Roy Blakeley: Lost, Strayed or StolenFitzhugh, Percy Keese
General
Roy Blakeley: Lost, Strayed or Stolen
Fitzhugh, Percy Keese
Adventure stories; Boy Scouts of America -- Juvenile fiction
There are twelve of those laws, and the one I like best is law number
eight, because it says a scout has to be cheerful and smile a lot. I
always smile except when I’m asleep, and I’m not asleep much, because a
scout is supposed to be wide awake. When I’m asleep I never disobey any
of those laws.
I’ll tell you some more about the scout laws, too, only this isn’t going
to be a law book, you can bet. A scout is always supposed to do a given
task. His dinner is a given task. He’s supposed to do a good turn every
day. Maybe you think those are hard, but they are easy. If a scout in my
patrol had some gumdrops and I ate half of them so he wouldn’t get sick,
that would be a good turn. See?
A scout is supposed to save life, too. Once I saved Wig Weigand’s life.
He nearly died laughing at Pee-wee Harris, and I got there just in time
to push the kid off the springboard into the water so he had to stop
talking. That’s one thing I’m crazy about. I don’t mean talking, I mean
swimming.
Especially a scout is supposed to be observant. That’s one thing about
the scouts my sister doesn’t like. She’s crazy about tennis, my sister
is; tennis and strawberries. She’s crazy about Harry Donnelle, too; he’s
a big fellow. That’s why she doesn’t like it about scouts being
observant—I should worry.
But anyway, you needn’t think that scouts are always smiling. Lots of
times I laugh, _he he_, but I’m not happy. That’s because we have a lot
of trouble on account of not being able to keep our meeting place in one
spot very long. Gee williger, Washington had a lot of headquarters and
we only have one headquarters, but we have our headquarters in as many
places as he did. Gee, there are a lot of people that have to move these
days, but they don’t have to move the houses they live in, that’s one
good thing. When you have to take your house with you, that’s no fun.
Housing problems are bad enough, and transportation problems are bad
enough. And besides, I hate problems anyway, especially in arithmetic.
But, gee whiz, when you get a housing problem and a transportation
problem all rolled into one-_good night!_
CHAPTER II—MORE THINGS (I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO CALL IT)
Now that chapter was about law and this one is about geography, kind of.
Maybe I’ll have one about civil government, too. I bet you’ll skip that
one, hey? Anyway, I’m glad we don’t have uncivil government in school,
because I guess that’s worse. There’s a civil engineer in our town and
he’s not so civil. A scout has to be civil, that’s another law.
I guess before I tell you any geography, I’ll tell you some history.
That’s my favorite study—history. I got nine points in that last term.
A couple of years ago, Mr. Temple, he’s rich, he owns a lot of
railroads—a couple of years ago he gave us an old railroad car to use
for a scout headquarters. That car used to stand on a side up at
Brewster’s Centre, and it was used for a station until the railroad
built a new station.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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