ON THE SCREEN
That fellow didn't stay long and he went away very sudden like, just the
same as the way he came. We told him to come to the movie show and he
said he would. We decided that he was kind of crazy, but anyway, he was
awful nice about it, and gee whiz, if you're happy, what's the
difference whether you're crazy or not? He was happy all right, and he
seemed to be mighty proud, because he thought the town was named after
him. So we let him think so.
By six o'clock we had everything ready for the big show. We fixed the
apparatus so that the lens cylinder stuck through the ticket window, and
that way the operator (that was Pee-wee, because the machine belonged to
him) could be all by himself in the ticket agent's room. We hung the
screen at the other end of the car, and turned all the seats facing that
way.
The man over in the store came and watched us and got friendly. I guess
he knew how it was by that time, and he wasn't afraid that the name of
the village was really changed. He gave us some cakes and we had cakes
and fried perch for supper. They were dandy cakes, with jam in them.
There were seven of them and only five fellows, but anyway, Pee-wee
hadn't done any good turn that day, so he ate three. That was so none of
the rest of us would get a stomachache. That's the way with Pee-wee,
he's always thinking about some one else.
All the while we were eating supper, we could see smoke curling up out
of the woods across the lake, and we guessed that was where the girls
had their camp.
"I bet they're getting supper now," Connie said.
Pee-wee said, "Maybe some of us ought to borrow that store man's boat
and row over after them, because girls can't row or paddle very well. It
would be a good turn."
"_Good night_," I said; "didn't you just eat three peach cakes and call
that a good turn? You should worry about the girls. Probably they know
how to row and paddle better than you do."
"You make me tired," he yelled; "scouts are supposed to do things for
them, and show them how to do things."
"Well, they'll see you doing enough things on the screen," I told him;
"girls aren't as helpless as you think they are. Come on, help get
ready."
* * * * *
At about half-past seven, people began coming and I could see that we
were going to have a big house, I mean a big car. First an automobile
full of people arrived and then a lot more who had walked from
Skiddyunk. Then a couple more automobiles came and pretty soon there
were a half a dozen of them parked around the car, and the seats inside
the car were full. Westy stood on the platform collecting ten cents from
each one and letting them through, past the screen. Oh, boy, there was
some crowd.
Pretty soon the store man came over and said that as long as the weather
was so warm, it would be a good idea to open the car windows and have
standing room outside. So he gave us some boxes and barrels and things
to put outside the windows for people to stand on. All the people out
there paid their ten cents just the same and they laughed and said it
was a lot of fun. Some of them were summer people, I guess; holdovers.
The girls from _Camp Smile Awhile_ came over in two canoes and a
rowboat.
When there wasn't space for another head to stick through a window, I
got up in front of the screen and made a speech. This is what I said:
"Ladies and gentlemen, we thank you for coming to see our show, and
we hope you'll like it. I guess maybe I ought to tell you about
Temple Camp, then you'll understand the pictures better.
"Temple Camp is where lots of scouts go in the summer. It's near
the Hudson. Maybe you've heard about all the different things that
scouts learn how to do. So these pictures will show you some of
those things.
"Some of the things are hard, but some of them are easy, like
eating and things like that. Especially desserts. So now the show
will begin."
First we flashed the sentence that is in the handbook:
A SCOUT IS HANDY AND USEFUL
and then came the picture of Pee-wee with a big white apron on,
standing in front of the stove in the cooking shack, stirring a big
boiler full of soup. I heard one of the girls say, "Oh, _isn't_ he
simply too cute for _anything_!" Then we flashed another sentence that
said:
A SCOUT IS SKILFUL
and then came the picture of Pee-wee standing at the kitchen table,
rolling dough. Everybody applauded and the girls said it was wonderful,
but that anyway, the Boy Scouts was started before the Camp-Fire Girls
was, and so they had had more time to learn things. I heard one lady say
it was _splendid_ how scouts got to be self-reliant, on account of
learning the domestic arts.
Oh, bibbie, I just had to laugh, because that was the one thing that
Pee-wee didn't know anything about at all--cooking. The only thing that
kid knew about domestic arts, was eating. He was a good ice-box
inspector and pantry-shelf sleuth. He could track a jar of jam to its
dim retreat, but when it came to cooking--_good night_! The only reason
we had him in those pictures was because he was so small and looked so
funny.
The next sentence we flashed said:
A SCOUT IS QUICK
and the picture showed Pee-wee flopping a wheat cake and catching it in
the frying pan again. Honest, when we were trying to get that picture up
at Temple Camp, the whole floor was covered with wheat cakes and there
was one on Pee-wee's head like a Happy Hooligan cap. But the audience
didn't know that. There are lots of things you don't see in the movies.
It takes about twenty wheat cakes to get a good picture of Scout Harris
flopping one.
The regular cook wasn't there the day we got that picture.