Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1914-07-09
Campo Of Boy Scouts.

In the Fittsfield Advertiser we read
of the outing of boy scouts of that
town, and their description of the
oampgreund, duties and outdoor life
at Moose Pond. If we had the gift OF
Elizabeth Akers to sing Backward,
turn backward, o, time in your fight"
we would fit 1t to the period of boy
scoutdom and, if granted the boon,
would wish that boy scouts had been
organized then. What real man with
the love of Nature in his heart does
not envy the boy scouts the things
that he missed when he was boy =?
To have been one of score of boys
to enjoy several days "roughing it"
at Moose Pond when we were boy,
would have been an event in life
cherished now and on to the end of the
last chapter.
OF boy scout camp an editorial
writer of the Boston Transcript says:
The fun, and other things just as
enjoyable and more profitable. If ever
instruction was sugar-coated 1t is
sugar-coated in such camps as these,
but ii is not less certain nor less solid
on that account. There is discipline
without pedagogue- exaction; there is
RESTRAINT without irksomeness, there is
responsibility which is not a burden,
and tasks without drudgery. There is
over everything the Boy Scouts do,
from play to hard work (and they do
bothl that one most priceless thing in
youth-glamor. 1t is all a game and
a game full of the zest Of things done
for. their owE sakes. The Blue Hills
camp is anything but a loaffng place.
Every minute of the day is planned
from waking at its beginning TO drop
ping off to sleep at the end of 1t, and
of those things which boys most need
and most wish to know, the things
which they use in their daily lives, it
is probable that they learn more in a
week of this keen-edged, voluntary in
structton than in month of perfume
tory schooling
The method and mana cement OF
this camp is worth noting quite by
itself 1t has effected booking up of
public and private agents in re-
markedly suggestive fashion. The Met
ropolitan Park Commission proffers
thirty-tsve. acres elbow-room for the
camp itself, and a good 1000 acres for
these youngsters to stretch legs in il
they wish. The Boston Public Library
sends books, and week. after next tbs
boys themselves start building log.
cabin to house them. The State and
the city send out their experts to lee.
ture on fire-fghting. forestry ornithol.
ogy, and SO on UP to list OF forty
men who will be visiting the camp
every other day.
The moral of this is almost too obvi-
GUS to need mention. Here 10 group
of lads ripening into citizenship, who
are learning, from public servants
themselves, the things we all should
know and which many of US do not. II
is the kind of training for public duties
which all OF us would like to have en-
joyed. Better still, the boys who are
enjoying it are sons of plain people
whose means do not permit expensive
vacations for their children in summer
boys camps, but who can afford tbs
almost nominal expense of such ar
outing as this within the ten-cent fare
limit. The number in the camp at any
one time is l5o-"the capacity house
as managers say. During the summer
this means a band of 700 boys passing
through this camp. Last year there
were thirty-five boys who remained
all summer; this year there will be
three times as many. The place il
sure to grow, and it should grow
There is no reason why the park sys-
TEN and the waste land round about
the city might not blossom with boys
camps carefully superintendent on the
model Of that at Blue Hills, and bring
ing up the number of boys so reached
by this wholesome life and helpful In
struetion from the hundreds to the
thousands.