And you can connect with this exercise, since it makes you alternately stand up and squat down, that whether you are standing or sitting, at work or resting, you will hold yourself together (as your hands on your hips are doing), and make yourself do what is right.
These exercises are not merely intended as a way of passing time, but really to help a fellow to grow big as well as to grow strong.
Climbing
Every boy likes climbing, and if you stick to it and become really good at it, you will go on at it forever.
Most of the great mountain-climbers began as boys climbing up ropes and poles, and then trees. After that, a long way after—because if you haven’t had lots of practice and strengthened your muscles you probably would tumble, and attend a funeral as the chief performer—you take up rock climbing, and so on to mountain climbing.
Tree climbing is great exercise. Fasten a thick rope over a strong branch, and try different ways of climbing it.
It is glorious sport teeming with adventure, but it needs strength in all your limbs, pluck, determination, and endurance. But those all come with practice.
It is most important for mountain climbing to be able to keep your balance and to place your feet nimbly and quickly where you want them. For this there is nothing like the game of “Walking the Plank” along a plank set up on edge, or “stepping stones” laid about on the ground at varying distances and angles to each other.
This is a home- made camp gymnasium. Build it from strong poles and ropes for the lashi ng—and there you are! There are no regular exercises; you make up your own stunts.
When I was a fairly active young bounder I went in for the vigorous kind of folk dancing. It amused people at our regimental theatricals and it was good exercise for me. But I came to realise a new value in it later on when I had to carry out some scouting in service against the Matabele in South Africa.
I had climbed into their mountain fastnesses in the Matopo Hills and was discovered by them. I had to run for it. Their great aim was to catch me alive as they wanted to give me something more special in the execution line than a mere shot through the head—they had some form of unpleasant torture in view for me. So when I ran, I ran heartily.
The mountain consisted largely of huge granite boulders piled one on another. My running consisted mostly in leaping down from one boulder to another, and then it was that the balance and foot management gained in folk dancing came to my aid. As I skipped down the mountain I found myself outdistancing my pursuers with the greatest of ease. These, being plains men, did not understand rock-trotting and were laboriously slithering and clambering down the boulders after me.
So I got away. And with the confidence thus engendered, I paid many successful visits to the mountains after this.
Training in folk dancing was of great help in evading the Matabele.
Nose
A Scout must be able to smell well, in order to find his enemy by night. If he always breathes through the nose, and not through the mouth, this helps him considerably. But there are other reasons more important than that for always breathing through the nose. An American once wrote a book called Shut your Mouth and Save your Life, and showed how the Red Indians for a long time had adopted that method with their children to the extent of tying up their jaws at night, to ensure their breathing through the nose only.
Breathing through the nose prevents many disease germs from getting from the air into throat and lungs.
For a Scout, nose-breathing is also specially useful. By keeping the mouth shut you prevent yourself from getting thirsty when you are doing hard work. And also at night, breathing through the nose prevents snoring, and snoring is a dangerous thing if you are sleeping anywhere in enemy country. Therefore practise keeping your mouth shut and breathing through your nose at all times.
Ears
A Scout must be able to hear well. Generally the ears are very delicate, and if they are once damaged you may become incurably deaf.
People are too apt to fiddle about with their ears in cleaning them, by putting the corners of handkerchiefs, hairpins, and so on into them, and also stuffing them up with hard cotton wool. All of this is dangerous because the drum of the ear is a very sensitive tightly-stretched skin which is easily damaged. Many children have had the drums of their ears permanently injured by getting a box on the ear.
Eyes
A Scout, of course, must have particularly good eyesight—he must be able to see a long way off. By practising your eyes in looking at things at a great distance, they will grow stronger. While you are young you should save your eyes as much as possible. Avoid reading by poor light, and sit with your side to the light when doing any work during the day. If you sit facing the light it strains your eyes.
Eye strain is a common failure with growing boys, although very often they do not know it. Headaches come frequently from the eyes being strained. If a boy frowns, it is generally a sign of eye strain.
A Scout, besides having good eyesight, must be able to tell the colour of things which he sees. Colour blindness is a great affliction from which some boys suffer. It takes away a pleasure from them, and it makes them almost useless for certain trades and professions. For instance, a railway signalman or engine-driver or a sailor would not be much good if he couldn’t tell the difference between red and green.
It can sometimes be overcome. A way of doing this, if you find you are rather colour blind, is to get a collection of little bits of wool, or paper, of different colours, and pick out which you think is red, blue, yellow, green, and so on, and then get someone to tell you where you were right and where wrong. Then go at it again, and in time you will find yourself improving, until you have
no difficulty in recognising the colours.
