A companion volume to “Scouting for Girls” is “Campward, Ho!” a manual for Girl Scout camps. The keynote is sounded on the first page by a quotation from Chaucer, beginning:

“When that Aprille with his schowres swoote

The drought of March hath perced to the roote,

And bathus every veyne in swich licour,

Of which vertue engendred is the flour.”

One can almost hear the girls singing that of an evening as they sit around the campfire tying knots in ropes. It is really an ideal camping song, because even the littlest girls can sing the words without understanding what they mean.

But it really lacks the lilt of the “Marching Song” printed further on in the book. This is to be sung to the tune of “Where Do We Go From Here, Boys?” Bear this in mind while humming it to yourself:

MARCHING SONG

Where do we go from here, girls, where do we go from here?

Anywhere (our Captain5) leads we’ll follow, never fear.

The world is full of dandy girls, but wait till we appear—

Then!

Girl Scouts, Girl Scouts, give us a hearty cheer!

A very stirring marching song, without doubt, but what would they do if the leader’s name happened to be something like Mary Louise Abercrombie or Elizabeth Van Der Water? They just couldn’t have a Captain with such a long name, that’s all. And there you have unfair discrimination creeping into your camp right at the start.

In “Scouting for Girls” there is some useful information concerning smoke signals. In case you are lost, or want to communicate with your friends who are beyond shouting distance, it is much quicker than telephoning to build a clear, hot fire and cover it with green stuff or rotten wood so that it will send up a solid column of black smoke. By spreading and lifting a blanket over this smudge the column can be cut up into pieces, long or short (this is the way it explains it in the book, but it doesn’t sound plausible to me), and by a preconcerted code these can be made to convey tidings.

For instance, one steady smoke means “Here is camp.”

Two steady smokes mean “I am lost. Come and help me.”

Three smokes in a row mean “Good news!”

I suppose that the Pollyanna of the camping party is constantly sending up three smokes in a row on the slightest provocation, and then when the rest of the outfit have raced across country for miles to find out what the good news is she probably shows them, with great enthusiasm, that some fringed gentians are already in blossom or that the flicker’s eggs have hatched. Unfortunately, there is no smoke code given for snappy replies, but in the next paragraph it tells how to carry on a conversation with pistol shots. One of these would serve the purpose for repartee.