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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Sure Pop and the Safety Scouts, by Roy
+Rutherford Bailey
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Sure Pop and the Safety Scouts
+
+
+Author: Roy Rutherford Bailey
+
+
+
+Release Date: June 28, 2009 [eBook #29260]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SURE POP AND THE SAFETY SCOUTS***
+
+
+E-text prepared by David Edwards, Emmy, and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from digital material
+generously made available by Internet Archive/American Libraries
+(http://www.archive.org/details/americana)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+ file which includes the original illustrations.
+ See 29260-h.htm or 29260-h.zip:
+ (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/29260/29260-h/29260-h.htm)
+ or
+ (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/29260/29260-h.zip)
+
+
+ Images of the original pages are available through
+ Internet Archive/American Libraries. See
+ http://www.archive.org/details/surepopsafetysco00bailrich
+
+
+
+
+
+Sure Pop and the Safety Scouts
+
+
+ _Being a Safety Scout means doing the right thing
+ at the right time._
+ --COLONEL SURE POP
+
+
+
+SURE POP AND THE SAFETY SCOUTS
+
+by
+
+ROY RUTHERFORD BAILEY
+
+Published Under the Auspices of the National Safety Council
+
+Illustrated
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Yonkers-on-Hudson, New York
+World Book Company
+1916
+
+_Get the Safety Habit_
+
+Copyright, 1915, by World Book Company.
+Copyright, 1915, in Great Britain.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+ PAGE
+
+ Introduction 1
+
+ Adventure Number
+ One: Bob Thirsts for Adventure and Gets It 3
+ Two: The Royal Signet Ring 9
+ Three: The Woman and the Wizard 13
+ Four: The Persistent Pigmy 21
+ Five: The Magic Button's Warning 27
+ Six: The Live Wire 32
+ Seven: Betty Evens the Score 38
+ Eight: Little Schneider's Fire Alarm 43
+ Nine: "Chance Carter's Way" 49
+ Ten: The Twins Meet Bruce 58
+ Eleven: "Just for Fun" 62
+ Twelve: Getting Down to Business 69
+ Thirteen: Dalton Patrol 74
+ Fourteen: Six Timely Tips 82
+ Fifteen: Twin Uniforms 89
+ Sixteen: Where Safety Was a Stranger 95
+ Seventeen: Giving the Other Fellow a Square Deal 102
+ Eighteen: An Adventure in Safety 110
+ Nineteen: One Day's Boost for Safety 117
+
+
+
+
+THE SAFETY SCOUT'S PLATFORM
+
+
+ _I will bear in mind the value of human life and a sound body._
+ _I will take no risks to endanger my body or any of its parts._
+ _I will do nothing to endanger the life or limb of any other person._
+ _I will be vigilant not only for my own safety, but for that of others,
+ in the street or indoors, on foot or in conveyances, anywhere and
+ at all times._
+ _I will try to do at least one Good Turn for Safety every day._
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+SAFETY FIRST--THE PREVENTION OF ACCIDENTS
+
+
+AMERICANS are realizing the need for preventing accidents. The general
+conservation and efficiency movements and the Workmen's Compensation
+Laws first directed the attention of employers to the needless waste of
+human life. The discovery that by the safeguarding of machinery and the
+education of workmen ninety per cent of the industrial accidents could
+be prevented, has proved the value of educational methods in Public
+Safety work, and the Safety activities of public officials, trade
+organizations, public schools, churches, and other agencies have been
+directed toward the prevention of accidents on the street, in public
+places, and in homes. Every phase of human life is affected by
+accidents, and their elimination means saving human life and the
+avoidance of destitution and misery.
+
+The National Safety Council realizes the importance of educating school
+children in the principles of Safety; for they will be the future
+industrial workers and the representatives of public opinion; their
+interest must be aroused to practice and preach "Safety First"
+everywhere. Children can be taught to become alert to their own safety,
+and can influence their parents to a deeper realization of their
+responsibilities.
+
+The National Safety Council has directed the preparation of this book
+and hopes that through its pages children will be brought to realize the
+manliness of caution, the importance of courtesy and consideration;
+that, in short, the Safety way is simply the right way of doing things;
+and that the efficiency, comfort, and happiness of many individuals will
+be increased by the practicing day in and day out of "Safety First."
+
+ R. W. CAMPBELL
+ _President National Safety Council_
+
+ _You have no right to take a chance; some one else
+ may have to take the consequences._
+ --COLONEL SURE POP
+
+
+
+
+
+
+SURE POP AND THE SAFETY SCOUTS
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+ADVENTURE NUMBER ONE
+
+BOB THIRSTS FOR ADVENTURE AND GETS IT
+
+
+"Bully for Uncle Jack!" cried Bob, a stalwart lad just on the edge of
+twelve, excitedly waving a letter with a South American postmark. "What
+wouldn't I give to be with him on his exploring trips! Here, Betty,
+listen to this part about their fight with the natives!"
+
+"Oh, don't, please!" said his twin, clapping both hands over her ears,
+but listening just the same. "I'm always so afraid Uncle Jack will get
+killed."
+
+"Uncle Jack get killed? Hardly! Just listen to what he says:
+
+"'This last scrimmage was one of the liveliest I've ever been up
+against. The warlike up-river tribes, it seems, mistook our native
+scouts for a war party and lay in ambush for us. Might have been worse,
+though. Our losses were two men killed and seven wounded--but of course
+that's only a fraction of what you wound and kill every day back there
+in the States.'"
+
+"Why, what does he mean by that?" wondered Betty. "There's no war going
+on in this country, is there?"
+
+"Not that I know of." Even Brother Bob looked puzzled for a moment. "No
+Indians left to fight! But say, Betty, Uncle Jack's life is just fairly
+dripping with adventure! Think of it--every day chock-full of thrills
+and narrow escapes--and adventures every time he turns around! Well, it
+won't be many years now before I can be a scout and explorer myself."
+
+A yell from their playmates outside brought the twins to the street in a
+hurry. Bob's legs were longer, but Betty, quick as a cat, got there
+first.
+
+"You're it, Bob!" "Bob's last, so he's it!" Like a band of savages the
+screeching boys and girls scuttled across the car tracks and around the
+corners, while Bob counted up to five hundred "by fives."
+
+"Four hundr' nine' five, FIVE HUNDRED!" yelled Bob, and started to dash
+across the tracks, for he had caught a glimpse of Jimmy West's new red
+boots disappearing under his grandmother's porch across the street. The
+sound of the wind in his ears as he ran drowned out the roar of the
+coming street car, and of course he had eyes only for those tell-tale
+red boots.
+
+Another jump and Bob would have been under the wheels--but a strong
+little hand on his shoulder stopped him. The street car roared by with a
+startled clang of its gong, for the motorman had seen Bob too late to
+throw off the power.
+
+Bob gasped in relief--then whirled around to see what had stopped him.
+And what do you think he saw, right there beside him in the street? Was
+it a scout--or a pygmy--or what?
+
+He was old and snowy haired, but as fresh as a daisy and as spry as a
+cricket. His cheeks were as ruddy as Spitzenberg apples and his only
+wrinkles were the laughter wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. And such
+eyes! They were big and clear, and so bright that Bob could only look at
+them a moment and then turn away. It was like trying to stare at the
+sun.
+
+He was tiny, but straight as a ramrod in his natty khaki uniform. And he
+was holding up his right hand just like the big policeman on the corner
+downtown. As he dropped it to shake hands with Bob, there was a sudden
+flash of green.
+
+"Why, hello there!" Bob could scarcely believe his eyes. "Where on
+earth did _you_ come from? And who--who _are_ you, anyway?"
+
+"My name is Sure Pop!" answered the scout in a clear voice, like the
+note of a bugle. "I've dropped in on the United States on my second tour
+of scouting duty, and I hear you are thirsting for adventure. Well,
+you've had _one_, at any rate; if I hadn't grabbed you just in the nick
+of time--" He shuddered and hustled Bob back to the sidewalk.
+
+"Thanks, old scout!" stammered Bob. "I didn't know there was a car
+coming, and you see I was in such a hurry--"
+
+"I see!" said Sure Pop, dryly. "_I_ see, Bob, but _you_ didn't. How do
+you suppose a wee chap like me ever gets across the busy streets
+downtown?"
+
+"Give it up!" said Bob, "unless you can fly!" And he gave a sly glance
+at the scout's square little shoulders, half expecting to see wings.
+
+Sure Pop grinned. "No more than you," he chuckled. "So I keep my eyes
+and ears open. Folks who have no wings must use their wits."
+
+Bob felt a bit uncomfortable to have his mind read so easily, and
+promptly changed the subject. "What a funny name you have--'Sure Pop'!"
+
+"Well, 'tis a funny one, sure pop! That name was wished on me by a crowd
+of Borderland folk, and then His Majesty gave it to me for keeps."
+
+"His Majesty--do you mean your King?"
+
+"Right--the King of the Borderland." The two had been walking toward the
+Dalton house as they talked. Now Sure Pop followed Bob up the steps and
+curled up in the big porch chair to tell him all about it.
+
+"Once upon a time, some years ago, when I was a younger man than I am
+now," began Sure Pop, "I was standing on a corner in the largest city in
+the Borderland. It was noontime, and crowds of horsemen and chariots
+were dashing up and down the street.
+
+"Suddenly I saw a youngster start over to my side of the street without
+looking either way. There was a chariot almost upon him when I held up
+my hand, as I did to you now, and yelled, 'Look sharp!' He stopped
+short--and those thundering wheels missed him by about an inch.
+
+"He picked his way across the street, then, and held out his hand. 'That
+was a close shave,' he said. 'You've saved my life, Mr.--Mr.--' For of
+course he didn't know _my_ name from Captain Kidd's.
+
+"'That's all right!' I said. 'But you should always look before you
+cross.'
+
+"'Do _you_?' he asked, with a sudden sharp glance.
+
+"'Sure pop!' I told him. 'Safety First!'
+
+"By this time quite a crowd of Borderland folk had gathered around us,
+and they all laughed and cheered and called me 'Sure Pop.' And one
+bold-eyed rascal threw up his pointed cap and shouted, 'Bully for Sure
+Pop!' and ran off to tell the King. At that all the rest of the crowd
+clapped their hands, for though they laughed at the name they knew I had
+the right idea."
+
+"Ha!" said Bob. "So that's how you came by that comical name of yours?"
+
+"Sure pop!" answered the Safety Scout with a twinkle.
+
+ _Folks who have no wings must use their wits._
+ --SURE POP
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+ADVENTURE NUMBER TWO
+
+THE ROYAL SIGNET RING
+
+
+Sure Pop paused in his story as Betty came dashing around the house.
+Like a shot the stranger jumped to his feet, and again Bob caught that
+sudden flash of green as he raised his hand in salute.
+
+"Hello, Betty, glad to see you!"
+
+"Why, goodness me!" exclaimed Betty. "You seem to know me, but I don't
+know who you are--unless you are one of those Boy Scouts Bob is so crazy
+to join?"
+
+"Not exactly _Boy_ Scouts," chuckled Sure Pop with a wink at Bob,
+"unless you count us boys till we're ninety-nine years old! Girls are
+scouts, too, in _my_ regiment."
+
+"Now, Betty," warned Bob, "sit down here and don't you dare interrupt,
+for Sure Pop's right in the middle of a story--and I think he's come to
+stay a while, haven't you, Sure Pop?"
+
+"Sure pop! I'll stay as long as the King will let me," laughed the merry
+little scout.
+
+"Well, after I got away from the crowd," he went on, "my eyes must
+suddenly have been opened to the thousand-and-one things that might
+happen even in Borderland to folks who didn't look sharp on the street,
+for on my way home I saved several others from getting hurt.
+
+"The first was a careless little cabin boy, who went along whistling
+with his hands in his pockets. He slipped and fell plump in front of a
+chariot, and of course he couldn't jerk his hands out of his pockets in
+time to save himself. I grabbed him up in the very nick of time, or he'd
+have been smashed flatter than a pancake.
+
+"And only a block farther on, I met a carpenter hurrying through the
+crowd with a ladder on his shoulder. Some one shouted to him, and he
+whirled around with never a thought of his ladder. The end of it would
+have hit a fat old banker squarely between the eyes if I hadn't been
+watching for that very thing and caught it as it swung. I went home and
+thought no more about all this, till that night, at midnight, I was
+summoned before the King."
+
+"The King!" cried Betty. "My, weren't you scared?"
+
+"I was, sure pop! When I marched into the throne room it was crowded
+with richly dressed people. The King and Queen sat on their thrones,
+and as I went toward them I had to pass between two long lines of
+trumpeters.
+
+"Suddenly up went the silver trumpets, and the trumpeters blew a mighty
+blast. Let me tell you, it was enough to send the shivers down your
+spine, that trumpet call was! It seemed as if I never had climbed a
+longer flight of steps. But at last I found myself bowing before the
+King and Queen. The King, who wore a brand new uniform, just like this
+one I have on, beckoned a herald to his side.
+
+"'Now hark to his words,' he said to me, 'and say if he speaks the
+truth.' And then the herald read aloud from a long white scroll, with
+scarlet seals on it, the story of how I had saved the young chap from
+the chariot that noon, and all about the cabin boy and the fat old
+banker I'd helped on my way home!
+
+"'Does the herald speak truly?' asked the Borderland King. And all the
+rest strained their ears for my answer.
+
+"'Sure pop, Your Majesty!' I replied before I knew what I was saying. At
+that he pulled from his finger a new signet ring, inked it with some
+magic ink, and motioned for me to hold out my right hand. How do I know
+it was magic ink? Why, it must have been, for the print it made has
+never faded. Look!"
+
+Bob and Betty looked at the little scout's right hand, which he held up
+again like the crossing policeman downtown. And this is what they saw:
+
+[Illustration: UNIVERSAL SAFETY]
+
+"'Hold it up,' commanded the King, 'where all can see!' And then the
+trumpets sounded again.
+
+"'Long live Colonel Sure Pop, the Safety Scout!' cried the herald. The
+court wizard stepped forward, waved his hand and mumbled a few magic
+words over me, and--what do you think!--I found myself dressed in a
+brand new scouting uniform, the only one just like the King's!"
+
+ _Long live the Safety Scouts!_
+ --SURE POP
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+
+ADVENTURE NUMBER THREE
+
+THE WOMAN AND THE WIZARD
+
+
+Sure Pop, the Safety Scout, drew a long breath and watched the
+automobiles whirling recklessly down the busy street. "But say, haven't
+you twins had enough stories for one day?"
+
+"Not much we haven't! What did the King do next?"
+
+No doubt about the twins' being thirsty for adventure! Sure Pop smiled.
+
+"Well, a single wave of the King's hand dismissed his people. Looking
+very sorrowful, he opened the great book in which he keeps the record of
+everything that happens over here in the New World.
+
+"I looked where he pointed, and trembled. For this was what I read:
+
+ "'UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+ 'Fathers and mothers and boys and girls killed by
+ accidents last year....
+ 'Injured, blinded, crippled, and maimed...'
+
+"He ran his finger across the page to the totals, and I saw that the
+first total ran clear up into the thousands--and the second one into the
+millions!
+
+"'Colonel Sure Pop,' said the King, 'if only the thought you put into
+the mind of that lad you saved this noon, might be put into the mind of
+all America!'
+
+"'Your Majesty means--Safety First?' I asked.
+
+"The King nodded. 'All the lives lost in all our battles,' he said
+grimly, 'are but a drop in the sea as compared with the slaughter of a
+single year in a single land!'
+
+"'Oh, Your Majesty, let me go and teach them Safety First--now, before
+another life is thrown away!'
+
+"'No, Colonel. Not yet. The time is not yet ripe. But--perhaps we can
+make a beginning. Come to me again tomorrow night, at midnight, and we
+shall see.'
+
+"The next night I went to the throne room and found the King studying a
+big map. He had a red pencil and a blue one in his hand, and he pointed
+to a lot of red rings he had drawn on the map.
+
+"'Those,' he told me, 'are America's great mills. In them and the other
+factories, thousands upon thousands of workmen are killed by accident
+every year--by accident, Colonel, not in battle.
+
+"'And that is not all,' the King went on. 'These blue lines mark the
+trails of the great iron horses--the railroads. Last year these iron
+horses trampled out thousands of lives in America alone. And all because
+the Americans haven't learned to _think_ Safety!'
+
+"That was too much for me. I pleaded with him to let me come straight to
+America and help end that awful suffering. But the King shook his head.
+
+"'The more haste, the less speed, Colonel. Before you can help America,
+you must help yourself; and the quickest way to do that is first to
+teach Safety to our own people. Let me see you win your spurs here in
+the Borderland, and then--to America you go!'
+
+"'Teach Safety to our own people?' I repeated, a bit puzzled. 'How ought
+I to go about it, Sire?'
+
+"'Go through all the Borderland,' said the King, 'and muster an army of
+Safety Scouts. Train them to know signs that spell DANGER, as an Indian
+scout reads the signs of the trail. Teach them to report every danger
+signal they see--and they will teach their neighbors, and so the
+knowledge will spread. But above all, be sure your Safety Scouts are
+well chosen.'
+
+"'But how?' I asked. 'Shall I pick out wise people?'
+
+"'Colonel of the Scouts,' said the King, shrewdly, 'the wisest are not
+always the safest. Have you never thought why it is "bad luck to go
+under a ladder"?'
+
+"'Never,' I owned up. 'I've always thought of it as just a proverb.'
+
+"'True. But proverbs without reason would be like trees without roots.
+Stop and think: sometimes a ladder breaks or slips, which is bad for the
+climber--and bad for any one who happens to be under that ladder just
+then. And sometimes a painter's heavy paintpot falls--and woe to him who
+walks under the ladder then, be he the wisest man in the kingdom. Now
+go, and one moon from tonight bring me a full regiment of Safety
+Scouts.'
+
+"So out through the Borderland I went, saying over and over to myself,
+'It is bad luck to go under a ladder,' and waiting for the King's
+meaning to be made plain.
+
+"First I went to the home of a great wizard, the wisest man in the
+Borderland. As I neared the house, the door opened and the wizard came
+out, a heavy book of wisdom under his arm.
+
+"He had a long black pipe in his mouth. Pulling out a match, he lighted
+his pipe, threw the burning match over his shoulder, and hurried on
+toward the city.
+
+"I started to run after him, when a flicker of light caught my eye.
+There in the straw that littered the roots of the ivy vines by the
+steps, a little tongue of flame was lapping up the tangle of leaves!"
+
+Bob jumped to his feet as if he had heard the clang of a fire bell.
+"Good enough for him, the old fossil! Did it burn his house down?"
+
+"Came mighty near it," said Sure Pop, looking at the scars on his hands.
+"He had a sick wife in there all alone, and if I hadn't happened along
+just then--
+
+"Well, anyway," he went on cheerfully, "I got the fire out at last. And
+the King's meaning was made plain--it is one thing to have wisdom and
+another thing to use it. So I didn't ask the wizard to join the Safety
+Scouts, after all."
+
+"I should say NOT!" cried Bob and Betty with one voice. "But where _did_
+you find your Scouts?" added Bob.
+
+"Well, the next idea I had was to ask mothers, for mothers give up much
+of their time, anyhow, to keeping children out of harm's way. I found
+one whose house looked so trim and neat, and her children so clean and
+happy, that I had almost made up my mind to invite her to join--when my
+eye fell on a shining butcher knife hanging beside the kitchen table,
+where even the baby could reach it without half trying.
+
+"And that wasn't all I saw. There was a saucer of fly poison on the
+window sill! Then I saw the mother starting to carry out a pail of water
+to scrub the steps, when the brass knocker on the door gave a thump, and
+she left that hot water right there in the middle of the floor while she
+talked to a peddler!
+
+"Just then the baby came toddling across the room. He got safely past
+the scalding water and the fly poison, but the next moment I saw him
+climb up on a chair, open the medicine chest, and grab a bottle from the
+bottom shelf--the bottom shelf, Betty, of _all_ shelves in the house!
+Out came the cork, and up went the bottle to his lips, just as I saw to
+my horror a skull and crossbones on its label. Like a flash I--"
+
+"What's a skull and crossbones, Sure Pop?" broke in Betty.
+
+"Poison sign!" explained Bob, shortly. "Don't interrupt! Go on, Sure
+Pop!"
+
+"Like a flash," said Sure Pop, "I bounded to the baby's side and
+snatched the bottle away. I tell you, I did some earnest thinking as I
+left that house. I realized that it would never do to ask that mother to
+join our army of Safety Scouts, for until she herself had formed the
+Safety habit, she could hardly be expected to teach Safety to others.
+The adventure of the baby and the poison bottle had opened my eyes to
+the real meaning of the King's words about finding Scouts who could read
+the little signs that spell DANGER.
+
+"By the way, I told the poison bottle story to a great doctor the other
+day, and now he's doing his best to get a law passed requiring that all
+poison bottles be of some special shape, different from any other
+bottles. That will make them much safer, even in the dark."
+
+"But how can they be made different in shape?" asked Betty. "What shape,
+Sure Pop?"
+
+"Three-cornered, probably. That certainly would be a life-saving law, if
+he could only get it passed. Just think! There were several thousand
+deaths in the United States last year from that one cause alone--just
+from mistaking bottles of poison for other medicine."
+
+"But what I can't see," said Bob, "is how anybody _could_ mistake a
+poison bottle. They all have skulls and crossbones on them, haven't
+they?"
+
+"Stop and think a moment," said the Safety Scout. "Suppose baby has
+croup in the night, and mother is roused out of a sound sleep and rushes
+to the medicine chest; she's only half awake--the light is dim--poor
+baby is gasping and choking--not a moment to lose. She isn't likely to
+stop and read labels very carefully, is she? But if she felt her hand
+close over a _three-cornered_ bottle, it would wake her up in a hurry.
+Even in the darkness and in the excitement--if she had been trained to
+think of a three-cornered bottle as meaning DANGER, perhaps death--it
+would stay her hand as surely as a red light stops an engine."
+
+"I suppose," said Betty, "that when folks are badly hurt, or awfully,
+awfully sick, other folks lose their heads and don't know what they
+really _are_ doing."
+
+"Betty, you've hit the nail right on the head. Now that's why we must
+fix things so safety won't depend on level heads or time to think. The
+danger signal must pop right into our heads from force of habit. The
+sooner American boys and girls--yes, and the grown-ups, too--get the
+Safety habit, the sooner 'Safety First' will change from phrase into
+fact.
+
+"The first day I ever spent in America opened my eyes to the price your
+country is paying for the word 'guess.' The more I studied the
+situation, the oftener I noticed folks saying 'I guess' where they
+should have said '_I know_.' In nearly all of America's accidents,
+guesswork is the real cause.
+
+"The moment I realized that, I said to myself, 'It's high time America
+dropped guesswork out of its daily life.' My work was cut out for me: I
+began right then and there to study out ways of getting folks to stop
+guessing, once for all, _and be sure_--sure pop!"
+
+ _Stop guessing, once for all, and be sure._
+ --SURE POP
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+ADVENTURE NUMBER FOUR
+
+THE PERSISTENT PIGMY
+
+
+"Say, Sure Pop!" burst out Bob, as the Safety Scout paused in his story.
+"A whole regiment--did you realize that was a lot of Scouts to get
+together in one month?"
+
+"Did I?" echoed Sure Pop with a chuckle. "_Did_ I? Well, if I didn't
+when I set out on my search, I did before the first day was over. I had
+lost out on the wisest man in the Borderland--_he_ wouldn't do, for all
+his wisdom. He only served to remind me of what the King had said, that
+the wisest are not always the safest."
+
+"Sure--sure pop!" Bob broke in again. "But how did you ever get a whole
+regiment together in one month? You simply couldn't disappoint the King,
+you know."
+
+"You're right, Bob, I simply couldn't. So as fast as I did find one that
+would do for the army, I set him to work finding others--passing the
+good work along. I soon saw I could never make good with the King by
+trying to do it all myself, and I do believe the King knew all along
+that there was only one way a really big work could be done--by getting
+_everybody_ stirred up and enthusiastic. So I turned each new Scout
+loose to hunt for more.
+
+"You'd laugh to know who was the first Scout enrolled. As I slipped out
+of the poison-bottle house, I saw a funny little pigmy hurry out of a
+cottage across the lane and go z-z-zam! down the front steps. We'd had a
+nip of frost the night before, and the slippery steps took him by
+surprise. For a moment he stood rubbing his head, with his merry little
+face puckered up into a comical sort of bowknot. Then he picked his way
+slowly up the steps into the house.
+
+"A minute or two and out he came again with a bag of salt and sprinkled
+the steps with it. Though he was in just as big a hurry as our friend
+the wizard, the Safety First idea had got him, and he plainly had made
+up his mind to begin right then and there.
+
+"'Well, I declare!' I said to myself. 'I've a notion to muster him into
+the scouting service--but what would the King say to my enrolling a
+pigmy?' Just as I was wondering about it, down he went again, flat on
+his little back!
+
+"This time it was on the sidewalk in front of his house. Some careless
+youngster had thrown a banana skin on the walk. Poor little pigmy, what
+a bump he did get that time! But again he picked himself up, and this
+time he didn't wait a moment--just poked the banana skin off into the
+gutter where it could do no more harm.
+
+"Such persistence was too much for me! I told him the King wanted him
+for the royal army of Safety Scouts, and that he was to have the honor
+of being the first one enrolled. His eyes fairly popped out of his head
+as he listened, and before you could say 'Jack Robinson,' he had
+scampered off to help me raise an army--with one of these buttons in the
+lapel of his leather jerkin."
+
+[Illustration: Universal Safety]
+
+Sure Pop pulled a sparkling button out of his pocket and laid it before
+the twins.
+
+"There, that's the Safety Scouts' badge of honor, and no Scout can wear
+one till he earns the right. The King himself designed it."
+
+"My! I wish--!" The twins remembered their manners and stopped short,
+but Sure Pop understood. He threw back that wise little head and how he
+did laugh!
+
+"You wish--eh? That's what they all say, the minute they lay eyes on
+that button! You see, that's a magic button, so it's no wonder everybody
+wants one. Friends, that button can _talk_!"
+
+Bob stared at the button as if he couldn't believe his ears. Betty,
+taking Sure Pop at his word, grabbed the button and laid it to her ear.
+She gave a squeal of delight.
+
+"It does! It does talk--doesn't it?" she cried.
+
+"Sure pop it does!" laughed the Safety Scout. "That's all it can say,
+just four words at a time--but those four are enough to save thousands
+of lives every year."
+
+"What four words?" yelled Bob, clapping the magic button to his ear. How
+his jaw dropped when he heard--or seemed to hear--the magic button's
+words, four words he will never, never forget, even if he lives to be a
+hundred years old!
+
+"_Safety First_," whispered the magic button in his ear. "_Get Busy!_"
+
+Bob sprang to his feet, so startled that he nearly dropped the button.
+
+"Get busy?" he echoed. "Well, let's!"
+
+"And let's be quick about it," chimed in Betty. "I want to earn one of
+those magic buttons myself."
+
+"Here too!" Bob whirled around to Sure Pop. "But we'll have to get the
+soil ready first, won't we, just as the King told you? So the seed won't
+be wasted, you know."
+
+"That's the first move, Bob. Waste is something no Scout can bear to
+see. Waste of life, waste of health, waste of time, waste of food--even
+waste of money seems a crime to a Safety Scout."
+
+Betty was thinking hard. "Then before we can plant the Safety First idea
+in other people's minds, shan't we have to start it growing in our own,
+Sure Pop?"
+
+"Sure pop, we shall! And now listen, friends. When I first came to
+America, after years of Safety training among my own people, I took up
+the task of planting the Safety First idea among the great American
+mills and factories. Some day I'll tell you about those years of Safety
+work among the mill hands, but just now what I want to explain is this:
+when I had got the work well established among the mills, I thought at
+first that my work in America was finished; but the more I thought it
+over, the plainer it became that my most important work still lay before
+me."
+
+"Your most important work," echoed Betty. "What do you mean, Sure
+Pop--teaching Safety to the President of the United States?"
+
+"No, Betty. A far more important work than that--teaching Safety to
+children. I saw that by making Safety Scouts out of the boys and girls,
+I should be solving the whole problem of the years to come--for workmen,
+Presidents, and all. So I drew a long breath and started in again, this
+time in America's homes.
+
+"Now how do you suppose I came to choose your home to begin on? Just as
+I was wondering which house to tackle first, I overheard Bob wishing he
+had Uncle Jack's life of adventure--though the United States has more
+real adventure to the square mile than all South America put together!"
+
+"You don't mean it? Why, this is a civilized country!"
+
+"You Americans think so, Bob. And you're trying to bring about
+world-wide peace, because you feel that war is out of place in civilized
+life. But what about the thousands you kill and the millions you wound
+every year? More than you killed and wounded, remember, in the whole
+Civil War. What about that? Does that sound so very civilized?
+
+"You want adventure. Good! You shall have it--early and often. And you
+won't have to go to any other country to find it, either."
+
+"Well," said Bob, "here's hoping. What comes first?"
+
+"First, we must get our eyes and ears open. That's the first thing for
+any Scout to learn, and he isn't good for much until he gets the habit
+of noticing things. Scout-craft means reading signs in everything you
+come across and acting on little silent hints that most folks wouldn't
+notice.
+
+"Now, to begin with, here are three practical rules for you to bear in
+mind--three things we found out in our first year of Borderland Safety
+Scouting: First, a true Scout is always on the alert. Second, a Scout
+always keeps cool. Third, a Scout does one thing at a time. Do you
+suppose you can remember these three things?"
+
+"That's easy," said Betty.
+
+"Easy as anything," said Bob. "Keep wide awake, keep cool, and keep your
+mind on one thing at a time. Three 'keeps'--anybody can remember them!"
+
+"Think so?" Sure Pop's voice sounded surprisingly far away. "All right,
+we'll see!" And before the twins' very eyes he faded away into thin air!
+
+ _A true Scout is always on the alert._--SURE POP
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+ADVENTURE NUMBER FIVE
+
+THE MAGIC BUTTON'S WARNING
+
+
+"He's gone!" Bob and Betty stared at each other. For a moment the whole
+thing seemed like a dream, and they hated to think of waking up.
+
+"But it _was_ real!" Bob turned the magic button over and over in his
+hand, glad to have something left to prove the reality of their new
+friend, something they could still see and touch.
+
+"We can't wear that button, though," Betty reminded him. "We've got to
+earn it first. What shall we do with it?"
+
+Bob stuck it into his deepest pocket. "I'll hang on to it till Sure Pop
+comes back--if he does come back. Oh, hello, Joe!"
+
+Joe Schmidt, a wiry boy of Bob's own age, but fully half a head shorter,
+turned around and gazed up at the Daltons' porch.
+
+"Why, hello, Bob! What are you doing?"
+
+"Nothing." Bob ran down the steps and began talking with Joe. In fact,
+the two lads were so busy talking that they did not see George Gibson
+till he purposely bumped into Joe's back with a sudden "Hey, there! Get
+off the walk!"
+
+Joe bristled like a ruffled sparrow. "Let's see you throw me off!" When
+George good-naturedly took him at his word, Joe clinched with him and
+managed to get a half-Nelson hold on him. Joe always went at things in
+dead earnest, anyway. Bob and Betty, laughing and shouting, hopped
+gleefully around the swaying wrestlers, Bob yelling encouragement to
+George, and Betty yelling just as hard for Joe.
+
+Suddenly--was it just Bob's imagination?--something seemed to give a
+wiggle in his pocket--then a warning flop. It must be that magic button!
+
+Bob jumped, gave a snort of surprise, and jammed his hand into his
+pocket. What had got into the button anyway?
+
+Then an idea flashed across his mind--perhaps the Safety button was
+trying to warn him. To be sure, if the wrestlers went down hard on the
+cement sidewalk, it might mean a broken skull! In his hurry to get them
+off the walk and over on the grass, Bob lost his head. He made the
+mistake of trying to do it by force; he caught hold of George's elbow,
+and got a sharp dig in the pit of his stomach for his pains.
+
+"Hey, fellows--danger!" he yelled, when he could catch his breath. "Get
+over on the grass--look out!"
+
+His warnings came too late. George, much the bigger of the two, got a
+hip-lock on Joe, and, forgetting everything else in his struggle to "lay
+him out," gave a sudden heave that sent Joe sprawling on his back. His
+head struck the sidewalk with a thud.
+
+That was all. Joe lay like a lump of lead.
+
+"He's _dead_!" screamed Betty wildly. She threw herself at the gasping
+George. "You--you've _killed_ him!"
+
+George, puffing and blowing from his struggle, held her at arm's length.
+A big policeman suddenly came around the corner. "Here, what's all
+this?" he asked sternly, bending over the fallen wrestler.
+
+"He struck on the back of his head," spoke up Bob. "They were
+wrestling--just in fun, you know--and Joe struck his head on the
+sidewalk. Is--is he dead?"
+
+"Small thanks to you young rascals if he isn't," growled the officer.
+"Crazy Indians, wrestling on a cement walk! Where does he live?"
+
+He lifted the limp body in his arms and hurried to the Widow Schmidt's
+modest little cottage with the green blinds and the neatly scrubbed
+doorstep. George and Bob, feeling very sick, trailed sadly along after
+him; they hated to think of the look that would come into the Widow
+Schmidt's motherly face. Joe was all she had in the world.
+
+Betty, womanlike, was first to think of the doctor. Almost before the
+policeman had reached Joe's side, she was running to the corner drug
+store as fast as her feet would carry her. The druggist would know where
+to reach a doctor with the least delay--she could telephone.
+
+It seemed ages before the fluttering lids opened and Joe's black eyes
+looked out on the world again. "No bones broken," said the doctor at
+last. "Half an inch farther to the right or left, though--"
+
+He stopped, but the twins understood. Silently they gripped Joe's hand
+as it lay helpless on the bed, nodded to George, and the three tip-toed
+out of the hushed little room.
+
+That night, before Bob and Betty went to bed, Sure Pop came back. He
+found the twins sitting with their heads together, studying Bob's
+_Handbook of Scout-Craft_ as if their lives depended on learning it by
+heart in one evening. Bob still lacked a few months of being old enough
+to join the Boy Scouts; he had long looked forward to his coming
+birthday, but it had never meant so much to him as now.
+
+Sure Pop nodded and smiled as he saw the familiar handbook. "Good work!"
+he said. "All true Scouts are brothers, you know. Well, how about the
+'three keeps' of the Scout Law? Did you find them as easy as you
+thought?"
+
+Bob and Betty grew very red. They did not know what to say.
+
+The Safety Scout saved them the trouble. "Joe's better tonight," he told
+them, comfortingly. "I've just come from there, and the doctor says
+he'll be up again in a day or so. What shall we do tomorrow,
+friends--begin hunting for adventure and planting Safety First ideas?"
+
+Bob looked at Betty and swallowed hard at a lump in his throat. Somehow
+this wise little Sure Pop knew everything that happened!
+
+"I think," said Bob, frankly, "we really planted one today!"
+
+ _All true Scouts are brothers._
+ --SURE POP
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+ADVENTURE NUMBER SIX
+
+THE LIVE WIRE
+
+
+Sure Pop saw, the moment he laid eyes on Bob and Betty next morning,
+that they had made up their minds to earn a magic button apiece that
+day.
+
+"Where shall we go for today's adventure?" was the first question.
+
+The Safety Scout laughed. "We probably shan't have to go far. Once a
+Scout's eyes are really open, so that danger signs other folks wouldn't
+notice begin to mean something to him, why, adventure walks right up to
+him. It walked right up to you two yesterday, but you didn't read the
+signs till too late. Being a Scout, remember, means doing the right
+thing at the right moment. Now let's start out and walk a few blocks,
+and see what danger signals we come across that other folks are
+overlooking."
+
+Just as they opened the gate, Mrs. Dalton came to the door. "Bob! Come
+here a moment, please. I want you to take a note over to Mrs. Hoffman's
+for me. Their telephone is out of order."
+
+She lowered her voice as she handed him the letter, and added, "Who is
+that out there with Betty?"
+
+"Oh, that's one of the Scouts. We're going out for a little practice
+scouting."
+
+Mrs. Dalton knew how eagerly Bob had been awaiting the day when he could
+become a Boy Scout. She trusted the Scouts and was glad to have Bob and
+Betty spend their vacation time in scouting. She little guessed that the
+three friends were to start an order of Safety Scouts which even fathers
+and mothers would join.
+
+Bob hurried back to Betty and Sure Pop. "Can you wait while I run over
+to Mrs. Hoffman's with this? All right, I'll be back in no time!"
+
+Hurrying though he was, he looked both ways before he crossed the car
+tracks, for already the habit of "thinking Safety" was growing on him.
+He reached Mrs. Hoffman's in record time, delivered the note, and raced
+back toward home.
+
+As he slowed down to catch his breath, he met a crowd of yelling
+youngsters "playing Indians." Several of them wore Indian suits. One,
+dressed as a cowboy, tried to rope him as he passed. This gave the
+Indians an idea, and they came howling after Bob, waving their tomahawks
+and promising to scalp him. Two yelping dogs joined in the chase.
+
+Bob grinned and broke into a long, easy run which soon shook the
+redskins off his trail. But at a sudden delighted whoop from the enemy
+he stopped and looked back.
+
+"Hi-yi!" yelled the biggest Indian. "Look at that telephone wire on the
+ground! Come on, let's chop it off and use it to bind the palefaces to
+the stake."
+
+Pellmell across the street swarmed the little fellows, each bound to get
+there first. But Bob was too quick for them. Hatless, breathless, he
+threw himself between the Indians and the swaying wire. "Get back!" he
+roared. "That's no telephone wire--it's alive! Keep back, I say! You'll
+be killed!"
+
+It was no easy thing to stand between the youngsters and the deadly
+wire. They were laughing and yelling so hard, and the dogs were barking
+so wildly, that at first Bob couldn't get the idea of danger into their
+heads. He fairly had to knock two or three of them down to keep them
+from hacking at the wire with their hatchets. Would they never
+understand? "I won't forget this time, anyway!" muttered the boy,
+gritting his teeth as he remembered the "three keeps" of the Scout Law.
+
+Up ran one of the dogs, capering around with sharp, ear-splitting barks,
+and tried to get his teeth into Bob's ankle. When Bob tried to kick him
+away, of course the Indians and cowboys yelled harder than ever. The dog
+stumbled and fell across the electric wire--gave one wild yelp of
+pain--and lay there kicking and struggling, unable to jerk himself
+loose. Worst of all, he had landed in a puddle of water, so that the
+electric current was pouring straight through his twitching body into
+the wet earth.
+
+At last Bob managed to drive all the boys back out of harm's way, only
+to see one of the cowboys rush for the dog with a cry that tore at Bob's
+heartstrings.
+
+"It's Tige! Oh, Tige!--poor old Tige! Let me go! I've _got_ to save my
+dog!"
+
+Bob had grabbed the little fellow and held him tight. "Too late, old
+scout," he said, with tears in his own eyes as he saw the dog kicking
+his last. "Tige's done for, I'm afraid. Keep back, there--that wire will
+get you too!" For the boys were crowding nearer again.
+
+"Who has a telephone at home?" asked Bob.
+
+"We have," said one of the larger boys.
+
+"Then run home quick, call up the Electric Light Company, and have them
+send their repair crew. Tell them a live wire has killed Tige and may
+kill the boys if they don't hurry. Tell 'em it's at the corner of Broad
+Street and Center Avenue. Run!"
+
+While he waited for the repair wagon, Bob managed to get the boys lined
+up in all directions, where they could mount guard over the danger zone.
+Then he stood guard with the rest, and they succeeded in keeping all
+teams and passers-by from running into danger till the repair men came.
+
+It seemed a long while before the clatter of hoofs and the rumble of
+heavy wheels told him the rescue party was coming at last. He jumped
+with surprise when the repair wagon dashed around the corner and pulled
+up beside the curb, for there beside the driver sat Sure Pop, the Safety
+Scout! Puzzled by Bob's long stay and hearing the gong as the wagon
+hurried up, he had decided to come along.
+
+Ten minutes later the live wire was back in place, the repair crew had
+clattered off again, and a little band of mourning Indians and cowboys
+had carried poor Tige's body over to his master's back yard, where they
+buried him after a solemn funeral service. Only a dog--but the tears
+they dropped on his little grave were very real and sincere, for he had
+been a jolly playmate and a loyal friend.
+
+Bob was very sober as he walked home with Sure Pop. "Wish I could have
+saved Tige, somehow!"
+
+The Safety Scout laid his hand on the boy's shoulder. "Bob, you did just
+right. You remembered the 'three keeps' this time--you kept wide awake,
+kept cool, and kept your mind on one thing at a time. No Scout could
+have done more. If you had risked touching that wire, it would have cost
+a good deal more than the life of a dog, I fear. It's important to know
+what _not_ to do, sometimes. Robert Dalton, I'm proud of you!
+Here--you've earned it this time, sure pop!"
+
+He reached down into his pocket, pulled out the Safety button, and
+fastened it in Bob's coat lapel. The boy flushed with pride as he lifted
+the magic button to his ear. And never had words thrilled him more than
+those which greeted him now--for two of them were new words which his
+own quick wits had earned:
+
+"_Safety First!_" whispered the button, clear and sweet as a far-away
+bugle call. "_Good Work!_"
+
+ _Safety first--not part of the time, but all the
+ time._--SURE POP
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+
+ADVENTURE NUMBER SEVEN
+
+BETTY EVENS THE SCORE
+
+
+All through supper time Betty schemed and plotted.
+
+"I certainly am proud of the way Bob won his," she said to herself. "But
+I've never been behind Bob _yet_, and that magic button's going to be
+twins before tomorrow night, _somehow_!"
+
+The hot summer sun woke her early next morning, and she hurried
+downstairs to be through breakfast before Sure Pop came for the day's
+adventures.
+
+"Where do we go today?" she asked Sure Pop an hour later, dancing up and
+down and looking wistfully at Bob's new Safety button.
+
+"Sorry, friends," said the Safety Scout, "but I can't be with you
+today. I'm due for a little outside scouting duty--something you twins
+aren't quite ready for yet."
+
+"Oh, say!" Bob's face fell. "What are we going to _do_ then, all day
+alone?"
+
+"Do?" laughed the merry Colonel, waving them goodby. "Why, you'll be out
+scouring the neighborhood for new adventures, I fancy. And as for Betty,
+if I'm any mind reader, she has something up her sleeve sure enough!"
+
+Sure Pop was right, as usual. Bob fussed around the yard awhile, managed
+to open a box of crockery out on the back steps for Mother, and soon
+rambled off to see what new adventures he could find in the name of
+Safety First.
+
+Betty spent most of the morning in the kitchen, helping Mother. As soon
+as Bob was off again after lunch, she began to roam about the yard,
+eyeing everything like a hawk. Soon Mother saw her picking up the boards
+Bob had pried loose from the box and scowling at the ugly nails that
+stuck up where little feet might so easily be stabbed by their rusty
+points. These she carefully bent down with a big stone.
+
+"That's one on Bob, anyway," said Betty to herself, and went on looking
+around the yard.
+
+Her eye roved upward to the bright geraniums on the sill of Mother's
+window upstairs. "Mother," she called, "have you ever read _Ben Hur_?"
+
+"Why, yes, Betty--a long time ago. Why?"
+
+"Don't you remember how that loose tile from Ben Hur's roof--the one he
+tried to snatch back as he saw it fall--struck the Roman soldier on the
+head, and how Ben Hur went to prison for it? Well, what about those
+flower pots up there?"
+
+"Why, Betty!" cried her mother, more puzzled than ever. "Ben Hur--flower
+pots--what is the dear child talking about?"
+
+Betty laughed. "I read in the paper last night that one of the big
+hotels has put up signs in every room, and they say:
+
+ =PATRONS--ATTENTION=
+
+ =Please do not place articles of any kind ON
+ WINDOW SILL (bottles and chinaware most
+ dangerous). They may fall or be blown into the
+ street, causing serious if not fatal accidents.=
+
+"That's because a flower pot fell from an upper window on a woman's
+head. Baby's sand pile is right below your window, and one of the flower
+pots might fall while she was out there playing. A sudden draft could do
+it, or a door slammed hard. Do you mind if I fasten them on with wire so
+they can't fall? Then I'll do it right now before anything happens!"
+
+She had just finished the job to her satisfaction, and was looking about
+for something else, when Mother called softly: "Betty, if you'll keep a
+lookout and let me know if anybody comes, or if Baby wakes up, I'll take
+a nap."
+
+Betty was pleased. Here was a fine chance to play housekeeper. Mother
+left a soup bone simmering over one burner of the gas stove, and a steam
+pudding bubbling away over another, and went upstairs for her nap.
+
+Betty tiptoed to the little sewing-room, next to the kitchen, and looked
+in. Baby was sleeping. Then she softly shut the kitchen door and sat
+down in the dining-room to read. Suddenly a shower came up, and out she
+ran to close the windows in the kitchen and the sewing-room, where the
+rain was pouring in.
+
+She had hardly begun reading again when she heard Bob clatter up the
+back steps, tear through the kitchen in search of his raincoat, and
+hurry out again. The wind was blowing hard and swept through the open
+kitchen, banging the dustpan against the wall like a fire alarm gong.
+
+Betty read on. Presently she looked at the clock and sprang to her feet.
+"Why, how long Baby is sleeping today! 'Most three hours and never a
+peep. I wonder--"
+
+A faint whiff of gas from the kitchen made her turn pale with dread.
+Then it flashed into her mind what must have happened--that sudden gust
+of wind had blown out the gas! As she ran to the kitchen, she realized
+that she had caught the same faint smell several times before. "Oh!" she
+sobbed, "what if Baby--"
+
+Mother, sound asleep upstairs, was roused by a crash from the kitchen, a
+shriek from Betty, and the sound of a shattered window-pane; for Betty,
+finding that the outside door stuck fast, had hurled a frying-pan
+through the window. Then she ran to the sewing-room as the life-giving
+breeze poured in through the broken pane.
+
+Startled, bewildered, still only half awake, Mother stumbled to the
+kitchen and found Betty, with the unconscious baby in her arms, groping
+her way toward the dining-room. Snatching them both up and rushing
+toward the open air, Mother landed in a heap on the front porch, Betty
+and the baby on top of her. And then--oh, glorious sound!--came a feeble
+little cry from Baby, and they knew she was safe after all! There Father
+and Bob found them a few minutes later, laughing and crying and hugging
+each other by turns. Betty's quick wits had saved the day.
+
+Mother was telling the whole story that evening, not forgetting the
+rusty nails and the flower pots--two risks which neither Father nor
+Mother had ever thought of before--when a sturdy little figure in a
+Safety Scout uniform paused at the door and listened with a shrewd
+twinkle in his eye.
+
+It was Sure Pop, who had looked in to say good night to the twins. He
+caught Betty's eye, beckoned her into the hall--and when she came back
+to the supper table, Bob's sharp eye caught the gleam of a Safety First
+button over _her_ heart, too.
+
+Betty had evened the score!
+
+ _Safety scouting begins at home._
+ --SURE POP
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+ADVENTURE NUMBER EIGHT
+
+LITTLE SCHNEIDER'S FIRE ALARM
+
+
+Ever since the twins had earned their Safety First buttons, they had
+been looking forward to the Fourth of July, and on the eve of the Fourth
+came an adventure far more exciting than any they had expected.
+
+The lights were out in Bob's and Betty's rooms, and Bob had just dropped
+off to sleep when the clang of the fire bell brought him out of bed in a
+hurry.
+
+As his feet struck the floor, his ear caught the rattle of gravel on the
+window. The room was half lighted by a ruddy glow, and looking out he
+saw Sure Pop standing below his window.
+
+"Come on to the fire!" the Safety Scout called up to him. "Perhaps we
+can do somebody a good turn. Bring Betty along, if your mother doesn't
+mind."
+
+Bob got dressed first and hurried in to help Betty. Her teeth were
+chattering with excitement, and she could hardly button her clothes.
+"Where is the fire, Bob?"
+
+"I don't know exactly--a mile or two north of here, I think. Come
+on--Mother says you may go, if you'll stick close to me."
+
+The two clattered down the back stairs and joined Sure Pop.
+
+"Bother that shoe string, anyhow!" panted Bob as they scampered off to
+the fire.
+
+"Better stop and tie it up," advised the Safety Scout. "It'll trip you
+the first thing you know."
+
+Bob thought otherwise. A couple of blocks farther on, however, he
+stepped on the dragging string, caught his toe on a loose board in the
+sidewalk, and sprawled headlong. But Bob was game. Up he jumped, gave
+Sure Pop the Scout salute, and said, with a grin, "Sir, I stand
+corrected." Then he tied the shoe string by the light of a street lamp,
+winked at Betty, and the three ran on.
+
+The fire was farther away than it looked, and not till they had reached
+the hilltop did the size of the blaze fully show itself. "Goodness!"
+cried Betty. "The German church is gone, and Turner Hall will be next.
+And look at all those little houses in a row--they won't last long at
+that rate!" Then she stopped and coughed, for the air was full of smoke
+and soot, both from the burning buildings and from the fire engines.
+
+Everywhere was noise and confusion. Half-dressed men and women stumbled
+over the fire hose as they hurried along with their arms full of
+household articles, trying to save everything they could.
+
+A frightened sob fell on Betty's ears. She turned to see a chubby little
+baby boy, toddling along barefooted in his nightie, the tears rolling
+down his fat cheeks. "Mama!" he sobbed. "I want my Mama!"
+
+"Oh, poor little thing!" cried Betty. "He's lost!" She caught the scared
+little fellow up in her arms and wrapped him snugly in the folds of her
+loose cloak. "Don't cry, honey. Betty'll find Mama for you!" And she
+cuddled and petted him till he stopped crying and lay still in her arms,
+peering out at the spreading flames with wondering eyes.
+
+"I'm going to find his mother for him," said Betty. "He's scared half to
+death!"
+
+But Sure Pop caught her arm as she started away. "Wait, she'll find
+him."
+
+Sure enough, before long a young woman came running wildly from house to
+house calling out, "Karlchen! My little Karlchen! Where are you?"
+
+The little fellow popped his head out from under Betty's cloak with a
+squeal of delight. "Mama!" he cried in his soft baby voice.
+"Mama!"--just that one happy word, over and over, as his mother pressed
+him to her breast.
+
+The look on her face was thanks enough for Betty. Somehow the fire did
+not seem so dreadful to her after that.
+
+"How'd it start?" Bob asked a fireman who was binding up a split in the
+bulging canvas hose.
+
+"Fellow dropped a lighted match in a coat closet--house next to the
+church," puffed the fireman, who was breathing as if he had run a mile.
+He gave the hose a parting kick and hurried to join his comrades down
+the street, where the flames were fiercest.
+
+"The same old story," said Sure Pop, soberly. "Hold on! What's that?"
+
+Bob and Betty looked up at the little old-fashioned window in the
+cottage across the street. A small black-and-tan dog was standing on his
+hind legs inside the room, pawing and scratching at the window pane.
+
+Sure Pop put two fingers to his lips and gave a piercing whistle. The
+dog answered him, barking wildly and running back into the smoke-filled
+room, then to the window again, as if trying to call their attention to
+something or somebody in the room with him.
+
+"There's somebody in there!" cried Bob. "Come on, Sure Pop--wait here
+for us, Betty!"
+
+As they ran, the two splashed into a pool of water in a hollow of the
+sidewalk. Sure Pop dipped his handkerchief in this and tied it over his
+nose and mouth. Bob did the same. Then the smoke of the burning cottage
+swallowed them up.
+
+Remembering the dangers of a draft, Sure Pop carefully closed the door
+after them, and stopped Bob from kicking a hole in the window at the
+head of the stairs. They knew which room it was--the farthest window
+from the front door--and flung themselves against the door so hard that
+it burst open and they fell headlong into the room. The little
+black-and-tan dog, barking more wildly than ever, had heard them coming
+and was dragging with all his might at something on the bed.
+
+Bob and Sure Pop, half choked with smoke, ran to the bedside. There lay
+a little girl only five or six years old. Yes, she was breathing!
+
+Just then the hungry flames burst in through the flimsy closet door and
+came licking along the ceiling. Bob's eyes smarted and burned, and his
+lungs felt as if they would burst. He remembered his Boy Scout studies
+in First Aid, though, and threw himself beside Sure Pop on the floor,
+where the smoke was not so thick. Together they dragged the little girl
+to the window.
+
+Bob put his lips close to Sure Pop's ear. "Shall we jump?"
+
+Sure Pop shook his head. "Too risky. We'll try the stairs."
+
+With the little girl held close between them, their bodies shielding her
+from the flames, the two groped and stumbled down the short flight of
+stairs, fairly falling through the whirlwind of flame that swirled
+upward from the first floor. Scorched, singed, with their clothing afire
+in places, they fought their way back to the street--safe!
+
+Betty ran forward with a glad cry and flung her arms around her twin.
+"Bob! Oh, Bob, I thought you were _gone_!"
+
+Just then they heard a shout as a frightened little family group came
+running up, and a roughly dressed laborer snatched the little girl and
+kissed her till her eyes opened and she smiled.
+
+"Good Schneider! Nice Schneider!" said her small brother, patting the
+dog, who was wagging his tail almost off for joy.
+
+"Nice little Schneider--he took--care--of--me!" exclaimed the little
+girl between kisses. And the father gathered up the little dog in his
+arms and kissed him, too!
+
+As the tired Safety Scouts opened the front gate half an hour later, the
+boom of a cannon roared out, somewhere on the other side of town, and
+the twelve o'clock bells and whistles joined in an echoing chorus.
+
+Sure Pop raised his hand with a tired smile. "Midnight!" he cried.
+"Hurrah for the glorious Fourth!"
+
+ _Don't let a careless match cost a dozen homes._
+ --SURE POP
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+ADVENTURE NUMBER NINE
+
+"CHANCE CARTER'S WAY"
+
+
+BOOM! It was the distant roar of some Fourth of July cannon which had
+escaped the watchful eye of the police.
+
+Bob Dalton stirred uneasily and flopped over in bed. The morning sun was
+shining straight into his eyes.
+
+By the time the twins were dressed and downstairs, Sure Pop was waiting
+for them in the back yard. He, too, had slept late after the excitement
+of the fire.
+
+"I had hoped for a holiday today," he said, "but I can see there's going
+to be plenty of scouting for me to do, even on a 'sane Fourth,' so I'm
+off on my rounds. How are you two going to spend the day?"
+
+"Going over to where the fire was, as soon as we've had our breakfast,"
+said Bob. "Looks from here as if Turner Hall's still smoking."
+
+Betty was fingering the Safety Button in Sure Pop's lapel. "What are you
+doing, Betty?" asked the Safety Scout, with a twinkle.
+
+"Turning your button right side up," Betty told him.
+
+The merry little Colonel laughed and explained: "I have to wear it wrong
+side up each day till I've done my One Day's Boost for Safety."
+
+"Oh," said Bob. "Same as the Boy Scouts wear their neckties outside
+their vests till they've done the day's good turn to somebody?"
+
+Sure Pop nodded. "That one little rule is the biggest thing in the whole
+Scout Law," he said. "The Scout who lives up to that test--doing a good
+turn to somebody every day, quietly and without boasting--will be
+classed alongside the greatest Scouts the world has ever known. Bring me
+your _Handbook of Scout-Craft_ a moment, please, Bob. Listen to this
+from page 7, now:
+
+ * * * * *
+
+"'Another way to remind himself is to wear his Scout badge reversed
+until he has done his good turn. The good turn may not be a very big
+thing--help an old lady across the street; remove a banana skin from the
+pavement so that people may not fall; remove from streets or roads
+broken glass, dangerous to automobile or bicycle tires'--to say
+nothing," added Sure Pop, "of the danger to barefooted boys and girls,
+or to folks with thin shoes! Don't you see, Bob and Betty, how every one
+of those good turns happens to be a good turn for Safety as well? I told
+you a few days ago that all true Scouts are brothers; aren't we all
+working toward the same end, after all?"
+
+Bob and Betty saw the point. They turned their Safety buttons upside
+down as Sure Pop waved them goodby, resolving to get them right side up
+at the very first chance that offered.
+
+They found their father on the front porch reading the paper, taking
+solid comfort in the fact that Bruce's Mills were closed for the day. "I
+want you to help me with a little work out in the yard," he said, "as
+soon as you've had your breakfast." So it was almost one o'clock before
+Bob and Betty set out for the scene of last night's fire. Just across
+the river they met Chance Carter and George Gibson, bound in the same
+direction.
+
+The German church still raised its steepled head toward the sky, but its
+roof had fallen in, and Turner Hall was a mass of blackened ruins. Parts
+of the walls were still standing, swaying as if ready to topple over any
+moment. Off in one corner the blackened timbers and jumbled bits of
+furniture were stubbornly smoldering.
+
+The four stood and looked. "Just think!" said Betty softly. "All that
+from just one little careless match! Guess _that_ man won't light a
+match in a coat closet again."
+
+"Pshaw!" scoffed Chance Carter. "That wouldn't happen once in a thousand
+times."
+
+"How many matches do you suppose are scratched in the United States
+every second?" asked Bob, shortly.
+
+"Oh, a couple of hundred, I suppose."
+
+"Ten thousand, Chance, _every second_. And every match is a possible
+fire. Sure Pop told me last night that one third of the fire losses are
+due to carelessness in handling matches. And the fires in this country
+cost us over a million dollars every day--twice that, counting the cost
+of fire departments."
+
+"Whew!" Even reckless Chance looked impressed.
+
+"When you get into the Boy Scouts," Bob reminded him, "you'll find out
+what _they_ think about fooling with fire. A real Scout never leaves his
+camp fire till he's dead sure it's out. Even after there's no fire left
+that he can see, he pours water on it and all around it to guard against
+its rekindling. A Scout who isn't careful about such things is looked
+down on by the others as not of much account."
+
+"Well, I don't care; there's such a thing as being too careful. I wish
+we had the old-fashioned Fourth of July back again. This sane Fourth
+business is too tame for me!" Chance strolled off to the far corner of
+the smoking ruins and began climbing around in the half-filled basement.
+
+George winked at Betty. "Can't teach _him_ anything," he chuckled. "He
+was born careless and he'll die careless, I guess. Look at him,
+now--poking around where those loose bricks may cave in on him any
+minute. We can't say anything, though, or he'll get mad. Chance Carter
+always has to have his own way."
+
+"It's a wonder the police aren't guarding this place," said Bob,
+anxiously. "Guess they've got their hands full elsewhere." He scowled as
+he watched his reckless friend jumping from one charred timber to
+another, never noticing how the crumbling walls tottered with each jump.
+
+"Whether he likes it or not," he said finally, "I'm going to get him out
+of there. It's too risky. Hey, Chance! Look out--that wall's coming
+over!" His voice rose in a startled shout.
+
+"Aw, I guess not--" Chance got no further. The overhanging wall, swaying
+on its wobbly base and loosened by his sudden backward jump, toppled
+over on him in a shower of bricks and mortar. "Chance Carter's way" had
+come to grief again!
+
+"Too late--again!" muttered Bob, grimly, diving into the cloud of dust
+that hung over the spot where Chance had disappeared. For a picture had
+flashed into his mind--the memory of how he had failed to warn the
+wrestlers in time only a few days before, the picture of Joe's terrified
+face as his head crashed on the cement sidewalk. Why hadn't he warned
+Chance in time?
+
+A groan from the wreckage told where the boy lay half buried under the
+fallen wall. "Got me that time!" he muttered, through his set teeth.
+"Guess my leg's broken."
+
+A shadow fell on the two and Bob looked up to see George's white face
+gazing down at him. "What can I do, Bob?"
+
+"Have Betty run for a doctor, or telephone. Chance is badly hurt. Help
+me lift this rubbish from on top of him." The boys worked fast but
+carefully, lifting one brick at a time, till Chance was free. To their
+dismay he could not move.
+
+"It's this leg." He touched his left, just below the knee. "I felt
+something break when the wall hit me. Perhaps the other's broken, too--I
+don't know."
+
+Very carefully Bob ripped the clothing from the injured leg. Then he put
+one hand gently on the spot Chance touched, and the other hand just
+below it, and lifted the leg slightly. There was enough movement at the
+broken point so that there could be no doubt. The other leg proved to be
+badly bruised, but not broken.
+
+Bob carefully moved the broken leg back into the same position as the
+right one and piled his coat and George's around it so it would stay in
+shape. He brought the suffering boy some water in his hat, and the three
+waited for the doctor.
+
+"He said he'd come right away," reported Betty, hurrying back from the
+telephone. "But, Bob, it isn't safe to stay down there--no telling when
+that other chunk of the wall may fall on all three of you. Shall I try
+to push it over from the inside?"
+
+"Goodness, no, Betty! Keep as far away from it as you can. Well, we'll
+have to get him out of here, some way. You run back to that first store,
+please, and get half a dozen good strong strips of cloth about a foot
+wide and two or three feet long--anything that will do to tie his leg up
+to the splints. George, you bring over a few of those pieces of flooring
+that are not too badly charred to use for splints. There!"
+
+He laid a long piece of flooring along Chance's left side, from below
+his foot clear to his armpit, and chose a shorter board for the inside
+splint. He arranged the two coats so that they would pad the broken leg
+where the boards came up against it, and tied the splints firmly, but
+not tightly, in place. Then Bob slowly gathered his groaning friend in
+his arms.
+
+"Sorry to hurt you, old fellow, but we've got to get you out of here.
+You take his legs, George,--gently, now. So! We can climb out along that
+cave-in on the street side if we take it easy. Up we go!"
+
+ _Better be safe than sorry._
+ --SURE POP
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+ADVENTURE NUMBER TEN
+
+THE TWINS MEET BRUCE
+
+
+Chance Carter, lying helpless on the stone steps of Turner Hall, was
+wondering if the doctor would ever come. Bob and George did their best
+to ease his pain, while Betty gazed anxiously down the street.
+
+"Why doesn't that doctor come?"
+
+"Surely he knows where we are, Betty?"
+
+"Yes, I told him Turner Hall, and he said, 'Why, Turner Hall burned down
+last night, little girl.' And I told him I knew it, and that we were
+waiting right beside what was left of it."
+
+"Hm-m-m! Something must have happened to him then; he could have walked
+it in less time than this. If he doesn't come pretty soon, we'd better
+call up the police department and have them send the ambulance. We can't
+wait here much longer."
+
+While they waited, an idea popped into Bob's head.
+
+"Look here," he said, "somebody else is likely enough to get hurt here,
+just the way Chance did. I believe we'd better put up a sign. I'll get
+some paper from that store."
+
+So Bob hurried around to the store and got some wrapping paper and nails
+and borrowed a pencil and hammer. He worked fast, the shopkeeper looking
+curiously over his shoulder while he lettered this sign:
+
+
+ DANGER!
+
+ These walls may fall on you any moment. One leg
+ already broken here today. Keep out.
+
+ SAFETY FIRST!
+
+
+
+Bob had just finished the lettering when a big automobile came purring
+along in front of the ruined building. The chauffeur was in uniform. The
+big man inside looked almost lost among the cushions, so roomy was the
+machine. At a word from him, the car slowed down, and he scanned the
+ruins sharply. Bob knew him in a moment for Bruce, the great mill owner,
+one of the richest men in the city.
+
+"Hello, what's this? What's this?" Bruce stood up in the car when the
+little group on the steps caught his eye. In a twinkling he was out of
+the automobile and bending over the groaning boy, while Bob and George
+and Betty told him what had happened.
+
+"Tut, tut!" snapped the great man whose mills gave work to thousands of
+men, the twins' father among them. "This won't do at all! If the doctor
+won't come to him, we must get him to the doctor." Pushing aside the
+chauffeur, he lifted Chance into the car and on to the deep, comfortable
+cushions as easily as if he had been a child of two instead of a lad of
+twelve and big for his age.
+
+"Now, jump in, the rest of you," he said, "and we'll take him over to
+Doctor MacArthur's."
+
+Betty climbed in and George followed. The chauffeur took his seat and
+looked around at Bob, waiting. "What's the matter now?" asked Bruce,
+impatiently, as Bob lingered on the step.
+
+"It's those walls," answered the boy. "I hate to leave them in that
+shape--somebody else will be getting hurt just as Chance did. I'd better
+put up the sign. You folks go on, please, and I'll follow on foot."
+
+The mill owner shook his head. "Put up your sign and come along. We'll
+wait."
+
+Bruce looked sharply at Bob's sign as the boy nailed it up in place, but
+said nothing. Bob climbed into the waiting automobile, and the big
+machine rolled smoothly, silently to the doctor's office.
+
+Doctor MacArthur, surgeon's case in hand, came out. He was a little gray
+man--gray-haired, dressed in a gray suit, with keen gray eyes that
+seemed to take in everything at once.
+
+"Who put those splints on?" He jerked out the words like a pistol shot.
+
+"I did," said Bob, reddening; for the doctor's tone made him feel that
+he must have bungled his work.
+
+Swiftly the doctor bared the leg and laid a deft finger on the exact
+spot of the break. "Simple fracture," was his verdict. "Bone badly
+splintered, though--would have come through the skin in short order if
+you hadn't got the splints on when you did. Where does he live?"
+
+He took George's seat and George climbed over beside the chauffeur. On
+the way to Chance's house, he insisted on knowing how Bob had learned to
+give First Aid to the injured.
+
+"So you're a Boy Scout, eh?" Another keen glance from those sharp gray
+eyes.
+
+"N-no, sir--but I'm going to be."
+
+"Eh? How's that?"
+
+"He isn't quite old enough yet," explained George. "You have to be
+twelve or over to join the Boy Scouts. I'm one--but Bob knows a heap
+more about it already than I do," he added frankly.
+
+"Ha! Well, I'll have to change my opinion of the Boy Scouts, young man.
+I always took it for granted they were a sort of feeder to our regular
+army--playing soldier, you know. But if this is the kind of work they
+turn out, I don't know but I'll join myself."
+
+George got out when they reached Chance's house, and helped the doctor
+carry the injured lad up the steps. "You needn't wait for me," he told
+the twins, "I'm going to stay a while."
+
+"Come in and see me some time," Doctor MacArthur called back to Bob. "I
+want you to tell me more about your First Aid work! See you later, Mr.
+Bruce."
+
+"Home, Jennings," said Bruce. "And be quick about it--I'm late."
+
+Bob leaned back against the cushions and studied the grim, square-jawed
+face of the great man whom everybody was so anxious to please. So this
+was the way he looked at close range, this self-made, stubborn man of
+millions who always managed to bend every other man in his line of
+business to his own iron will! As he looked, Bob felt it was no wonder
+they all feared him--feared and followed.
+
+For Bruce was the man who, more than all the others put together, was
+responsible for keeping Safety First work out of the mills in his line
+of business. Hundreds of men were killed and thousands injured every
+year in the great string of mills of which Bruce's was the head. Over
+and over it had been pointed out to him that the same Safety First work
+which had saved thousands of lives in other lines would save them in his
+line as well. But he was stubborn, iron-willed.
+
+"You're wasting your time," was all he would say. "No theories or
+new-fangled notions in _my_ mills."
+
+Because Bruce said this, all the other mills hung back, too. There were
+reasons. They knew Bruce.
+
+All this Bob knew from talks he had had with his father about the risks
+of working in Bruce's mills. He understood it better, now that he was
+face to face with Bruce himself.
+
+All too soon, to the twins' way of thinking, the automobile drew up in
+front of Bruce's big stone house. The mill owner wasted no words.
+Jumping out, he waved his hand to the three, said to Jennings, "Take
+them wherever they want to go," and hurried up the walk.
+
+The eager face pressed against the big bay window disappeared, the front
+door flew open, and a sweet little fair-haired girl threw herself into
+Bruce's outstretched arms. "Daddy! What made you so late? Here I've been
+waiting and waiting--"
+
+"Bonnie!" That was all the twins heard as the big automobile bore them
+away toward home. But the way he said it, and the way he caught his
+little daughter to his big, broad chest, told Bob and Betty all they
+needed to know about the soft spot in the millionaire's heart.
+
+What did his great house and his mills and all his money amount to,
+after all? He would gladly have thrown them all aside rather than have
+the slightest harm come to his Bonnie; for her mother had died when
+Bonnie was only a baby, and the little girl was all Bruce had left in
+the world.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+ADVENTURE NUMBER ELEVEN
+
+"JUST FOR FUN"
+
+
+The twins missed Chance Carter during the next few weeks. The boy had
+been a regular nuisance in some ways, for he was always getting into
+scrapes; but he was a clever lad and had a way of making up games that
+nobody else seemed able to think of.
+
+"It does seem lonesome without Chance," Bob told Sure Pop when the
+broken leg had kept their friend tied up indoors for a week or more.
+"And yet we don't get into half as much trouble when he isn't round."
+
+Sure Pop looked wise. "Perhaps it's because Chance hasn't learned that
+he must play according to the rules," he said. "The fellow who is
+always taking chances isn't playing up to the rules of the game."
+
+"Anyhow," said Betty, "Chance has had his lesson now. By the time he's
+able to run around again, he will be ready to quit taking chances."
+
+Sure Pop changed the subject, though a shrewd twinkle seemed to say that
+it would take more than one lesson to teach Chance how to play life's
+game according to the rules. "How'd you like to take a trip with me
+today?"
+
+"Fine!" exclaimed Bob and Betty. "Where?"
+
+"To a kind of moving picture show," answered Colonel Sure Pop. "Let's
+start right away, then. And be sure you wear your Safety First buttons."
+
+The twins couldn't help smiling at the idea of going anywhere without
+their magic buttons. They boarded the crowded street car with Sure Pop
+and stood beside the motorman all the way to the railroad yards. It
+seemed as if somebody tried to get run over every block or two, and the
+way people crossed the crowded streets in the middle of blocks was
+enough to turn a motorman's hair gray.
+
+"How'd you like to be the motorman, Bob?"
+
+"Well, I tell _you_, Sure Pop, I don't believe it's as much fun as it
+looks from the outside. If fellows like Chance and George would ride
+beside the motorman for just one day, seeing what he has to see right
+along, they'd be Safety workers forever after. Look at that, now! Those
+chaps have no business to cross in the middle of the block."
+
+"Nobody has," agreed Sure Pop, with a keen glance at Bob. The boy
+flushed as he remembered what he himself had been doing when he first
+felt the warning touch of the Safety Scout's hand.
+
+He and Betty noticed, too, how carefully Sure Pop looked all around him
+before leaving the car, and they did likewise. Two short blocks more and
+they were in sight of the railroad roundhouse. The Safety Scout stuck
+his head inside the great doorway and peered around at the smoking
+engines that impatiently awaited their turn. "There she is!" he
+exclaimed. "There's old Seven-Double-Seven!" And he waved his hand at
+the engineer up in the cab.
+
+The three climbed into the engine cab, where the fireman stood waiting
+with his eye on the steam gauge. From the way the engineer shook hands
+with Sure Pop, the twins decided they must be old friends.
+
+"Got my orders?" asked the engineer. He ripped open the envelope Sure
+Pop handed him, glanced at the message, nodded to the fireman, and
+gently pulled open the throttle. The big, powerful engine answered his
+touch like a race horse. With a warning clang of the bell, they slipped
+down the shining track, through the crowded yards, and toward the city
+limits.
+
+"Bob, what are you looking for?" asked Sure Pop.
+
+Bob went on looking in all the corners of the cab as if greatly puzzled.
+"Looking for the moving picture machine," he said with a grin. "I
+thought I heard you promise us a moving picture show."
+
+"You just wait. Be ready to rub your magic buttons when I say the word,
+both of you, and you'll see some moving pictures you'll never
+forget--pictures of what _might_ happen to boys and girls like
+yourselves. The pity of it is, it does happen, every day of the year."
+
+Sure Pop paused to call their attention to some little blurry patches of
+blue scattered along the track. "Wild flowers," he said. "Pretty things,
+aren't they? If we weren't going so fast, we'd stop and get some."
+
+The engineer scowled. "Pretty? They don't look pretty to me any more.
+Look there, now!"
+
+The brakes jarred as he spoke, and the shriek of the whistle scattered a
+group ahead. Several young couples, going home from town by way of the
+railroad track, had stopped to gather wild flowers. One couple were
+walking hand in hand over the railroad bridge, deaf at first to whistle
+and bell and everything else. Suddenly they heard, looked up, and turned
+first one way and then another, uncertain whether to jump off the bridge
+or stand their ground.
+
+"Is it any wonder that I don't like the flower season?" grunted the
+engineer in disgust. "It's the worst time of all, seems to me. Now you'd
+think those young fellows and girls were old enough and would have sense
+enough to keep off the railroad's right of way, wouldn't you? But look
+at 'em!"
+
+He mopped his forehead and glared ahead at the frightened couple,
+holding the panting engine at a standstill till they could scramble off
+the bridge.
+
+"They act as if we had nothing to do but just watch out for 'em," he
+went on, getting under way again. "They got off scot-free this time, but
+imagine what old Seven-Double-Seven would have done to 'em if this had
+been my regular run! Forty miles an hour on schedule--and where would
+they be now?
+
+"It's the same old story, day after day--boys riding bicycles down the
+tracks, when the road's ten times smoother and a million times as safe!
+Boys playing on the turntables and getting crippled for life, one by
+one!
+
+"They'll run like mad to get across the track ahead of a fast train--and
+then stand and watch it go through! I ought to know--I did it myself
+when I was a boy, but little I knew then of the way it wrecks an
+engineer's nerves!
+
+"They flip the cars and try to imitate the brakemen without the least
+idea of how many thousands of brakemen have lost their lives just that
+way. They crawl under cars, instead of waiting or going around. Why,
+Colonel, the railroads kill thousands and thousands of people every
+year--you know the figures--dozens every day, week in and week out. And
+somebody's badly hurt on the railroads every three minutes or less--_and
+a third of them are boys and girls and little children_! That's what I
+can't stand--the little folks getting hurt and getting killed, when just
+a bit of common sense would save them! Oh, if their fathers and mothers
+had any idea--"
+
+The big engineer choked up for a moment. "Even on the trains," he
+added, "when they're safe inside the cars, they get hurt. I'm not the
+only one that worries on my run--ask the conductor. He'll tell you how
+they run up and down the aisle, till a sudden jar of the brakes throws
+'em against a seat iron or into the other passengers. They get out into
+the vestibules, which is against the rules, and when the train takes a
+sudden curve they get smashed up."
+
+Three minutes later he slowed down for the twins to watch the fast mail
+thunder past. It was near a village crossing, and a little group of boys
+stood waiting. As No. 777 came to a stop, the twins saw that most of the
+boys had stones in their hands.
+
+On came the fast mail, tearing past the little village as if it were not
+even on the map. The mail cars--the smoker--the long rows of glass
+windows, a head beside each--
+
+Smash! The flying splinters of glass told of one stone that had found
+its mark. The boys ran like scared cats around the corner into a lumber
+yard.
+
+"Little cowards!" The fireman glared angrily after them. "They may have
+killed somebody on that train--_they_ don't know!"
+
+"Rub your buttons!" whispered Sure Pop, whose eyes were still fixed on
+the fast mail, now disappearing in a cloud of smoke and dust.
+
+Bob and Betty rubbed. At their first touch of the magic buttons the
+disappearing train took on a queer, unreal look, like a film at the
+"movies."
+
+They seemed to be inside one of the cars. They seemed to be watching a
+sweet-faced old lady--somebody's grandmother--snowy haired, kind,
+gentle, not used to traveling, as even the twins could see. She kept
+looking first at the time-table and then at an old key-winding silver
+watch she wore on a quaint little chain around her neck.
+
+Her lips were moving, smiling. "Only two stops more," she seemed to be
+saying, "and then I shall see little Jim." She took a kodak picture out
+of her handbag and looked at it long and lovingly. She glanced out of
+the window and saw a group of boys standing by the village crossing "to
+watch the fast mail go through." She liked boys. She smiled at them--she
+did not see the stones in their hands.
+
+Smash! The other passengers sprang to their feet as one of the stones,
+thrown at random, shivered the car window into bits and struck the kind
+old face, full between the eyes. A quick, startled cry--a pitiful
+fumbling of kind old hands before shattered spectacles and eyes suddenly
+blinded--and the moving picture seemed to fade away. The twins were left
+with the sickening fear that perhaps little Jim's grandmother might
+never see him after all.
+
+"Oh! oh!" gasped Betty, rubbing her eyes. "How terrible!" Bob caught
+Sure Pop by the arm.
+
+"Did we imagine it, Sure Pop--or was it true?"
+
+"Too true," said Sure Pop, sadly. "It happens almost every day
+somewhere--where boys throw stones at the cars 'just for fun'!"
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+ADVENTURE NUMBER TWELVE
+
+GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS
+
+
+"And just to think," said Bob, as the three sat on the home steps
+talking over their exciting trip on old No. 777, "just to think of how
+many boys and girls are killed on the railroad tracks every day!"
+
+"Every day," echoed the little Safety Scout, "and all over the world. Go
+into any village graveyard along any railroad, and you'll find the grave
+of some boy or girl who has been killed trespassing on the railroad
+tracks. No way to save them, I'm afraid, till folks wake up to the fact
+that it's not so much the tramps who are being killed this way--it's the
+children!"
+
+"It's just awful," said Betty, puckering up her brow in a thoughtful
+scowl. "I think we ought to do something about it."
+
+"What, for instance?" Sure Pop was watching her sharply.
+
+"Well, something to put a stop to it. Surely we could find _some_ way of
+teaching the boys and girls how to play safely; and then when they grew
+up they'd be in the habit of _thinking_ Safety. Then they'd teach
+_their_ boys and girls--and all this awful killing and crippling, or
+most of it, would be ended."
+
+"The trouble is," said Bob, "in going at the thing in too much of a
+hit-or-miss style. We could do some good by talking to the few boys and
+girls we could reach, but not enough. Why can't we organize?"
+
+Sure Pop's eager face lighted up, overjoyed at the turn Bob's thoughts
+were taking. "You can," he said quietly.
+
+"Why, sure!" went on Bob, getting more and more excited as the idea took
+hold. "Let's get busy and organize an army of Safety Scouts right here.
+We've already got the biggest thing in the Safety Scout Law at
+work--don't you see?--our 'One Boost for Safety' every day. We can get
+some more Safety Scout buttons made, and as fast as a boy earns his--"
+
+"--Or a girl earns hers!"--interrupted Betty, so seriously that Bob
+couldn't help smiling.
+
+"Yes, of course--girls too--why, as fast as boys and girls earn the
+right to wear Safety Scout buttons, we can form them into patrols. It
+wouldn't be long before we could have several troops hard at it. I tell
+you, Sure Pop, if we go at it that way we can do big things for Safety
+just as sure as you're a foot high!"
+
+Sure Pop gave Betty a droll little wink. "It's a go, then," he said
+cheerfully. "Well, where are you going to begin?"
+
+Bob looked up at him with a sudden idea shining in his eyes. "Why not
+begin by organizing in patrols and then in troops, just about like the
+Boy Scouts? First, we can get a few of our friends interested, and let
+each one of them get eleven others interested--that will make a patrol
+of twelve, commanded by the one who got them together."
+
+"Spoken like a Scout and a gentleman!" cried the little Colonel, giving
+him a sounding thump on the shoulder. "Go on, Bob--what next?"
+
+"Well, just as fast as we get four new patrols, we can form them into a
+troop, with a Scout Master for their leader."
+
+"Good," said Sure Pop. "It will take some lively work to pick your Scout
+Masters and get them trained in time, but the difference in their
+efficiency will be worth your while."
+
+"I suppose," said Betty, "we'll have to choose only boys and girls who
+have good records for Safety?"
+
+Bob looked doubtful. "What do you think about that, Sure Pop?"
+
+"I think it would be a mistake, Bob. You'll find too few who have even
+learned to think Safety. A better plan will be to take in those who seem
+most in earnest over the idea, especially those who have been taught a
+hard lesson through accidents which care would have avoided."
+
+"Go on, please. Tell us more--how would you work out the details?"
+
+"Bob, I would--but I believe I've told you enough. You and Betty go
+ahead in your own way and work out the details yourselves. Let me see
+you get your Safety Scouts together, if you really do mean business, and
+I'll show you about the work that's already been done among the factory
+hands and mill-workers of America.
+
+"Let me tell you this much, though: you'll find, when you get your
+Safety Scouts of America organized, that the good work will go ahead by
+leaps and bounds. All this talk about 'efficiency' is really part of the
+same movement, though very few realize it; it's nothing more or less
+than cutting out guess work and waste--and what else, after all, is our
+Safety work?"
+
+"That's so. It really is all working in the same direction, isn't it?"
+agreed Bob. "Chance Carter's oldest brother is studying to be an
+efficiency engineer--perhaps he can give us some ideas."
+
+"Then--you really do mean to get busy and organize the Safety Scouts of
+America?"
+
+"Mean it!" Bob and Betty fairly shouted the words in their eagerness to
+get to work. And as Sure Pop said good night to them, there was a joyous
+light in his eye which showed his plan was working out just as he had
+thought it would.
+
+He smiled a satisfied smile as the door closed on the excited Dalton
+twins. "And now," said Colonel Sure Pop to himself, "_now_, we're
+getting down to business!"
+
+ _Enlist now! We fight to save life, not
+ to take it._
+ --SURE POP
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+ADVENTURE NUMBER THIRTEEN
+
+DALTON PATROL
+
+
+The next few weeks were busy ones for Bob and Betty Dalton. The plan was
+a big one--the Safety Scouts of America. Growing out of an idea planted
+by Colonel Sure Pop, it sprouted and grew surprisingly fast. Already the
+news was spreading like wildfire among the boys and girls all over the
+city.
+
+Joe Schmidt was out again, his head as good as ever. George Gibson,
+always brim full of energy and enthusiasm, had set his heart on becoming
+a Safety Scout Master and heading a troop of his own. Even Chance
+Carter, hobbling about on crutches, had caught the fever of Safety
+Scouting and was making all sorts of plans as to what he would do when
+his broken leg got well.
+
+Chance really had changed, somehow. The twins supposed it was all due to
+his accident, but the real reason was Colonel Sure Pop. Chance seemed
+almost magnetized by the little Colonel and never lost a chance to be
+near him.
+
+"Honestly now, Colonel," he owned up to Sure Pop one day, "I'd read so
+many stories about reckless heroes and all that, I got in the habit of
+thinking I had to be reckless. Story books seem to make out that it's a
+brave thing to risk your life--and wasn't that exactly what Bob did when
+he found that live wire?"
+
+Sure Pop laid an understanding hand on Chance's shoulder.
+
+"Listen, Chance! You've caught only half the point, that's your main
+trouble. It _is_ a manly thing to take a risk--_when it's necessary_.
+When somebody's life is in danger, it's the manliest thing on earth to
+take a risk for the sake of saving it. That's why Bob's act in
+patrolling the live wire earned him a Safety Scout button--the lives of
+those smaller boys were in danger, to say nothing of anybody else who
+might blunder across the wire just then--that's where the difference
+comes in."
+
+"That's so. I never thought of it in just that way."
+
+"I know you haven't. When you stop to think it over, you see it's a
+fellow's plain duty to take a chance when it's necessary, but it's
+downright foolish to do it on a dare. One thing about Bob's live-wire
+adventure I don't believe even he realizes," added Sure Pop. "It was
+that hurry-up patrol of small boys that he threw out around the live
+wire which really gave him the idea of how to organize the Safety Scouts
+of America. I knew the idea would strike him and Betty sooner or later."
+
+Chance looked admiringly at the little Colonel. What a wise Scout he
+was, sure enough, as keen and clever at reading signs of the trail as
+any Indian fighter that ever stepped in deerskin!
+
+The boy looked longingly after the Safety Scout Patrol, which was just
+starting off on an "observation hike," as Bob called it. Part of the
+training Bob had laid out for his men was an hour's brisk walk, after
+which each Safety Scout wrote out a list of the unsafe things he had
+noticed while "on the trail."
+
+"There's one thing that stumps me, though," said Chance. "How did Bob
+_know_ that was a live wire?"
+
+"He didn't. He simply had sense enough to treat _all_ fallen wires as if
+they _were_ alive. See? Better safe than sorry. Just the same in turning
+on an electric light: it _may_ not harm you to touch an iron bedstead
+with one hand while you turn the light on with the other--but it's
+taking a chance. Same's the fellow who turns an electric bulb on or off
+while standing in a bathtub: he _may_ go on with his bath in safety--and
+then again he may drop lifeless in the water.
+
+"It's a good deal like the gun that isn't loaded, Chauncey. There _was_
+a lad, you know, who found a gun was dangerous without lock, stock, or
+barrel--his father whipped him with the ramrod! A real Scout knows how
+to take care of himself--and of others. And that's especially true of
+Safety Scouts."
+
+"Well, Colonel," said Chance, reaching for his crutches and rising
+painfully to his feet, "I'm _for_ it! Perhaps if I make good, the
+fellows will quit calling me Chance and call me either Chauncey or
+Carter, I don't care which--but Chance makes me sick!"
+
+"Here's _to_ you, Carter!" said Sure Pop, with a hearty handshake. Again
+came that smile of satisfaction as he watched the boy hobble off on a
+slow "observation hike" of his own. In Carter's mind, too, the big idea
+was taking root.
+
+Ten days later, Colonel Sure Pop was reviewing Dalton Patrol.
+
+"Safety Scouts," he said, saluting the even ranks drawn up before him,
+"your Colonel is proud of the work you're doing. These 'observation
+hikes,' as your Scout Master calls them, show better than anything else
+how much more alert you are to danger signs than you were a month ago.
+
+"Now, I've been sizing up these risks as covered by your patrol reports.
+They seem to be of three kinds--home, street, and railroad risks.
+
+"Nobody can study these reports without seeing that our work is plainly
+cut out for us for the next few months. Charity and every other good
+work begin at home--though they end there only with the weak-minded! So
+our work in Safety patrolling will naturally begin in our homes and with
+ourselves, and will begin with the risks which these reports show to be
+most common. Let me read you a few of the common risks reported by the
+Scouts of this patrol:
+
+ Matches: left on floor where they may be stepped
+ on; or where mice may nibble them; or next the
+ stovepipe or chimney; or thrown down before the
+ last spark is out.
+
+ Celluloid things: brushes and combs handled near
+ the gas jet, where they may burst into flame.
+
+ Kerosene: poured on the fire to make it burn faster
+ (three bad cases of burns reported from this cause
+ alone).
+
+ Gasoline: left near a flame, or anywhere except
+ clear outside the house.
+
+ Gas: lighting oven of gas stove without first
+ opening oven door; leaving gas jet burning near
+ window, where breeze may blow curtains across (five
+ fires started that way during last month).
+
+ Electric wires: loose wires crossing, which often
+ cause fires.
+
+ Bathers: venturing too far out in deep water. In
+ nearly every case, it is the rescuer who drowns.
+ Never take a chance that may cost another's life.
+
+ Safety pins: left open within baby's reach. You all
+ know what happened to Mrs. Fuller's baby girl two
+ weeks ago, all through an open safety pin.
+
+ Hot water and grease: left standing where children
+ may get into them.
+
+ Dogs: left unmuzzled and running loose.
+
+"These are only a few of the common dangers shown in your scouting
+reports. So far, our work has been hunting out these risks and listing
+them. From now on, we'll fall to with a will and set them right as fast
+as we can, in our own homes first and next among our neighbors.
+
+"Just one word of caution before we take up this new patrol duty. Let's
+be careful how we go about setting these things right. Remember, we can
+catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, so let's not give people
+the idea we are criticizing them--just suggesting.
+
+"For instance: if a Safety Scout sees a mop and a pail of scalding water
+on Mrs. Muldoon's back steps and one of her babies in danger of pitching
+into it headfirst, he'd better not walk up and begin to scold about it.
+Mrs. Muldoon may have done that for years without scalding any one yet.
+More likely than not she'd just order you off the place--and go right on
+as before. But if, instead, a Scout steps up and begins playing with
+the baby, he can first get baby out of harm's way and _then_ watch his
+chance to say, 'Baby seems to have his eyes on that pail of hot water,
+Mrs. Muldoon. Two babies over on the west side were scalded to death
+last week; did you hear about it?' Chances are Mrs. Muldoon will be
+around warning all her neighbors before you've been gone ten minutes.
+Get the idea?--honey instead of vinegar."
+
+"Honey works better down in South America, anyhow!" said a deep voice,
+and a tall, handsome man stepped forward, saluted, and shook hands
+cordially with Colonel Sure Pop. He was brown as a berry from the
+tropical sun and he carried his left arm in a sling.
+
+"Uncle--Uncle Jack!" The Dalton twins forgot that the troop was on
+review, forgot Mrs. Muldoon's babies, forgot everything and everybody
+but Uncle Jack. What a surprise! And he knew Sure Pop, too!
+
+"Sure pop, I do!" laughed the explorer, kissing Betty warmly before the
+whole admiring troop. "Here, look out for that lame arm, you rascals!
+Our surgeon told me it would be well in a month, but he was too
+optimistic, for once!" For Bob and Betty were fairly swarming over their
+favorite uncle, home at last from the jungle.
+
+"Nellie," said Uncle Jack to Mrs. Dalton that night, when the Safety
+Scouts were off to bed at last, "those twins of yours are making
+history--do you realize that?"
+
+"Well," said his sister, "they have their faults, like all the rest,
+but they're pretty fine youngsters at that. But, oh, Jack, they're
+growing up so fast!"
+
+"They are, sure enough, like weeds; but their harvest isn't going to be
+any weed crop, now mark my words. I heard most of what was said at their
+patrol review this afternoon before anybody saw me; and on my word,
+Nell, those youngsters have started something bigger than they have any
+idea of, something that no power on earth is going to be able to stop.
+After all, I'm just as pleased that the old chief's spear thrust sent me
+home in time to see the Safety Scouts of America in the making!"
+
+ _A real Scout knows how to take care of himself--and
+ of others._--SURE POP
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+ADVENTURE NUMBER FOURTEEN
+
+SIX TIMELY TIPS
+
+
+Sure Pop and Uncle Jack were sprawled out side by side on the green
+river bank, talking over old times. Bob and Betty were hanging on every
+word.
+
+"My first few months of Safety work among American factories and mills,"
+Sure Pop was saying, "was largely planting. I planted the Safety First
+idea and gave it time to grow. I began with the steel mills; then I
+turned to the railroads, then to the wood-working shops, and so on."
+
+Uncle Jack gazed thoughtfully at the sparkling river. "Well," he said
+at last to Sure Pop, "what results and how?"
+
+"How?" repeated the little Colonel. "First, by putting the idea, Safety
+First, into the mind of every workman we met. Second, by whispering in
+his ear new ways of cutting out accidents--_after_ the Safety First idea
+had had a chance to sink in. Results? Three fourths of the deaths and
+injuries in the steel mills were cut out entirely in six years' time; in
+the railroads, the number of accidents was cut squarely in two in three
+years' time; in other kinds of work--all except one--big reductions all
+along the line."
+
+"Great!" There was no mistaking the admiration in Uncle Jack's voice.
+"What about the one exception--what line was that?"
+
+"It's a certain class of mills that is practically controlled by one
+man, a very able man, but exceedingly self-willed and stubborn. He owns
+a chain of mills from coast to coast, and the rest of the manufacturers
+in his line follow his lead in everything. He has fought the Safety
+First idea from the start--calls it 'one of these new-fangled
+notions'--will have nothing at all to do with it--and he has held back
+the Safety movement in his whole line of work."
+
+"Hm-m-m! Hard nut to crack, eh? What's the old codger's name?"
+
+"Bruce. He's done more to handicap Safety work than any other man in
+the country--and I do believe he's proud of it," said Sure Pop, grimly.
+
+"Bruce--isn't that the man your father works for, Bob?"
+
+Bob nodded. "He has a heart, though"--and he told them how the mill
+owner had come to Chance Carter's aid, and how like a different man he
+had seemed when little Bonnie threw her happy arms around him.
+
+"Queer mixture, isn't he?" said Uncle Jack.
+
+"Yes, he is. But don't you suppose our patrol could do something to
+change his mind?"
+
+Uncle Jack waved the idea aside. "Forget it, Bob, forget it! Don't lose
+sight of what the Colonel told you Scouts yesterday about the right way
+to go at things. Well, the right way to go at Bruce is to leave him
+alone for a while. If he's as prejudiced as all that, interfering would
+only make him worse. He'll come around by and by, won't he, Colonel?"
+
+"All in good time," said Sure Pop. "Your work is cut out for you, Bob,
+as I told you yesterday. Get the Safety First idea well rooted in the
+homes, and then we'll begin on the streets, and get folks in the habit
+of thinking Safety every time they cross the street."
+
+Uncle Jack yawned and stretched himself.
+
+"Can you spare these twins of ours for the day, Colonel? I've a frolic
+of my own I want to borrow them for, if I may."
+
+"Sure pop! Go ahead, sir."
+
+Uncle Jack stepped across the street to a telephone, and the first thing
+Bob and Betty knew, a big red automobile drew up beside them. "Jump in,
+folks--look out for my arm, please. Now--we're off! Goodby, Colonel."
+
+"My, but isn't this glorious!" Betty nestled closer to her uncle as they
+sped along toward the shopping district. "Is this your car, Uncle Jack?"
+
+"For today it is," laughed her uncle. "Today we'll just make believe I
+own the mint. Careful there, driver!"
+
+Forgetful of his lame arm, he jumped to his feet and waved his hand in
+warning. They had been running smoothly along the car tracks, and
+another automobile had cut in ahead of them from around the corner. A
+tow-headed lad of about Bob's age, who was stealing a ride on it,
+holding himself on by main strength as the automobile jounced along over
+the crossing, had just made up his mind he would ride no farther and was
+getting ready to jump. Down he came, kerflop, in the street, stubbing
+his toe as he tried to catch his balance.
+
+Uncle Jack's chauffeur, warned by his shout, gave the steering wheel a
+quick turn--and cleared the boy by a hand's breadth! Uncle Jack sank
+back on the cushions, his eyes flashing.
+
+"Reckless young rascal! Trying to make murderers of us, is he? What are
+you Safety Scouts going to do about the boys' hitching on like that,
+Bob?"
+
+Bob pulled a notebook out of his pocket. "Here's how Sure Pop has
+summed up our patrol reports on street accidents. He calls it--
+
+ SIX TIMELY TIPS ON STREET SAFETY
+
+ Tip 1: Make the street car stop before you step on
+ or off--the car can wait. But step lively!
+
+ Tip 2: Face forward in getting off. Hold the grip
+ iron with your left hand--it's a friend in need.
+ Left foot to the step, right foot to the ground,
+ eyes front!
+
+ Tip 3: Before leaving the car, look both ways for
+ automobiles, wagons, and motor cycles.
+
+ Tip 4: In passing behind a car, first peek around
+ to see what's coming. When carrying an umbrella,
+ peek around that, too.
+
+ Tip 5: Before you hitch on or steal rides on
+ street cars, automobiles, or wagons, better make
+ your will.
+
+ Tip 6: Keep wide awake in getting on and off cars
+ and in crossing streets. Walk fast, _but don't
+ run_. Use all the sense you have; you're likely to
+ need it and to need it quick!
+
+"Those six tips are not guess work either, Uncle Jack. They're boiled
+down from weeks of street scouting by every boy and girl in our
+patrol."
+
+"Those are good, sensible tips," said his uncle. "What use are you going
+to make of them?"
+
+"Well, by the time vacation's over, we will have a special School Safety
+Patrol drilled and ready to get down to business on this particular work
+among the youngsters--to get them out of the habit of hitching on, and
+that sort of thing. Our idea is to begin with the smaller school
+children; there have been a good many bad accidents to them, you see,
+going to and from school. Most of them have to cross the tracks; it's
+altogether too easy for them to get confused and run down by a street
+car or engine or auto."
+
+"That's right, Bob. How are you going to stop it?"
+
+"Why, each Scout in the School Patrol takes charge of the school
+children in his block for one month. It's his job to get them together
+at a convenient corner in the morning, then herd them across the tracks
+and through the crowded streets to school; to do the same thing on their
+way home; and to keep an eye on their games during recess, reporting any
+risky condition to their teachers. We've planned it so this team work
+will not only keep the youngsters from being run over and all that, but
+will also be training them to take care of themselves and keep out of
+danger just like any Safety Scout. How does the idea strike you?"
+
+"Fine! It's a good, practical plan! Makes me wish I were a boy again
+myself. Hello, here we are--out we go!"
+
+"Why, where are we?"
+
+"I'll soon show you." Uncle Jack led the way to the elevator and they
+shot up, up, clear to the roof.
+
+"Hungry?" he asked, as a white-clad waiter showed them to a table. He
+enjoyed the surprise of Bob and Betty; they had never had luncheon
+downtown before. Mr. Dalton's hard-earned wages left no room for such
+celebrations as this. And a roof garden--! No wonder it seemed very
+strange and very grand to the Dalton twins.
+
+They must have spent a good half-hour ordering that meal: it was fun to
+study the big bill of fare and pick out delicious things which they
+"never had at home." Uncle Jack seemed to find it just as much fun as
+they did, and he understood pretty well how they felt as they ate and
+ate, while they gazed out on the roofs of the city spread out below
+them. It wasn't so _very_ many years, you see, since he had been a
+youngster himself!
+
+ _Plant the Safety First idea and watch it grow._
+ --SURE POP
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+ADVENTURE NUMBER FIFTEEN
+
+TWIN UNIFORMS
+
+
+"How nice and cool it is up here!"
+
+Betty, looking very grown-up and quite as if she were used to taking
+luncheon in a roof garden every day, smiled contentedly at Uncle Jack
+over her glass of lemonade.
+
+"Cool as a cucumber," said her uncle. "Hard to realize how sweltering
+hot it is down there in the street, isn't it? Betty, what's _your_
+Safety work going to be when school begins?"
+
+Betty glanced at Bob; she had not yet told even him about her plan.
+"First, I suppose, I'll serve my month on the School Safety Patrol; and
+then--then, I'm going to talk to my teacher about starting Safety Games
+in the lower grades."
+
+"Safety Games!" Bob's tone showed his surprise.
+
+"Yes, Bob. Funny sounding idea, isn't it? But I've thought out a lot of
+games that the kindergarten children can play, games that will be brand
+new to them, and lots of fun, and at the same time will get them into
+the habit of thinking Safety and looking out for themselves on the
+street."
+
+"Tell us one," demanded Bob.
+
+"Well," said Betty, "one of them I call 'Little Safety Scout.' We can
+begin by asking the little folks in one grade what things they ought to
+keep in mind when crossing a busy street. The one that gives the best
+answer is made 'Little Safety Scout.' One of the biggest boys plays he's
+the crossing policeman, other children play street cars, others make
+believe they're automobiles, and so on. The rest are just people trying
+to get across the street, and they have trouble trying to understand
+what the policeman's whistle signals mean, and some get run over, and
+some are saved by the 'Little Safety Scout,' and others show the right
+way to get on and off a car, and all that."
+
+"Well, Betty Dalton," cried Uncle Jack, "you're a regular little witch!
+Why, that's a dandy plan. The first thing you know, you'll have the
+little folks able to take care of themselves on the streets better than
+the grown-ups do!"
+
+"Fine!" chimed in Bob. "And we can give them Sure Pop buttons, too!"
+
+"That's right, we can," said Betty. "We can give buttons to the children
+who pass an easy little Safety First examination after we've played the
+Safety Games a few weeks. And perhaps we might make some Safety posters
+to hang on the schoolroom walls; just big posters in colored crayons,
+with a picture of Sure Pop and one of his Safety mottoes below it in big
+letters,--like, 'Folks that have no wings must use their
+wits,'--something that would make the children remember the point of the
+story longer. Don't you think that would help along?"
+
+Thus the three friends went on planning, till the jolly head waiter
+asked them for the ninth time if they wouldn't have something more, and
+Uncle Jack looked at his watch with a start of surprise.
+
+"Four o'clock! Whew! We must get out of this. We have lots to do yet
+before we go home, and I told the chauffeur to be back here at five.
+Let's stop in the cold-storage room below."
+
+"Is that what makes the roof so cool?" asked Betty, as they looked
+around on the floor below.
+
+"Ha, ha! Not a bad idea--perhaps it does have something to do with it.
+No, this is where the store keeps its furs during the summer months.
+Moths can't stand the cold, you know. Come on, we'll go on down now."
+
+The elevator car was nearly full of people from the roof garden. Betty
+started to step in, hesitated, then turned back. Uncle Jack motioned her
+and Bob in, stepped in after them, and carefully turned so that he faced
+the elevator door.
+
+"That was a risky thing you did just then," he whispered to Betty.
+"Three quarters of all the elevator accidents are due to stepping in or
+out in the wrong way. Never do the thing halfway, you know. Always wait
+till the elevator man stops the car at the floor level and throws the
+door wide open."
+
+Next to them in the elevator stood two boys--cash boys in the store--who
+were fooling and scuffling so close to the door that the elevator man
+cautioned them twice as the car dropped swiftly downward. Finally one of
+them brought his heel down on the other's foot so hard that the other
+jumped backward, forgetting everything else for the pain. Forward went
+his head--bang went his face against the iron grating of the door they
+were just passing.
+
+The elevator stopped with a jerk. They carried the boy out and sent for
+the store doctor. Bob and Betty never had to be reminded, in all the
+years to come, to look sharp when riding in elevators. The memory of
+that bruised and battered face was warning enough.
+
+"It's a dangerous machine," said Uncle Jack as they left the store. "A
+fellow who will scuffle in an elevator is foolish enough for almost
+anything. Here's our next stop," and he showed them into a shop with a
+big sign over the double door:
+
+ UNIFORMS--READY MADE OR TO ORDER
+
+"Uncle Jack must be going to have a new uniform," whispered Betty to her
+twin as the tailor came up with his tape over his shoulders. But it was
+not around their uncle that the tape measure went, it was around Bob!
+
+"Yes, the regulation khaki," Uncle Jack was saying. "Cut and finish it
+just like this one," and he handed the tailor a photograph of Sure Pop.
+
+"Your turn next, Betty," said Uncle Jack, and to Betty's great delight
+and the tailor's surprise, _she_ was measured for a special Safety Scout
+uniform too!
+
+Uncle Jack did not stop there. He bought the twins Safety Scout hats of
+fine, light felt, made for hard service, and he was on the point of
+buying them leather puttees or leggings, but Bob stopped him.
+
+"Canvas leggings are plenty good enough," he said. "The fellows couldn't
+afford leather, most of them, and we want them all to match."
+
+"Canvas it is, then," nodded his uncle, and went on making up the
+outfits. Betty sighed happily as they followed him into another store.
+It all seemed too good to be true! The first thing she knew, they were
+sitting at a glass-topped table.
+
+Uncle Jack mopped his steaming forehead again. "That tailor shop beats
+the jungle all hollow for heat!" he exclaimed. "What kind of ice cream
+do you want, Scouts?"
+
+Betty thought it was time to object. "Oh, Uncle Jack, we've had enough!
+You've done too much for us already!" All the same, she enjoyed the ice
+cream just as much as the others did, and when Uncle Jack tucked a box
+of chocolates under her arm, her cup of joy was full.
+
+"What are you thinking about, Betty?" asked Uncle Jack as the big red
+automobile bore them merrily homeward; for Betty had not said a word for
+blocks and blocks.
+
+She patted Uncle Jack's arm--the well one--with a grateful smile. "I was
+thinking what a perfectly, perfectly _lovely_ day we've had! And
+wishing," she murmured, wistfully, "that Mother had been along too."
+
+"Now that part's all taken care of," said Uncle Jack. "Your mother's
+going out for a spin with me tonight after Baby's asleep; she couldn't
+leave today, she said. She and I will have a good long ride down the
+river front in the moonlight. Be sure you get a good sleep tonight, now,
+you two; I want you to be in good trim for a little exploring party I'm
+planning for tomorrow."
+
+"We'll be up bright and early, ready for anything," Bob told him. "Whew!
+but this has been a whirlwind of a day! Glad you're going to take Mother
+out--that's the only way she'd get a cool breeze tonight, all right!"
+
+"But it can't be as nice as the roof garden, even then!" cried his happy
+twin, as she lifted out her big box of candy and skipped up the front
+steps two at a time.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+ADVENTURE NUMBER SIXTEEN
+
+WHERE SAFETY WAS A STRANGER
+
+
+True to their word, Bob and Betty were up bright and early, ready for
+Uncle Jack's exploring trip.
+
+"We're going to visit one of the big wood-working mills," he explained
+as they left the house after breakfast. "I'm curious to see the result
+of Colonel Sure Pop's Safety patrolling, and it seems to me that will be
+about as interesting a shop as we can begin on. It will be fun to see
+what they're doing to make it safer for the men--perhaps we can get some
+ideas for your outside patrols, Bob."
+
+The twins looked around them sharply as they went into the mill by way
+of its lumber yard. "I don't see anything here that looks dangerous,"
+was Bob's first remark. "Hold on, though--what about those piles of
+lumber? Don't you think they're piled too high to be safe?"
+
+"I can tell you this much," said Uncle Jack, who had been reading up on
+the year's long list of accidents. "The danger of being hit by falling
+or flying objects in mills and factories is the biggest risk in the
+whole country today."
+
+He walked around to the laborers who were piling lumber and began
+talking with the foreman. The twins stepped nearer so that they could
+hear what he was saying.
+
+"They're getting that pile rather high," said Uncle Jack, as if he had
+only just noticed it. "It's beginning to look a bit wobbly on its pins.
+Isn't there danger of its toppling over and hurting somebody?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know," was the foreman's answer. "We do have a few men
+smashed up that way, off and on; it's all in the day's work, though."
+
+Hardly were the words out of his mouth when a heavily loaded wagon in
+passing beside the lumber piles swayed and came squarely up against the
+one the men were working on. With a crash and a clatter the whole thing
+went over. One man jumped clear of the wreck, another slid down with the
+lumber, bruised but not much hurt--and two disappeared under the huge
+mass of falling boards.
+
+The three Safety Scouts stood watching the ambulance, fifteen minutes
+later, as it carried off the two men to the hospital, one with a broken
+arm and a gash over one eye, the other hurt inside so badly that he died
+that night. Both of them had boys and girls of their own--families
+whose living depended on their daily wages at the mill!
+
+"Hard luck for their folks," said Uncle Jack, as the ambulance rumbled
+away. "The Colonel told me yesterday his men had done a lot of
+successful Safety scouting among the wood-working mills. I can't
+understand it. By the way, Bob, that ambulance reminds me: what drill
+are you giving your Safety Scouts on how to call the fire department,
+and the police and the ambulance and so on?"
+
+"We've got that well covered in our Saturday reports, Uncle Jack. Once a
+week each Scout adds to his report the telephone number of the police
+and the fire department--it's usually a number that's easy to remember,
+like 'Main 0' for fire and 'Main 13' for police--as well as the street
+address of the nearest station."
+
+"Bob, how did they happen to choose those numbers?" wondered Betty.
+
+Her brother grinned. "I suppose because after a bad fire there's nothing
+left, and because it's unlucky to fall into the hands of the police!"
+and he cleverly ducked the box Betty aimed at his ear.
+
+Uncle Jack's twinkle didn't last long, though. He was too much puzzled
+over the carelessness he was noticing in this mill, carelessness where
+he had expected to find up-to-date Safety methods. He poked with his
+foot at a board with several ugly nails sticking up in it and jammed
+them carefully down into the ground.
+
+"That's the fourth bad case of upturned nails I've found here already,"
+he said quietly. "There's no end of broken bottles and such trash under
+foot, and just look at that overloaded truck, will you? One sharp curve
+in the track and that load will spill all over the place. Why, these
+chaps don't realize the first thing about Safety, Bob."
+
+They moved on into the engine room. One of the engineer's helpers, a boy
+who looked hardly older than Bob, stood beside a swiftly moving belt,
+pouring something on it out of a tin can. His sleeve was dangling, and
+every time the belt lacing whirled past, it flipped the sleeve like a
+clutching finger trying to jerk his arm into the cruel wheel.
+
+Uncle Jack walked over for a word with the engineer, a fat, jolly
+looking man who seemed well satisfied with life. "Do your helpers often
+put belt dressing on while the belt is running?" he asked.
+
+The jolly engineer was plainly surprised. "Why, they never do it any
+other time!" he exclaimed. "Why do you ask?"
+
+"Only," said the explorer, dryly, "because there are several hundred men
+killed in just that way every year--and most of them have families.
+Don't you put guards around any of your belts in this mill, either?"
+
+Again that puzzled look in the engineer's eyes. "No, not here," he
+answered slowly. "There was some talk about putting them on, but nothing
+came of it. It wouldn't be a bad idea, either; every now and then some
+poor fellow loses a hand or an arm. Last spring a new man from out in
+the yards was walking through here, and the wind blew his sleeve too
+near the belt. It yanked him clear in between the belt and
+pulley--smashed him up so he didn't live more'n a couple of hours. That
+certainly was hard luck."
+
+"Luck!" snorted Uncle Jack, when the three were out of hearing. "A
+moving belt is almost as dangerous as a can of gunpowder! Yet these men
+call it luck when it takes off an arm or snuffs out a life. It's
+disgusting."
+
+All through the plant they found the same state of affairs--careless
+men, unguarded machinery, guesswork everywhere. In the machine shop they
+found men and boys cleaning machines that were running at top speed. Any
+one could see how easily the rags and soft cotton waste they were using
+could catch in the moving parts and draw a hand or an arm into the
+flying wheels.
+
+"I noticed in the accident reports of one single state," Uncle Jack told
+Betty, "that more than five hundred people were hurt in that very way,
+by cleaning machines that were moving. Half of them lost fingers and
+many lost their hands or arms. No sensible workman, these days, treats
+his machine as anything but downright dangerous as long as it's
+running."
+
+The buzz saws fascinated the twins. They felt as if they could stand all
+day long and listen to the drone of the saw as it ate its way into the
+clean white boards, snarling like an angry dog when its teeth struck a
+knot in the wood. There were a good many of these saws in the big, long
+room; now and then they would get to singing together like a music class
+at school and then they would drop out of tune again.
+
+"Not a saw guard in the place," shouted Bob in Uncle Jack's ear, for the
+saws drowned out his ordinary tone.
+
+But Uncle Jack's keen eyes had already caught sight of some metal guards
+hung up on the wall here and there. "They've got them," he corrected,
+"but they are not making any use of them." He stepped up to one of the
+saws and spoke to the man who was running it. "Why don't you keep the
+guard on your saw?"
+
+"Aw, those things are a nuisance," said the man. "Yes, we're supposed to
+keep 'em on, but they'd be in the way--we couldn't get the work out so
+fast with them."
+
+"That's queer," said Uncle Jack. "In a good many mills like this they've
+found that a man using a good saw guard turns out more work than
+ever--because he's so much more free in using his hands, I suppose."
+
+The man grunted, but did not answer. On their way to the door, the
+Safety Scouts spied, clear back in one corner, a man who really did have
+his saw guard in use. "And a rattling lot of work he's turning out,
+too," said Bob, after the three had watched him a while from a distance.
+The neat metal guard came clear down over the murderous saw teeth, so
+that no matter how much his fingers happened to be in the way, they were
+safe.
+
+"Let's ask him why he uses his saw guard when the others won't," said
+Uncle Jack. He stepped nearer the silent workman and then--he saw the
+reason. Turning to Bob and Betty, he tapped his left hand with his right
+and jerked his head toward the man beside the saw. The twins walked
+around to where they could get a look at the workman's left hand. Then
+they understood. There was nothing left of the fingers but the stub of
+one, and the thumb!
+
+"Easy enough to see why that one man was using his saw guard, eh?" said
+Uncle Jack to Sure Pop that night.
+
+"Nothing easier," said the little Colonel. "A burnt child dreads the
+fire, you know. Not much Safety First idea noticeable in that mill, was
+there?"
+
+"Colonel, that's just what I don't understand. I thought you said
+yesterday your Safety Scouts had done good work among the wood-working
+mills, but if that's a sample--"
+
+"It isn't," was the quiet answer. "Do you happen to know who's the
+biggest stockholder in that mill?"
+
+Uncle Jack stared. "Surely not--not Bruce?"
+
+"You've guessed it."
+
+Uncle Jack gave a long, low whistle of surprise. "But I had no idea he
+owned wood-working mills too."
+
+"This is the only one. It's out of his line, I'll admit--but it goes to
+show his bitter prejudice against the Safety First movement, doesn't it?
+He'll come around by and by, never fear. All in good time, my friend,
+all in good time."
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+ADVENTURE NUMBER SEVENTEEN
+
+GIVING THE OTHER FELLOW A SQUARE DEAL
+
+
+The Dalton twins had something on their minds. Mother felt it. Uncle
+Jack felt it. Every now and then they forgot to go on eating their
+breakfast; and when a Dalton went that far, as their uncle remarked,
+things were getting very bad indeed.
+
+Betty sat and fidgeted. Bob looked as if he would like to pop one
+question at his uncle, but he managed to hold it in. Finally Betty slid
+down from her chair, went boldly around to Uncle Jack, and whispered
+something in his ear. How he threw back his handsome head and laughed!
+
+"Betty, you're a regular mind reader! Why, we're going down to try them
+on this very morning, and I was just going to tell you to get ready,
+but you were too quick for me!"
+
+Two hours later Betty, looking very spruce in her new Safety Scout
+uniform, was dancing up and down before the mirrors while Bob's blouse
+was having the buttons set over a bit.
+
+"That boy," said the tailor, looking at him with bulging eyes, "has
+grown smaller since this uniform was measured!"
+
+"If you'd seen the luncheon he tucked away, just before we came over
+that day to be measured," laughed Uncle Jack, "you'd only wonder that
+those buttons won't have to be set back at least a foot! Now, where are
+the trousers?"
+
+"They are up in the shop. Wait, I'll get them. What? You'd like to come
+along? Up this way, then."
+
+On the second floor they found themselves in a big room that looked like
+a forest of sewing machines, humming and clicking so fast that at first
+the twins were fairly bewildered. Girls who, it seemed, could hardly be
+older than Betty were bending over their machines, sewing away as if for
+dear life. Most of them did not even look up from their work as the
+visitors came through.
+
+"The young man's trousers are in this next room," said the tailor,
+leading the way to a heavy iron door which separated the two rooms on
+that floor.
+
+"What's the idea of this iron door?" asked Uncle Jack. "To keep a fire
+from spreading from one department into the other?"
+
+"Exactly so. That big, thick fire wall goes straight through the
+building from top to bottom--cuts it in two. Suppose a fire breaks out
+here on the piecework side: the foreman just opens this fire door and
+shoos the boys and girls right through, like a lot of chickens. Then he
+shuts the fire door tight, and they are safe. That big fire we had here
+four years ago taught us something. So when the owner rebuilt it for us,
+he built it right."
+
+The big room on the other side of the fire wall was crowded almost as
+full of workers as the first one. The main difference was that there
+were more boys and men, and that more sewing was being done by hand.
+Bob's khaki trousers were quickly found and tried on--a perfect fit.
+
+"We'll give Bob a Patrol Leader's arm badge--two white bars of braid
+below his left shoulder," said Uncle Jack. "Betty will get one bar for
+the present, I understand. There are some badges yet to come, Colonel
+Sure Pop says."
+
+Bob and Betty looked at each other, too pleased to talk.
+
+The four were walking downstairs for a look at the other floors of the
+big tailor shop when the noon whistle blew. R-r-rip--slam--bang! A
+torrent of rattle-brained boys came tearing pell mell down the stairs
+like a waterfall over a dam. Most of them came pelting down three steps
+at a jump, but on one of the landings somebody stumbled, and the yelling
+boys piled up in a squirming, kicking heap.
+
+"Hey! WAIT!" No one would ever have suspected the mild-mannered tailor
+of having such a foghorn of a voice! The rush from the upper floors
+slowed up at once, and Uncle Jack and Bob helped the fallen lads pick
+themselves up. But the boy at the bottom, a little fellow with a thin,
+pinched face that looked as if he had never had half enough to eat, nor
+even enough fresh air, lay there moaning softly.
+
+Bob knew that queer, unnatural angle of the boy's right arm, which lay
+awkwardly stretched out beside him, as if it had never quite matched his
+left. The arm was broken.
+
+"Here, here!" roared the tailor, gently picking the little fellow up and
+carrying him to the elevator. "Will you crazy fellows never learn? Only
+last week, somebody hollered 'Fire!' just to see the other fellows jump
+up and run, and broke that poor little Levinski's collar bone! And now
+look at this!"
+
+"The old fellow's right on that score," was Uncle Jack's remark as the
+twins followed him to the street car, each hugging tight a big
+pasteboard box with a brand new Safety Scout uniform inside it. "Those
+lads meant no particular harm, but that certainly was about as far from
+a square deal as one fellow can give another. These 'practical jokers'
+who will yell 'Fire!' or run over a boy smaller than themselves--well,
+if a Boy Scout had no more sense than that, he'd be drummed out of the
+service!"
+
+Once on the way home, when the car stopped at the corner, he pointed up
+to a fire escape on a big flat building. "There's your flower-pot risk
+over again, Betty. Even worse, for this time they're on the fire escape
+steps where folks would fall over head first in case of fire. And see
+that girl leaning against that rickety old porch railing on the third
+floor! Certainly there's plenty in sight for a Safety Scout to do!"
+
+That afternoon they visited a large machine shop across the river. To
+their great delight, Bob and Betty were allowed to wear their new Safety
+Scout uniforms, leggings and all. They stood very straight as they
+waited for their companion to get a permit at the Company's office.
+
+"Those new uniforms are going to be about as good an 'ad' for Safety
+First as anything we could have," remarked Uncle Jack, leading the way
+into the big machine shop. He had caught the admiring glances that had
+followed them from the older people and the longing looks that the boys
+and girls had sent after them all the way over.
+
+"We haven't done our 'Day's Boost for Safety' yet, though," said Betty.
+"I don't know but we ought to do our good turn every morning before we
+start out on any trip--I just hate not to get my button right side up
+till so late in the day!"
+
+"Those girls have pretty neat looking uniforms of their own, haven't
+they?" said Bob, a little later, as they gazed down a long row of punch
+presses which were pouring out shining streams of aluminum pin trays.
+"What do they wear them for--just to look pretty?"
+
+"You wouldn't have thought so," laughed the forewoman, "if you could
+have seen how they fought the first caps and aprons we tried to get them
+to wear. They _were_ homely things, even if they were life savers. So we
+kept at it till we got something so trim and pretty that the girls would
+rather wear it than not."
+
+"Life savers?" repeated Betty. "How could caps and aprons save lives?
+Oh--by not catching in the machinery?"
+
+"Just so. It's easy for a girl's hair to be blown into the machines, or
+for a braid to swing against a whirling shaft, you see. Oh yes, we had
+several girls killed that way, before we tried this uniform. They used
+to wear dresses with baggy sleeves,--ragged ones, sometimes. Rings and
+bracelets are bad, too; and even these aprons, you'll notice, are
+buttoned back so they can't fly out against the wheels. Yes, the girls
+all like the idea now. The caps keep their hair from getting dusty or
+mussed up. Besides, we find it saves a good many girls' feelings, too,
+having them all dressed so much alike."
+
+The same good sense was shown in the other departments, in the working
+clothes worn by the men and boys.
+
+"You won't find a man in this room with a necktie on," the foreman told
+them. "These are the biggest punch presses in our whole shop. A while
+ago one of the men got his necktie caught between the cogwheels and he
+was drawn into the machine head first. That was the end of that sort of
+thing in _this_ shop!
+
+"Now, as you'll see, long sleeves and ragged or baggy overalls are
+things of the past. If a man does wear a long sleeve, he keeps it rolled
+up where it can't catch and cost him a hand or an arm.
+
+"Watch the men and boys, and you'll see how careful they are not to look
+around while their machines are running. Before they start their
+machines, you'll find them looking all around to see there's nobody near
+who might get caught in the wheels or belt. These workmen are just as
+anxious to give the other fellow a square deal as anybody could be, once
+they catch the Safety First idea. It took some of them a long while to
+learn never to fool with the other fellow's machine--that's always
+dangerous, you know, just like a machine that's out of order. Our
+pressmen wouldn't think of starting up a machine which was out of order,
+or which they didn't understand--they'd report it to me at once."
+
+"What has been the result of all this Safety training--has it got the
+men to 'thinking Safety,' so you don't have so many accidents?" asked
+Uncle Jack.
+
+The foreman's face glowed with pride. "Why, it's got so now, sir, that
+even the youngsters are too wise to scuffle or play jokes on each other
+here in the shop. They've come to see how easy it is to fall against
+dangerous machinery or down a shaft or stairway. And as for throwing
+things at each other, the way they used to during the noon hour--nothing
+doing any more in that line.
+
+"Would you believe it, we haven't had a bad accident in this shop since
+a year ago last July. That was when one of the boys on a punch press got
+the die clogged and tried to dig it out with his fingers instead of
+using a hook. That's about the last set of fingers this shop has lost;
+yes, sir. Before that, there was hardly a week went by but we had
+several hands crippled, and often somebody killed. Oh, this Safety First
+work is wonderful,--it's making things a lot safer for the working man!"
+
+Uncle Jack told the kindly foreman what the twins were doing in Safety
+patrol work. Bob and Betty could see how proud the man was of the
+splendid Safety showing his shop was making. "And it's a fine pair of
+Scout uniforms you and the little lady have," he called after them.
+"More power to you both--and to the Safety Scouts of America!"
+
+"You seem very much interested in everything in these shops, Bob," said
+his uncle, who could hardly drag him away.
+
+"You'd better believe I am!" cried the boy, warmly. "As soon as I get
+through school, I'm going to get a job in one of these factories
+and--well, I'm trying to make up my mind which shop it shall be!"
+
+ _One thing you always owe the other fellow--a
+ square deal._--SURE POP
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+ADVENTURE NUMBER EIGHTEEN
+
+AN ADVENTURE IN SAFETY
+
+
+Betty told Sure Pop what Bob had said about getting a job in one of the
+big mills by and by, and the little Colonel remembered it a few weeks
+later when he was showing several of the Safety Scouts through the steel
+mills.
+
+"Do you think it will be one of these mills you'll pick out for your
+first job?"
+
+"Well, I don't know, now. It's a pretty big, lonesome sort of place for
+a fellow like me, Sure Pop, and there don't seem to be so many fellows
+of my own age here as in some of the other factories."
+
+Betty and Joe and Chance followed Bob's eyes around the big steel mill
+yards. They knew how he felt. It was a lonesome looking place till you
+got used to it, in spite of the thousands of men who swarmed around
+them. The queer, raw smell of the reddish iron ore added to the feeling,
+too.
+
+Away down in the big ore boats along the docks, gangs of big, brawny
+workmen strained and sweated, filling the iron buckets that traveled up
+the wire cables to the ore dumps. Others were trucking the ore to the
+furnaces, while a swarm of little switch engines panted and puffed back
+and forth over the network of steel rails.
+
+The steel works covered many acres of ground, and, shut off as they were
+by high fences, seemed almost like another world. The roar of the
+furnaces and the din of steel on steel made Betty and the boys feel
+rather confused at first. "I should think all these men just over from
+the old country would get mixed up, so many of them not understanding a
+single word of English," said Betty to their guide.
+
+"Yes, we have to be mighty careful," said the man, who was one of the
+Safety men who gave all his time to making the steel mills safer for the
+thousands of workmen. "We print this little book of Safety Rules in all
+the different languages, so that each new man can study it and find out
+how to do his day's work without getting into danger."
+
+"Wow! what's that?" Joe's black eyes opened very wide as he pointed to a
+great ball of fire that rose from one of the furnace stacks, floated a
+little way like a balloon, and then burst into a sheet of flame.
+
+"Just the gas from the blast furnace--regular Fourth of July fireworks,
+isn't it? I remember how queer those gas bubbles used to look to me when
+I first came to work here."
+
+He waited while his visitors stared for a few minutes at the fiery
+clouds, then led the way to the blast furnaces. They went through two or
+three big buildings, all of them fairly alive with hurrying, sweating
+laborers. But in spite of the seeming confusion all around them, Bob
+noticed how carefully the aisles and passageways were kept free and
+clear of anything the hurrying men might stumble over.
+
+"We simply have to do it," explained the steel man. "Before we woke up
+to the importance of never leaving anything in the way where it might be
+stumbled over, we had more broken arms and legs every month than you
+could shake a stick at. Now it's different; it's as much as a man's job
+is worth to leave anything lying in the passageways for his fellow
+workmen to stumble and fall over."
+
+"I saw some white lines painted on the floor of that last room we came
+through, the one where all those castings were stacked up in rows," said
+Chance. "Was that what they were for? Great scheme, isn't it? And as
+simple as falling off a log!"
+
+"Simple? Sure--most of these things are simple enough, once you think of
+them," agreed their guide. "It took perhaps an hour of one man's time
+and a gallon or two of white paint to paint those dead-lines along the
+sides--and many's the man who has been saved weeks in the hospital by
+those same white lines."
+
+The five friends followed him into the foundry department. Hardly had
+they stepped through the doorway, when the clang of a big gong overhead
+scattered a group of laborers who were piling heavy castings on flat
+cars.
+
+Five pairs of eyes looked up as the five Safety Scouts turned to see
+where the gong was. Away up above them on a track that went from one end
+of the long room to the other, they saw something like an oddly shaped
+freight engine running along with a heavy wire cable dangling toward the
+floor. The big, strong cable was carrying a load of several tons of
+steel castings as easily as a boy carries in an armful of wood. "And
+with a whole lot less fuss and bother!" said Betty, with a sly look at
+Brother Bob.
+
+"When a man hears that gong overhead," said the guide, "he knows what it
+means even before he looks up. That's what is called a traveling crane.
+It runs back and forth on those overhead tracks, wherever the crane
+driver wants to pick up or drop his load. He kicks that gong with his
+heel, just like the motorman on the street car, and it gives warning to
+the workmen below just as plainly as if it yelled out, 'Look out, below!
+Here comes a load that might spill on your heads!'"
+
+"Sounds exactly like a street-car gong," said Betty.
+
+The steel man smiled. "It ought to--it was made for use on a street car.
+Watch sharp when the crane comes back this way and you'll see the gong
+fastened right up under the cab floor. See? We tried whistles for a
+while, and automobile horns, too; but this plain, everyday street-car
+gong beats 'em all. A man doesn't have to understand English to know
+what _that_ sound means!"
+
+"It must have made a good deal of difference in the number of
+accidents," said Sure Pop, "with so many men working underneath those
+cranes right along."
+
+"Did it? Well, I should say so! That's another little thing that's as
+simple as A B C, but it saves lives and broken bones just the same.
+Sometimes I think we get to thinking too much about the big things,
+Colonel, and not enough about these little, everyday ideas that spell
+Safety to all these thousands of men who look to us for a square deal."
+
+Sure Pop reached up to say something in Bob's ear as they went on to the
+chipping yard, where long rows of men were trimming down the rough steel
+castings with chisels driven by compressed-air hammers.
+
+"Did you ever see anything like it, Bob, the way this 'square deal' and
+'fair play' idea gets into their systems, once they wake up to the
+possibilities of Safety First?"
+
+"It certainly does," said Bob. "I thought of that, too. It's what that
+tailor told the boys in the clothing factory, the day we got our
+uniforms, and it's just what the foreman in that machine shop told us,
+too."
+
+"Yes, sir," said Sure Pop, "the spirit of fair play means everything to
+a fellow who's any good at all--it's the very life of the Boy Scout law,
+you know."
+
+Joe was looking hard at the chippers.
+
+"Every one of those men wear glasses! Isn't that queer!"
+
+"It's all the difference between a blind man and a wage earner," was the
+way the steel man looked at it. "When those steel chips fly into a man's
+eyes it's all over but the sick money." He turned to little Sure Pop
+again. "There it is again, Colonel--another of the simplest ideas a man
+could imagine--just putting goggles on our chippers and emery wheel
+workers--but it has saved hundreds and hundreds of eyes, and every eye
+or pair of eyes means some man's living--and the living of a family."
+
+"Splendid idea," nodded the little Colonel--just as if he, the Spirit of
+Safety, had not thought it all out years before, and put it into the
+minds of men! "Do you ever have any trouble getting the men to wear
+them?"
+
+"Plenty! Most of the men treated it as a joke at first. Then, gradually,
+they began to notice that the men who wore theirs on their _hats_ (the
+rule is that they must wear goggles while at this work or lose their
+jobs), those were the men who lost their eyes. Several of the first men
+to be blinded after the new rule was posted were those very ones, the
+chaps that had made the most fun of the goggles. Then the others began
+to wake up.
+
+"Over in my office, I've several hundred pairs of goggles that have had
+one or both lenses smashed by flying bits of steel--and every pair has
+saved an eye, in some cases both eyes. Seems sort of worth while, eh,
+Colonel?"
+
+It was an enthusiastic group of Safety Scouts that passed out through
+the big steel mill gates and started home in the mellow September
+twilight. "Oh, I think it's wonderful," cried Betty, as they talked over
+what they had seen, "perfectly wonderful, Sure Pop, that such little
+things can save so many lives!"
+
+"But I don't see why you call a trip like this 'an adventure,'" broke in
+Chance, who had never been along on any of the twins' Safety Scouting
+trips before. "We didn't see an accident or an explosion or anything!"
+
+Colonel Sure Pop gave Chance one of his wise smiles. "That's the best
+part of the whole trip, as you'll see when you've been at it as long as
+I have. The most delightful adventure a lover of fair play can possibly
+have to look back on, my boy, is one just like what we've had today--a
+real, live adventure in Safety!"
+
+ _The spirit of fair play is the very life of the
+ Scout Law._--SURE POP
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+ADVENTURE NUMBER NINETEEN
+
+ONE DAY'S BOOST FOR SAFETY
+
+
+October had come and gone in busy school days and even busier Safety
+Scouting trips, all but the last day. For it was the morning of
+Hallowe'en,--and the Dalton twins' birthday.
+
+"Twelve years old, eh?" said Father, at the breakfast table. "Well,
+well, how time flies, Nell! Stand up here, you Safety Scouts, and let's
+have a look at you. I declare, no one would suspect Bob of being a day
+under fifteen, would he, Jack?"
+
+"I'd hate to have him haul off and hit me with that fist of his!"
+laughed Uncle Jack. "How are you going to celebrate the day, Scouts?"
+
+"As if any one need ask!" smiled Mother. "Today's the day Bob takes his
+entering test and joins the Boy Scouts, and Betty joins the Camp Fire
+Girls. Just think--big enough for that! Good thing it's Saturday,
+Betty."
+
+"What are you going to do--start out to capture all the honor medals?"
+
+"Well, I hope to get a few, by and by," admitted Bob, modestly, but with
+a determined gleam in his eye. "I'll be just a tenderfoot to start with,
+you know. But I'm hoping it won't be so terribly long before I can
+qualify as a first-class Scout."
+
+"Hm-m-m!" muttered their uncle, winking at Mr. Dalton over the twins'
+heads. For he realized what Bob and Betty did not, that the practical,
+everyday Safety scouting the twins had done had already gone far toward
+qualifying them, not only for Boy Scout and Camp Fire Girl honors, but
+for practical Safety work all the rest of their lives. There is no age
+limit in the Safety Scouts of America.
+
+They were wearing their handsome new uniforms when Chance Carter came
+over to get some scouting tips from Bob. Chance was going around without
+his crutches now, for the broken leg seemed to be as strong and well as
+ever.
+
+Chance had his heart set on a Safety Scout uniform like Bob's. "Dad says
+he'll get me one as soon as I do something to earn it," he told the
+twins. "I'm going to put in all day today scouting for something that
+will earn me that uniform--and I want you two to think up some stunt
+that will win it, _sure_!"
+
+The twins were eager to get ready for their entrance tests, but it
+seemed only fair to give their friend his chance, too. So they sat and
+thought hard, while the golden minutes flew past.
+
+"I can't seem to think of anything worth while today," said Betty. "Why
+not hunt for a live wire and report it, the way Bob did?"
+
+"Not much use on a day like this," objected Bob. "That was the morning
+after the big windstorm, when wires were down all over town. I'll tell
+you what you might do, Chance: you might patrol the roads on the edge of
+town. You may run across a broken culvert, or a shaky bridge, or
+something."
+
+"And you might patrol the river bank and watch for a chance to fish
+somebody out of the river," added Betty. "There are lots of children
+playing down by the river every Saturday, you know."
+
+"Now," said Bob, when to their great relief Chance Carter had hurried
+off to begin his day's scouting for Safety, "now, we've got to hustle,
+or we'll be late for those examinations. Come along, Betty."
+
+"Wait till I turn my Safety button upside down," was his sister's
+answer. "It seems a shame to go to the Boy Scout and Camp Fire Girls
+tests with our Safety buttons wrong side up, doesn't it? I feel almost
+like waiting till we've managed to do our 'One Day's Boost for Safety,'
+Bob. Don't you suppose we'd better, after all?"
+
+"Oh, now, Betty, come _on_! If we can't do any better, we can count our
+patrolling hints to Chance as our work for Safety this time--certainly
+that took enough longer than our day's boost usually does!"
+
+Though Betty scoffed at the idea of their talk with Chance being work
+for Safety, Bob had spoken more truly than they knew.
+
+All forenoon long Chance Carter patrolled the different roads leading
+into town. By noon he was so hot and tired that he plodded on till he
+came to Red Bridge, as the boys all called the old bridge that spanned
+the river where it crossed Bruce's Road, the short cut to Bruce's Mills.
+Here he managed to find a shady spot on the grassy river bank and sat
+down to eat the lunch he had brought along.
+
+"What luck!" he grumbled to himself. "Everything's so dis-_gust_-ing-ly
+safe!" The way he bit off the syllables showed how tired and
+disappointed he was.
+
+He threw the crumbs from his luncheon into the water, hoping the fish
+would rise for them; but even the fish were not at all accommodating,
+this sunny Hallowe'en. For a while he amused himself by shying stones at
+the weather-beaten DANGER sign which was Bruce's only reply to the City
+Council's action condemning Red Bridge as unsafe. The bridge was really
+on Bruce's land, and nobody knew it better than the great mill owner
+himself. So, while the public wondered why the city did not build a
+newer and stronger bridge, Bruce had stubbornly insisted to the road
+commissioner, "Oh, that bridge'll hold a while longer," and was putting
+off spending the money for a new bridge just as long as he could.
+
+Meanwhile the farmers from that part of the country had kept on using
+the shaky bridge as a short cut to town by way of Bruce's Mills. One of
+them was driving up to the bridge now. Lying on his elbow by the river's
+edge, Chance idly watched the old bridge quiver and quake as the light
+horse and buggy dragged lazily across.
+
+Suddenly something went kerflop into the water, like a big fish jumping.
+Chance sat bolt upright, staring at the dark shadows under the bridge.
+There it was again! And this time he saw it was no fish, but a second
+brick which had rotted away from the bridge supports underneath the
+farther end.
+
+"Phew!" whistled Chance to himself, now fully aroused. "If a light rig
+like that shakes the bricks loose, the old thing must be rottener than
+it looks! What would a loaded wagon do, I wonder?"
+
+He carefully climbed up under the bridge to see just how bad it really
+was, and then climbed out again in a hurry. The whole middle support had
+crumbled away. Red Bridge was barely hanging on the weakened brickwork
+at the far end, ready to plunge into the river with the next heavy load
+that came along!
+
+Bruce, in the meanwhile, was getting impatient. He sat at his desk in
+the little office, signing papers as fast as he could shove his pen
+across the pages. He glanced again at his watch and gave his call button
+a savage punch with his big, blunt forefinger. A buzzer snarled in the
+outer office, and a nervous looking secretary jumped for the private
+office as suddenly as if the buzzer had stung him.
+
+"Why isn't that car here?" snapped the great man.
+
+"I--I don't understand it, sir. It should have been here half an hour
+ago. Jennings is always so punctual," stammered the clerk.
+
+"Humph! Call up the house and see if they've gone back for any reason.
+Bonnie told me she'd call for me with the car at five o'clock."
+
+The clerk hurried to the telephone, while Bruce paced his office. "If
+that chauffeur has let anything happen to Bonnie, I'll--"
+
+If Bruce had not cared more for his little golden-haired daughter than
+for anything else in the world, he never would have thought such a
+thing, much less said it; for he had had Jennings for years, and knew
+him for the safest, steadiest of drivers. But he scowled when the clerk
+hurried back to report that Jennings, with Bonnie in the biggest
+automobile, had left for the office almost an hour before.
+
+Throwing his light coat over his arm, the big mill owner slammed down
+his rolltop desk and dashed out to the sidewalk, straining his eyes for
+a glimpse of the big automobile and Bonnie's flying curls. As he stood
+waiting on the curb, fuming at the delay, suddenly he heard a voice that
+sent his heart up into his throat.
+
+"Daddy! Oh, Daddy, here we are!" The big automobile swept swiftly up to
+him--from the opposite direction!
+
+"My Bonnie!" The big man snatched the dimpled, smiling girl into his
+strong arms and held her there.
+
+In the excitement of the moment, Jennings interrupted his employer as
+the mill owner started to question him sternly as to the cause of the
+delay. Bonnie, too, broke in with her version of the story, and together
+they told him how a punctured tire had held them up fifteen minutes just
+as they were leaving the house in plenty of time.
+
+They told him how, to avoid being late at the office, Jennings had taken
+the old short cut across to the mills, by the way of Red Bridge, only to
+be halted by a lad of fourteen who waved a red handkerchief at them and
+barred the way across the bridge in spite of the chauffeur's argument
+and threats.
+
+They told him how a heavy lumber wagon, in which three farm hands were
+rattling home from the city, had come bouncing along to the other side
+of the river and how the men had howled down the boy's wild warnings and
+entreaties as they bowled on to Red Bridge as fast as their horses could
+go.
+
+Bruce's stern face went white as his little daughter, shuddering at the
+awful memory of it, told how the bridge had gone crashing down into the
+river--men, horses, and all; how the boy who had tried so hard to warn
+them had almost given his own life trying to drag the drunken farm hands
+from the swift-running current; how two of the men had never come up
+again; and how the third, towed to shore by the half-drowned boy a
+quarter mile below, had been laid face down on the river bank as soon as
+the boy could catch his own breath long enough to get the water out of
+the man's lungs and start him to breathing again.
+
+Still clasping Bonnie tightly to him, her father got into the
+automobile. "Home, Jennings. Why, what makes these cushions so wet?"
+
+"Oh," said Bonnie, "that's where that nice boy sat while we were taking
+the almost drowned man to the doctor's. Then we took the nice boy
+home--he was so wet and shivery."
+
+"Take us there first, Jennings, then home."
+
+The big car whirled swiftly back to Chance Carter's house. Bruce found
+Chance with his hair still wet, but triumphant. He was telling his
+father exactly how he wanted his new Safety Scout uniform made, patch
+pockets and all!
+
+From him Bruce got the whole story, clear down to the scouting hints
+from Bob and Betty that had started him off that morning. The mill owner
+took Mr. Carter aside and made him promise to send the bill for that
+uniform to Bruce's Mills. "Where do this other boy and the girl live?"
+he asked, as he and Bonnie got back into the machine. "All right,
+Jennings, we'll stop there next."
+
+"I think, sir," suggested Jennings, "that must be the same boy and girl
+we took home from Turner Hall last Fourth--the boy who put the splint on
+this other lad's broken leg, sir. It's the same house, anyway."
+
+Sure enough, when they drew up at the curb, there were Bob and Betty in
+their Safety Scout uniforms, just going in to their birthday supper.
+They were going to have a big double cake, with lots of frosting and
+with twenty-four green candles on it--green for Safety, Betty
+explained--and they were so excited over having passed their
+examinations with such high marks, that it was some time before the big
+man could make them understand what he was getting at.
+
+"What I want to know," persisted Bruce, "is how you ever came to put
+that Carter boy up to such a stunt as that. What difference did it make
+to _you_?"
+
+"Why," Betty told him, "we simply had to help him get a start for his
+uniform and his Safety First button. But we couldn't do much because we
+didn't have time. You see this is our birthday, and we had to go for our
+examinations." Before Bruce left they had given him _their_ whole story,
+too, and a good deal more than they had intended telling him, forgetting
+what Colonel Sure Pop had told Uncle Jack about the way Bruce had been
+holding back the Safety First work from Maine to California.
+
+Bruce said little as he listened to their story, but he did some quick
+thinking. So this was the sort of thing he had fought so long and so
+stubbornly--this "Boost for Safety" talk which he had called
+"new-fangled theory," but to which he owed the life of his own little
+girl!
+
+As they talked, two Scouts came into the front hall to remind the twins
+that their birthday supper was waiting, but Bruce was too interested to
+see them. Quick at reading signs, as all good Scouts are, Colonel Sure
+Pop and Uncle Jack watched and listened for a moment, then smilingly
+went back to the supper table.
+
+"You were right, Colonel, as usual," said Uncle Jack, heartily. "Bruce
+is coming around. He'll be the biggest Safety Booster in the whole
+United States before morning!"
+
+"Sure pop!" exulted the dapper little Colonel. "I'll have to wire my
+King about this day's work!"
+
+ * * * * *
+
+It was long after Bonnie's bedtime, and the nurse waiting in the hallway
+was beginning to wonder if her little mistress was never coming
+upstairs. On the avenue outside, in the soft, mellow Hallowe'en breeze,
+jack o' lanterns and soot bags were still being paraded up and down,
+horns blowing, rattles clattering. Two street urchins, bolder than the
+rest, crept up to the great iron gate in front of the Bruce mansion and
+vainly struggled to lift it off its hinges. Still the mill owner sat
+before the fire, Bonnie on his knee. He could not bear to let her go
+tonight, even to bed.
+
+In the flames dancing on the hearth, the big man was seeing
+visions--visions of the Safety First work that would be started tomorrow
+morning in every mill in the whole Bruce chain. "I'll telegraph every
+manager to get busy on Safety work at once if he wants to hold his job,"
+he thought to himself. "I won't lose another day!" For after hearing
+from the Dalton twins and from Chance Carter the way _their_ spare time
+was spent, his own work in the world seemed suddenly very small and
+mean. Here he--Bruce the rich, Bruce the powerful, with the safety of
+thousands of lives in the hollow of his hand--had been holding back the
+great work which these striplings had been steadily, patiently--yes, and
+successfully--building up!
+
+"I'll send those three youngsters each a copy of my telegram in the
+morning," he muttered, looking more eager and enthusiastic than he had
+looked for many a day. "I'll write across the bottom of each telegram,
+'_The Safety Scouts of America did this!_' And the wonderful part of it
+is," he added, "that it's only what any boy and girl could do, every day
+of their lives. I wonder why somebody didn't start this Safety Scout
+idea long, long ago!"
+
+ * * * * *
+
+Over in the Dalton cottage, only a few blocks away, Bob and Betty were
+going upstairs to bed.
+
+"Many, many happy returns of the day!" whispered Betty to her brother as
+she kissed him good night.
+
+"Same to you, and many of 'em! But our 'One Day's Boost for Safety'
+didn't amount to much today, did it, Betty?" For Bob and Betty had yet
+to hear of Chance Carter's adventures, and Bruce had given them no hint.
+
+"No, it didn't--not unless what we told Chance gave him a start toward a
+Safety Scout uniform," said Betty, sleepily. "Never mind, though, Bob,"
+she added. "We'll try to do better tomorrow, if we didn't get much done
+today."
+
+ * * * * *
+
+But over in the big stone house on the avenue, the silent man with the
+little golden-haired girl in his arms thought differently of their day's
+work.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+HOW CAN YOU TELL A GOOD SCOUT?
+
+_In school_
+
+
+ _He keeps to the right on walks, in halls, going
+ up and down stairs._
+
+ _He goes up and down stairs one step at a time._
+
+ _He looks where he runs._
+
+ _He doesn't jostle in a crowd._
+
+ _He doesn't bully the little fellows._
+
+ _He sees that the little chaps have a fair chance
+ on the playground and that they don't get hurt._
+
+
+_Out of school_
+
+ _He does not walk on railroad bridges or tracks._
+
+ _He does not walk around lowered gates or crawl
+ under them._
+
+ _He does not jump off moving trains, cars, or
+ engines._
+
+ _He does not crawl over, under, or between cars._
+
+ _He does not loiter around railroad stations or
+ cars or play on or around turn tables._
+
+ _He does not cross tracks without remembering to
+ stop, look, and listen._
+
+ _He looks where he goes and keeps to the right._
+
+ _He crosses at regular crossings, not in the
+ middle of the block._
+
+ _He looks out for automobiles turning corners._
+
+ _He looks and listens for danger signals and heeds
+ them._
+
+ _He plays safe, as much for the other fellow's
+ sake as his own._
+
+
+
+
+THE BEST OF GIFTS--A BOOK
+
+
+For the many occasions when a present is to be given, there is nothing
+of more permanent value than an interesting book. It may also be an
+inexpensive gift. Read the following selected list of World Book Company
+books which make acceptable gifts, and note the range of prices. All
+these books are well suited for gifts. They are interesting; the
+pictures are the work of excellent illustrators; the type is large and
+plain; the paper is good; the printing is clear; the binding is both
+strong and attractive.
+
+
+FOR YOUNGER CHILDREN
+
+ CHADWICK-FREEMAN: Chain Stories and Playlets. 1.
+ The Cat that was Lonesome. 2. The Woman and Her
+ Pig. 3. The Mouse that Lost her Tail. Each, 18
+ cents.
+
+ CHANCELLOR: Easy Road to Reading. 1. A Book of
+ Animals. 2. A Book of Children. 3. A Book of Fun
+ and Fancy. 4. A Book of Letters and Numbers. Each,
+ 18 cents.
+
+ THOMPSON-COOPER: Making Faces with Pencil and
+ Brush. Book I. Book II. Each, 18 cents.
+
+
+FOR BOYS AND GIRLS
+
+ BAILEY: Sure Pop and the Safety Scouts. 42 cents.
+
+ BURKS: Barbara's Philippine Journey. 72 cents.
+
+ BROWN: Nature and Industry Readers. 1. Stories of
+ Woods and Fields. 2. Stories of Childhood and
+ Nature. 3. When the World was Young. Each, 48
+ cents.
+
+ CURTIS: Indian Days of the Long Ago. Gift edition,
+ $1.20.
+
+ CURTIS: In the Land of the Head-Hunters. Gift
+ edition, $1.20.
+
+ MCGOVNEY: Stories of Long Ago in the Philippines.
+ 48 cents.
+
+ SIMS-HARRY: Dramatic Myths and Legends. Book One:
+ Norse Legends. Book Two: Greek and Roman Legends.
+ Each, 30 cents.
+
+A post card to the publishers will bring you more detailed information
+with regard to any or all of these books. The books will be sent
+postpaid at the prices given above. It is requested that payment in
+stamps, by registered letter, or by money order accompany all orders.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+ WORLD BOOK COMPANY
+ YONKERS-ON-HUDSON, NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+ * * * * *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+Both "tiptoe" and "tip-toe" were used in this text.
+This text also uses "Pellmell" and "pell mell."
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SURE POP AND THE SAFETY SCOUTS***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 29260.txt or 29260.zip *******
+
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