A would-be recruit came up to the recruiting officer to be enlisted during the Boer War. He was found to be a sufficiently strong and well-made man but when they came to examine his teeth they found that these were in bad condition, and he was told that he could not be accepted as a soldier. To this he replied: "But, sir, that seems hard lines. Surely we don't have to eat the enemy when we've killed them, do we?"
A scout with bad teeth is no use at all for scouting work, because he has to live on hard biscuits and hard meat which he cannot possibly eat or digest if his teeth are not good, and good teeth depend upon how you look after them when you are young, it means that you should keep them very carefully clean. At least twice a day they should be brushed, when you get up in the morning and when you go to bed, both inside and out, with a tooth brush and tooth powder; and should be rinsed with water if possible after every meal but especially after eating fruit or acid food.
Scouts in the jungle cannot always find tooth brushes, but they make substitutes out of dry sticks which they fray out at the end and make an imitation of a brush.
Three thousand men had to be sent away from the war in South Africa because their teeth were so bad that they could not chew the hard biscuits, etc., on which they had to live there.
Camp Toothbrush.
"Out West," in America, cowboys are generally supposed to be pretty rough customers, but they are in reality peace scouts of a high order. They live a hard life doing hard and dangerous work far away from towns and civilisation—where nobody sees them. But there is one civilised thing that they do—they clean their teeth every day, morning and evening.
Years ago I was travelling through Natal on horseback, and I was anxious to find a lodging for the night, when I came across a hut evidently occupied by a white man, but nobody was about. In looking round inside the hut, I noticed that though it was very roughly furnished there were several tooth-brushes on what served as a wash-hand stand, so I guessed that the owner must be a decent fellow, and I made myself at home until he came in, and I found that I had guessed aright.