“That’s enough from you,” I interrupted. “The matter is settled. We’ll have a Ceremonial Meeting. We’ll pretend we’ve gone traveling and have left our Ceremonial dresses at home. We’re a war-time group, anyhow, and ought to do without things.”
There now! The secret is out! Your poor stick of a Katherine is a real Camp Fire Guardian. I wasn’t going to tell you at first, but I’m afraid I will have to come to you for advice very often. I have organized my girls into a group and they are entering upon the time of their young lives. Make the hand sign of fire when you meet us, and greet us with the countersign, for we be of the same kindred. Magic spell of Wohelo! By its power even the poor spirited Hard-uppers have become sisters of the incomparable Winnebagos. Wo-He-Lo for aye! We are the tribe of Wenonah, the Eldest Daughter, and our tepee is the schoolhouse.
Of course, as Camp Fire Groups go, we are a very poor sister. We haven’t any costumes, any headbands, any honor beads, or any Camp Fire adornments of any kind. I advanced the money to pay the dues, and that was all I could afford. There are so few ways of making money here and most of the families are so poor that I’m afraid we’ll never have much to do with. But the girls are so taken up with the idea of Camp Fire that it’s a joy to see them. In all their shiftless, drudging lives it had never once occurred to them that there was any fun to be gotten out of work. It’s like opening up a new world to them. Do you know, I’ve discovered why they never did the homework I used to give to them. It’s because they never had any time at home. There were always so many chores to do. Their people begrudged them the time that they had to be in school and wouldn’t hear of any additional time being taken for lessons afterward.
As soon as I heard that I changed the lessons around so they could do all their studying in school. Besides that, I looked some of the schoolbooks in the face and decided that they were hopelessly behind the times, Elijah Butts to the contrary. They were the same books that had been used in this section for twenty-five years.
“What is the use,” I said aloud to the spider weaving a web across my desk, “of teaching people antiquated geography and cheap, incorrect editions of history when the thing they need most is to learn how to cook and sew and wash and iron so as to make their homes livable? Why should they waste their precious time reading about things that happened a thousand years ago when they might be taking an active part in the stirring history that is being made every day in these times? Blind, stubborn, moth-eaten old fogies!” I exclaimed, shaking my fist in the direction of Spencer, where the Board sat.
Right then and there I scrapped the time-honored curriculum and made out a truly Winnebago one. It kept the fundamentals, but in addition it included cooking, sewing, table setting, bed making, camp cookery, singing of popular songs, folk dancing, hiking and stunts. Yes sir, stunts! I teach them stunts as carefully as I teach them spelling and arithmetic. Can you imagine anyone who has never done a stunt in all their lives?
We rigged up a cook stove inside the schoolhouse—if you’d ever see it! The stovepipe comes down every day at the most critical moment. Besides that we have a stone oven outside. Every single day is a picnic. As all of us have to bring our lunch we turned the noon hour into a cooking lesson, and two different girls act as hostesses each day. The boys bring the wood and do the rough work and are our guests at dinner. They all behave pretty well except Absalom Butts, who is given to practical jokes. But as the rest of the boys side in with me against him, he gets very little applause for his pains and very little help in his mischief. The noon dinners continue to be the chief attraction at the little school at the cross roads. Hardly anybody is ever absent now.
I arranged the new schedule so that while I am teaching the girls the things which are of interest to them alone the boys have something else to do that appeals to them. I give them more advanced arithmetic, and have worked out a system of honor marks for those who do extra problems, with a prize promised at the end of the year. Then I got hold of an old copy of Dan Beard’s New Ideas for Boys and have turned them loose on that, letting them make anything they choose, and giving credit marks according to how well they accomplish it.
You see what a job I have ahead of me as a Camp Fire Guardian? In order to teach my girls what they must know to win honors, I have had to turn the whole school system inside out, and then, because I couldn’t bear to leave the boys out in the cold while the girls are having such a good time, I have to keep thinking up things for them to do, too. It stretches my ingenuity to the breaking point sometimes to get everything in, and keep all sides even.
One afternoon each week I have the girls give to Red Cross work. Every Saturday I drive all the way over to Thomasville, where the nearest Red Cross headquarters branch is, for gauze to make surgical dressings, returning the finished ones the next week. Here’s where dull-witted Clarissa Butts outshines all the brighter girls. She can make those dressings faster and better than any of us and her face is fairly radiant while she is working on them. I have made her inspector over the rest to see that there are no wrinkles and no loose threads, and she nearly bursts with importance. For once in her life she is head of the class.