parents who do not realize that youth is robbed of its equipment for life if it is not taught that it has no right to anything in the world that it does not in some way earn.
At the very beginning of the work of the Woodcraft League the girl is started on what is called the "initiation trail", and wonderful things are learned along this pathway — the beauty of that most marvelous and almost unknown things to youth — silence, and after that, usefulness, making her own bed, her own lamp, her own fire sticks, a basket in which she may gather firewood or carry her clothes to the river's edge to wash. Then the sleeping out of doors without a roof, and, strangely enough, for once at least, fasting twenty-four hours. It is extraordinary how these things that seem so simple to write of enlarge the capacity for thought increase the imagination and extend the sympathies — three conditions which we do not take into consideration in the ordinary course of education either in our schools or our universities.
We seek thus first of all to refresh the spirit of youth, through a close association with Nature and a careful study of her ways, and then to develop the qualities that bring about a real comradeship. The more material lessons are left until a little later, until the mind and spirit have been so opened that these concrete lessons are not only more easily absorbed but more eagerly sought.
You enter the Big Lodge as a Wayseeker, then, having learned the rudiments of camp life and begun to understand the charm of the woods, you become a "Pathfinder". Before one can become a Pathfinder there are fifteen out of twenty-three tests which must be taken satisfactorily. If you know all of these twenty-three tests rather, if you have ever strriven to pass them, I am sure you will never hear again the word Pathfinder without wanting to lift your hat to the Woodcraft Girl who has that honor. Again each test of itself seems a simple thing and yet I wonder how many grown-up people could successfully pass fifteen of them. The very first thing is that you must be able to walk six miles in two hours and write a satisfactory account of what you have seen. You may have graduated from Harvard and Oxford without being able to do this. And I am sure the highest success that a university could shower upon you would not teach you the real importance of the fourth test — to tie a slip knot, a double knot, a running noose, a halter, a square timber hitch, bow line and hard loop; ..text pokračuje
