WILLING WORKERS.
Long before eight o’clock that night the boys had gathered at their
meeting-place, which was now in the basement of one of the churches,
where they were promised a new gymnasium for the coming winter season.
When the roll was called, just twenty-nine responded to their names,
showing that whatever Billy had told them over the wire, it must have
excited their curiosity considerably. There was a buzz of excitement all
over the room when, the regular business finished, Hugh started to
explain the plan of campaign that had appealed to Billy and himself that
very afternoon.
He led up to it by telling about the terrible condition of the streets
almost everywhere about town.
“It’s become a chronic habit with everybody to sweep their waste into
the street, so that everywhere you go you’ll find stray papers blowing
about and lying in all fence corners. Why, sometimes you’d think a city
dump was close by, from the way old stuff flies in the wind. All that
could be changed if we just made up our minds to take hold and assist
the women of the town. The job they tackled twice has always been too
much for them. Let’s see what the scouts can do to help out. And as the
majority rules in our meetings, I hope somebody will call for a rising
vote.”
At that, Alec was before Billy in jumping to his feet and making the
proposition that the troop take hold in earnest to put themselves in the
running when it came to having a clean city, worth living in.
The motion was carried unanimously. If there were any “doubting
Thomases” there who feared that the attempt might end in failure, they
were carried off their feet by the wild enthusiasm that seemed to
pervade the meeting, for every scout registered his willingness to
embark in the scheme, no matter what it called for.
A little discussion was next in order. Hugh believed in taking the bull
by the horns, and hence he told the others what he feared might be their
most difficult task: keeping the Corbley crowd from undoing all their
work spitefully, just to show that Boy Scouts could not run that town.
“We’ll not cross a bridge until we come to it, though,” said Hugh in
conclusion, “and now, what’s to hinder our getting in some fine work for
a starter to-night?”
“Hurrah!” cried a number of the interested scouts in a volley.
“It happens that the moon is almost full for the occasion,” said Bud
Morgan, one of the Wolves and a boy who could always be depended upon to
do his share in everything that came along; Bud had seen considerable
practical experience in the field, as he had once been on a Western
ranch and had also worked through a vacation season with a surveying
party.
“But what can we do in such a rushing hurry, Mr. Scout Master?” asked
Arthur Cameron, another of the same patrol, whose particular hobby was
in the lines of photography and weather bureau work.
“For a starter, I thought we might take a turn around the little park
and get it in apple-pie shape. People throw away greasy paper from
luncheons there, and newspapers they’ve been reading. It’s a shame the
way that pretty little square looks. My mother says she avoids passing
across it whenever she can, because it seems so much like a pig-pen.
Now, boys, what do you say, shall we set to work with a vim and make
that a fit spot for any lady to sit or walk?”
“We can do it!” cried Blake Merton of the Hawks, a fellow who had a
melodious voice and was called on many times by his chums when in camp
to start up the songs they loved.
“Lead the way, Hugh,” proposed Walter Osborn. “We’ve taken to your
scheme like ducks to water, and the sooner we get busy the better it’ll
please a lot of us. I’m really getting rusty for want of something to do
besides study, now school has begun. Fall in, everybody, and don’t
forget your bags.”
“Now we know why Billy told us to fetch these bags along,” remarked Sam
Winter. “We are to stuff the waste paper in them, so we can carry it to
some central place. Is that the idea, Hugh?”
“Yes. We’ll put several of the collecting cans in a bunch near the
middle of the little park, and in the morning the dump man can take the
trash away,” the scout master informed him.
“Too bad we couldn’t make a big bonfire and burn it all up,” grumbled
Billy. “I’d feel better if that ended the affair, because—Oh, well, if
the rest of you think it will be all right to leave it there, I’m not
going to kick. How many of you fetched a broom along?”
It was found that, all told, there were seven brooms in the party, eight
hoes, half a dozen shovels, and two rakes. When this curious assortment
of implements had been shouldered by the enthusiastic boys, they looked
like a corps of gardeners about to begin work on some public ground.
Two by two the scouts marched out of their meeting-room and headed for
the open plaza not far away, where the grass was green and many bushes
and flowers grew. The spot had really lost much of its beauty through
the habit most people had formed of throwing aside all sorts of rubbish.
In certain quarters of town it was not an unusual sight to see, perhaps,
an old coal scuttle, cast-off shoes, or even a rusty hot-water boiler
reposing in the gutter as though that were the ordinary place for such
derelicts.
As the scouts crossed the main street in order to reach the little park,
some people stood and stared. A few gave them a faint cheer, though
unable to understand what the parade could be for. Doubtless they
imagined that it might only be a prank on the part of the boys, since
they carried garden tools and brooms in place of guns.
When they reached the small park, Hugh began to give his orders. He knew
every foot of that ground and had already planned the attack in his
mind.
Dividing it into four equal parts, he assigned one to each of the three
patrols besides his own. After that, it was up to the leaders to see
that their workers did their part in the undertaking.
First of all, several of the tall waste paper cans, which nobody ever
thought of using any more, were deposited near the center of the open
space. There was one for each patrol, and immediately the scouts busied
themselves in collecting the worst of the accumulated trash, depositing
it in the receptacles where it should have lodged long since.
Presently the hoes, rakes and brooms began to get busy. Such a bustling
spectacle had certainly not been seen in that vicinity for many a year
as the industrious band presented when they started to cover every foot
of ground in the little city park.
Of course all this could not go on without a certain number of people
becoming wise to the fact that an innovation had begun. Small boys and
girls who really should have been at home and in bed, but from lack of a
curfew bell still played upon the streets shouting and chasing each
other, watched what the scouts were doing, and upon discovering that
they were actually _working_, ran to tell others that a wave of reform
had struck the town at last.
It was not long before fully fifty people stood around and watched the
progress of the scouts’ work, commenting on the novelty. Some made great
fun of the idea that mere boys could cause the city to take on a
different look. They declared that it was bred in the bone with the
Italians and other foreigners to be careless, and it could not be beaten
out of the flesh.
Others were more sanguine. These scouts had succeeded in a number of
things where others had made failures, and besides, in this case they
surely were animated by the right principles. So a few observers said
good words and cheered the boys on. Several of the women were loud in
their expressions of gratification, and promised that they would see to
it that the almost defunct society for town improvement took on new life
and backed up the boy element in their work.
It was more or less fun for Hugh and his comrades, too. Boys can put in
a lot of hard work and call it a frolic. They laughed and joked as they
swept and raked and gathered up armfuls of rubbish to fill the tall
cans. In the end there had to be a detachment sent out skirmishing for
several more receptacles, such was the vast amount of trash collected on
that first night of the fray against dirt.
When ten o’clock sounded from the church tower where the clock stood,
the round moon looked down on as neat a little park as one could well
imagine. Every foot of it had been carefully scraped and cleaned by that
enterprising band of workers, until it was what might be called
immaculate.
By that time it was a pretty tired lot of scouts who began to gather
around the one in command. The fun of the thing had vanished, and they
were almost as eager to be given the word to start toward home and clean
themselves up, as a while before they had seemed to begin operations.
“It’s all done, anyhow,” Alec Sands said, as he came up to report that
his squad had completed their share of the work. “I’m going to come down
here the first thing in the morning, just to listen and hear what folks
say when they find out what’s happened. Chances are they’ll rub their
eyes and wonder if the little darky twins we see advertised as willing
workers haven’t been on the job while people slept.”
Hugh laughed as he glanced around at the perspiring scouts.
“And if they could see some of the faces here on this festive occasion,”
he remarked humorously, “they’d feel dead certain of it, because we are
the nearest approach to coons seen around here for many a day. I warrant
it’s going to keep a few of us busy cleaning up our uniforms against the
next parade. They don’t look as spic and span as when we were in the
procession on Labor Day.”
“But that ends it for to-night, doesn’t it, Hugh?” asked Alec anxiously,
for he was very tired, having worked with his customary zeal,—and Alec
had once been the spoiled son of a very wealthy man, too, until he
joined the scouts and learned the many benefits that labor brings in its
train.
“Yes, let’s all make for home now. I hope that when we drift down this
way in the morning, we’ll be satisfied with our job,” Hugh replied.
The signal being given, the boys drew up in line with military
precision, and at the command started away, still flourishing their
brooms, hoes, rakes and shovels as though proud of their strange weapons
for warfare.
Some of the men gave them a parting cheer. Even if they did not have a
great deal of faith in the success of this new undertaking of the
scouts, at least it did not prevent their admiring the unflinching
spirit with which the boys had taken up arms against the tide of
uncleanliness that was engulfing the town.
There were a few “boos” also, coming doubtless from certain elements
that viewed any movement looking to reform with disfavor, because it was
likely to cause them to change their careless, easy-going ways. They
might actually be compelled to take three steps to deposit a newspaper
wrapper in a receptacle, instead of throwing it on the ground as at
present to blow where it listed.
When Hugh reached his home, he, too, felt the effects of his recent
work, for he had not spared himself a particle in setting a good example
to his fellows of the Wolf Patrol. And he believed that their section of
the little park was just as destitute of rubbish as any other quarter.
Hugh was asleep soon after his head touched the pillow, and really he
knew next to nothing until long after the sun had arisen. Having
dressed, he was proceeding down to the dining room for breakfast, it
being Saturday morning, when he heard the telephone bell ring.
“Hello! Hello! Who is it?” he asked, reaching the instrument. When he
caught the well-known voice of Alec over the wire, Hugh had a sense of
coming misfortune.
“Well, it’s all up the flue, Hugh!” said the other scout disconsolately.
“What do you mean?” demanded the assistant scout master.
“Only this,” the other continued sadly, and angrily as well. “I’m
down-town now,—came early to gloat over our work,—but would you believe
it, everything has been turned out of the trash cans and scattered all
over the park again!”