourcefulness in a tight place it is to be doubted if we 
could equal them today. 
“You press a button and zve do the rest” is the slogan 
of a famous camera firm, and really it seems as if this 
might almost be called the slogan of modern times: we 
have only to press a button nowadays, and someone will 
do the rest. 
But in those early pioneer days there was no button to 
press, as we all know, and nobody to “do the rest” : every- 
body had to know a little about everything and be able to 
do that little pretty quickly, as safety and even life might 
depend upon it. 
The men who stood for all this kind of thing in the 
highest degree were probably the old “Scouts,” of whom 
Natty Bumpo, in Cooper’s famous old Indian tales is the 
great example. They were explorers, hunters, campers, 
builders, fighters, settlers, and in an emergency, nurses 
and doctors combined. They could cook, they could sew, 
they could make and sail a canoe, they could support 
themselves indefinitely in the trackless woods, they knew 
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