outs in all the world than his little troop of eight when they had
become familiar with their duties.
A new field and a broader vision of life was to open to these Labrador
lads, whose life was of necessity circumscribed. They had never been
given the opportunity to play as boys play in more favoured lands.
They had never known the joys of football or cricket or the hundred
other fine, health-giving games that are a part of the life of every
English or Canadian boy. They had never seen a circus or a moving
picture and they had never been in a schoolroom in their lives.
This opportunity to play and study as other boys play and study in
other lands was the thing, perhaps, they longed for above all else.
Doctor Joe had inspired them with ambition. They hungered to learn and
here was the Handbook with many things in it to study, and through
Doctor Joe and the book they were to learn the joy of play.
The new recruits to the troop, however, as well as the Angus boys, had
been close students of their native wilderness. Their eyes were sharp
and their ears were quick. They knew every tree and flower and plant
that grew about them. They knew the birds and their calls and songs.
They knew every animal, its cry and its habits of life. They knew the
fish of the sea and lake and stream. All this was a part of their
training for their future profession of hunters and fishermen.
As hunters they had not learned to look upon the wild things of the
woods as friends and associates. To them the animals were only beasts
whose valuable pelts could be traded at the Post for necessaries of
life or whose flesh was good to eat. Success in life depended upon
man's ability to outwit and slay birds or animals, and the lads held
for them none of the human sympathy that would have added so much to
their own enjoyment.
Now they were to have a new view of life. Doctor Joe was to open to
them a wider, happier vista. It was not in the least to breed in them
discontent with their circumscribed life, but rather to open to their
consciousness the opportunities that lay within their reach, and to
make their life richer and broader and vastly more worth while.
Doctor Joe explained to the five recruits the Tenderfoot Scout
requirements, much as he had explained them to David and Andy and
Jamie. Wilderness dwellers who must take in and fix in the mind at a
glance every unusual tree or stump or stone if they would find their
trail, have a peculiar an
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