Photograph from Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
ERNEST THOMPSON SETON and WIFE
Founder of the Boy Scout Movement
ERNEST THOMPSON SETON
How many boys of ten years of age know what they want to do when they are grown? Surely there are some boys of that age who have planned their future work or at least have dreamed about it. But how many ever do in later life just what they had thought of doing when in the fourth grade of the public school? Not many, you may be sure. However, some years ago there was a boy living in England who had decided on his life work by the time his tenth birthday passed. What is more, he carried out his plans with great success. Today you may read many of his books and look at interesting pictures he has drawn of wild animals that are as familiar to him as are the pets most boys and girls have in their homes. More than this, if a boy belongs to the Boy Scouts, he is a member of an organization that this man helped to found in the United States.
Ernest Thompson Seton was born in the northern part of England. His family moved to Canada, but he attended school in England and did not stay in America for any length of time until his schooling was completed. His name was originally Ernest E. Thompson Seton, but some years ago he changed it by turning the last two names around and putting a hyphen between them. As he has written under both names, persons sometimes wonder if there are two men who love the out of doors and write with pleasure of their open air experiences.
Mr. Thompson Seton’s wish was to spend a large part of his life tramping over the country studying animals and learning woodcraft. The rest of the time he would write and make pictures of what he had seen. He felt he could stay within doors only part of each year. So as soon as he finished school and returned to the province of Manitoba he went to work in the fields. It did not take him long to earn enough money to live on during the winter, as his wants were few; then he set out to tramp all over the province. He watched the birds; he learned the ways of all the animals and could tell wonderful stories of their instinct and cunning. When he did live under a roof for a few weeks, he was always busy drawing pictures of his friends in the open or writing down accounts of their lives. One of his best known books was published in 1898 and was called, “Wild Animals I Have Known.” This brought him to the attention of many readers; but he had been helping make books long before this one, for when the Century Dictionary was published he drew for it more than a thousand pictures of the animals that he had watched and studied.
In the course of his life he has been a hunter, a day laborer, a scientist, a naturalist, and an artist. At the same time he has been able to carry out his plan of spending the greater part of each year out of doors. Loving a free active life from his earliest boyhood, it is not strange that Ernest Thompson Seton was the first man to organize the Boy Scouts in America. In the Outlook 189 for July 23, 1910, he tells the story in a most interesting manner. He says: