Boy Scouts Handbook – First Edition

Wherever there have been heroes, there have been scouts, and to be a scout means to be prepared to do the right thing at the right moment, no matter what the consequences may be.

Living in the open in this way, and making friends of the trees, the streams, the mountains, and the stars, gives a scout a great deal of confidence and makes him love the natural life around him.

The aim of the Boy Scouts is to supplement the various existing educational agencies, and to promote the ability in boys to do things for themselves and others.

In fact, they left everything behind them, comfort and peace, in order to push forward into the wilderness beyond. And much of this they did because they felt it to be their duty.

Do you wish to have all-round, well-developed muscles, not those of a great athlete, but those of a sound body that will not fail you?

He did not want to know the trees as a botanist, but as a forester; nor the stars as an astronomer, but as a traveler.

he grew up with a kind of knowledge hunger in his heart that gnawed without ceasing.

As years went by he found that there were books about most of the things he wished to know, the stars, the birds, the quadrupeds, the fish, the insects, the plants, telling their names; their hidden power or curious ways, about the camper’s life the language of signs and even some of the secrets of the trail.