digging a shallow trench in the ground, making a fire of stray branches,
and setting the pot on to boil would hardly impress one as being
conducive of happy results, to the digestive organs. And yet I myself
had the interesting experience not only of watching the preparation, of
a _ragout_ under these peculiar circumstances--that is, in the open
field after a hard day's march--but also of sampling the result. How,
under such adverse conditions, the regimental cooks ever managed to
produce as delicious a stew as was offered me on this occasion is a
mystery I have never been able to solve: the meat, the potatoes, and
some gravy stock in a bottle the men carried with them in a cart. For
the rest--carrots, turnips, and the "fines herbes" that constitute
seasoning--they had to scour the neighborhood. Having secured these
concomitants, the work of cooking seemed to them child's play.
[Illustration: THE TRENCH DUG IN THIRTEEN MINUTES.]
I doubt if even the French soldiers live as well as do Belgium's hardy
defenders. In fact, I know they do not. The Belgium soldier's pay is
very high, judged by the European Continental standard--about six
dollars a month--and the government allows him liberal rations of bread
and meat besides. And with what care are his interests watched by his
superiors! I learned, for instance, that the officers in charge of the
regimental mess of the 3d Infantry, in Ghent, had succeeded not only in
providing for each soldier's comfort on 18 centimes (less than four
cents) per day, but that out of this sum money was left over for extra
beer and various entertainments, and at the end of a year almost 12,000
francs of savings were deposited in the bank for mutual benefit! This is
good management indeed. Some of the hardest work in connection with
modern field manoeuvres is entailed in the necessity of constantly
throwing up intrenchments, and two of the photographs show the fighting
under these conditions. The modern infantryman must be an adept with the
pick and the spade, otherwise he is entirely at the mercy of the modern
repeating-rifle. The Belgians understand that their future war will be
a defensive one against an unscrupulous invader, and the throwing up of
intrenchments at short notice will constitute an important factor in
their scheme of defence. Not many years ago infantry, when assailed in
the open without cover would at the best lay themselves flat on their
stomachs to escape the rain of shot. Nowadays the European foot-soldier
also performs the duties of sapper and miner, and while on the defensive
makes cover for himself by the use of pick and spade. I timed a company
of Belgian infantry at this operation in a large meadow bordering a wood
whence the mock enemy was emerging. The retreat of the former was cut
off by a broad impassable stream, so there was nothing for it but to
make a stand. At the word of command those of the men who carried the
combination pick and spade, about fifty in number, commenced digging a
trench. Thirteen minutes later the job was completed, and the entire
force was well under cover, and began firing its volleys at the
approaching foe. The trench was almost one hundred feet long, of an
average width of three feet, and of about the same depth. The earth
thrown up formed an _épaulement_ of two and one-half feet, allowing each
man to stand almost erect and to take careful aim. The whole operation,
in addition to its rapidity, was carried through with remarkable order
and coolness. The men seemed to understand their task thoroughly, and
performed it without the slightest trace of confusion. If their aim is
as good as their field-work, they must be formidable foes indeed!
[Illustration: CARRYING A PONTOON.]
[Illustration: FIELD TELEPHONE AND SIGNAL APPARATUS.]
The pontoon and the field telegraph and signal services are the objects
of great attention on the part of the Belgian military authorities, and
I have added photographs illustrating all these branches. The country
south of the Liege-Namur line, where the Germans are expected to appear
some day, is intersected with more or less impassable rivers, which will
often need bridging in short order. The pontoon service is consequently
of the first importance among the various factors in the country's
defence.
[Illustration: BELGIAN GENDARMES.]
The best picture--artistically speaking--represents a group of Belgian
gendarmes around a camp-fire. It is a masterpiece of artistic
photography. The gendarmes are also a very important branch of the
service, and their duties are most onerous, since they are not only
called upon to police the rural districts, suppress strikes, and make
themselves generally useful as servants of the law, but in war-time they
form part and parcel of the regular army, and are obliged to fight their
country's battles like the rest.
HOW TO EXTRA-ILLUSTRATE A BOOK.
BY WILLIAM HALE.
Every one knows how much more interesting is an illustrated book than
one without pictures. What a satisfaction it would be to us if we could
illustrate our favorite books ourselves! What pleasure we would take in
it! This is entirely possible. It is a comparatively easy matter to
illustrate a book, or, in the case of a book that already contains
pictures, to extend and increase the illustration by means of old
prints, engravings, and pictures gathered from various sources and bound
in with the leaves of the book. This is called "extra-illustrating," and
has long been a favorite amusement of collectors.
A book that is carefully and judiciously extra-illustrated is not only
much more attractive in appearance, but its value is greatly increased,
and the amount of pleasure and instruction to be gained by the extra
illustration of one book is a rich reward for the trouble and time it
costs.
The first thing to be done in the extra illustration of a book which has
been selected for the purpose is the collection of the pictures. This
will often take some time, and should never be done in a hurry. Old
magazines and illustrated papers will supply many of the necessary
pictures, while old books and the shops devoted to the sale of old
prints and engravings will furnish others.
Suppose _The Three Musketeers_ to be the book chosen. A portrait of the
author should be selected for a frontispiece. Other portraits,
representing the author at different ages, may be used in the book; but
the one that serves as the frontispiece should be one made about the
time he wrote the book.
The other illustrations should consist of pictures referring as nearly
as possible to the scenes and incidents described in the story. Pictures
of an author's home or portraits of members of his family are always
useful; but no picture, however interesting in itself, should be
included if it does not bear directly upon the scenes in the book or is
not in some way connected with the author.
When a sufficient number of illustrations have been selected, they
should be mounted ready for binding. This is the difficult part, and
must be done with great care.
Take a sheet of strong paper, as nearly as possible the same color and
weight as the paper upon which the book is printed, and cut it the exact
size of the page of the book. Then trim your print close to the work,
being careful to see that the edges are perfectly straight. Cut out from
your sheet of paper a hole exactly the shape of the print, but an eighth
of an inch smaller on all sides. This opening should not be exactly in
the middle of the page, but a little above the middle and a little to
the left, so as to give wider margins at the bottom and on the right.
Now gum or paste the edges of the print on the under side with great
care, and place it over the opening so that it is even on all sides. As
there is a difference of only a sixteenth of an inch on the four sides,
it is a delicate matter to place the print on the mount accurately, but
after a little practice it can be done quite easily and quickly.
After the prints are mounted, they should be pressed until dry. Then the
cover of the book should be carefully removed with the aid of a sharp
knife. Never mind about ruining the blank pages or fly-leaves, they will
be replaced by the binder when he puts the cover on again; but care
should be taken to avoid cutting or tearing any of the printed pages.
When the cover is removed, it will be found that the book is put
together in sections laid one on top of another. These sections consist
of sixteen or some other number of pages each, and a section is known in
a printing-office as a "signature." The threads that sew the book
should be cut, and the signatures should be carefully separated from
each other.
Then the mounted prints should be laid in as neatly as possible opposite
the incidents they illustrate. The prints should always be inserted face
up, and the sidewise full pages with the bottom of the picture toward
either the outside or inside margin of the book. Now your book is ready
for the binder. Perhaps your extra-illustration has been so extensive as
to increase the bulk of the book so much that the original cover will
not go on again, and perhaps enough has been added to make the one
volume into two, in which case your binder can supply you with simple
covers at a very slight expense.
Books of travel, or stories of hunting, fishing, etc., may be
beautifully illustrated by photographs. Unmounted prints are to be
desired, although it is possible to take prints off mounts by a liberal
soaking in warm water. The soft-finished photographs, such as bromide
and platinum-prints, are vastly better than the shiny albumen prints.
Photographs should be mounted in the same way as other prints, except
that no openings are to be made in the mounts. The prints should be
pasted on flat and pressed until dry. Albumen prints have a tendency to
curl up, and it will require a pretty stiff paper to keep them flat.
This is one of the reasons why platinum or bromide prints are so much
better. When albumen prints are used they must be mounted wet, and
should afterward be burnished, which can be done by any professional
photographer. An amateur photographer can have the fun in many cases of
making the pictures himself for the book he wants to extra-illustrate,
and the finished work will have an added interest and value to him.
The use of photographs, especially if many are included, will greatly
increase the thickness of a book, and it will generally be found
advisable to have the binder make it into two volumes of equal size.
THE IMAGINARY BOAT.
Oh, I've got a beautiful 'maginary boat!
'Tis the finest boat there is.
There isn't a place where the craft won't float,
And go with a lively whiz.
I can shut my eyes
And sail in the skies
On board of that 'maginary ship;
And without any ropes,
With nothing but hopes,
I can soar to the mountain's tip.
I can sail to the moon
Any afternoon,
I can cruise all about the stars,
I can sail any sea
That ever did be,
I can sail on tracks like the cars.
It'll go on land
With a speed that's grand;
It will sail up a cataract steep;
And there isn't a place
On the whole earth's face
I can't make that vessel creep.
It takes no steam for to make it go,
It takes no wind on its sails to blow,
It takes no mule with a rope to tow,
But goes like a breeze
Over land and seas
When I say so--
And it's big and strong,
And it's short or long,
According as 't needs to be:
And it's manned by a crew
That's 'maginary too,
Who all think the world of me.
And night or day
It's ready for play,
And it's safe as a boat can be,
For it's all in your mind
That its joys you find--
And that's not a very deep sea.
So I say to you all get a 'maginary boat;
'Tis the finest boat there is;
And there isn't a place where the craft won't float,
And go with a lively whiz.
GASTON V. DRAKE.
CAMPING AND HUNTING.
There is no reason why a boy of fifteen or sixteen should not spend his
two weeks in a camp hunting during September as well as his father or
uncle. The only requirements are a wholesome respect and care for the
gun, and the presence of some older man as a guide to keep him in the
right track. The ROUND TABLE has spoken often of late years concerning
the care and uses of a gun, and it is useless to go into the particulars
of this again. It is enough to say here that a gun must be kept clean,
always oiled and wiped each night, and never loaded except when game is
momentarily expected to appear; and, above all, no gun, nor any part of
a gun, should be pointed at any one.
The first question of moment in camping is the object. If it is hunting,
then the particular game is to be considered, and places sought where
that game is to be found. If it is fishing, then the best available
fishing-grounds must be the site of the camp. The site of a camp should
be on comparatively high ground, on some knoll where water will drain
away on all sides. This avoids the danger of having water run down into
the tent. One of the best of sites is the edge of a bluff, over the sea
or a lake, which in the main slopes back inland on its other three
sides. Such places can always be found if time is spent in searching
sufficiently far for them.
With the certainty that rain will drain away from the tent-floor and
that any breezes which may be going will blow across the tent itself,
from whatever direction they may come, the actual flooring of the
tent-house is settled. This knoll, however, must not be far from a
spring. Here again time is the only thing that is necessary, for there
is seldom a bluff near salt or fresh water that there is not a spring in
one of the surrounding valleys less than 100 yards away. Of course the
nearer the spring is the better, provided the tent site is not in or
near a swamp. In the northeastern quarter of the United States--that is,
from Ohio north and east--the tent should face southwest and northeast.
It should not be too much covered by trees, and though not absolutely in
the sun, the west exposure ought really to be open to all airs. If
possible, the shore on which the tent site is should be an easterly or
northeasterly one, so that as you stand on the bluff and look out on the
river, bay, or lake you look in a southerly or westerly direction. By
selecting such a shore, you will have your prevailing summer wind coming
into the tent across whatever water is near, and hence so much the
cooler. As some business man once said that "goods well bought were half
sold," so a camping party with a site well selected is practically sure
to be a success. Water is at hand and likely to be good, the wind is
cool when it blows, and the ground is sure to be dry except immediately
after a rain, when any spot would be wet. There will be shade under
trees near by, though the tent itself will be in the sun a good deal of
the day to keep it perfectly dry. This last is quite necessary, because,
though a tent pitched in a hot plain is perhaps the hottest habitation
on earth, the question of dryness is more important; and all tents on
such situations as have been described will be cool at night if the
directions regarding the care of the tent which are given below are
followed.
The best tent, because the coolest, roomiest, and easiest to make and
set up, is the ridge-pole tent. It consists of a ten-foot horizontal
pole lying about seven feet from the ground on two uprights. Over this
is stretched a piece of duck ten feet wide and about twenty feet long.
Along the two ten-foot ends of this canvas are fastened cords about two
feet from the end, something after the fashion of reefing-points on a
boat's sail; and these cords, being perhaps three feet in length, are
attached to tent pegs driven in sufficiently far out on each side to
draw the canvas taut over the horizontal or "ridge" pole. The result is
a peaked roof of canvas seven feet high at the centre and three feet
high where the "walls" begin, and then two three-foot perpendicular
walls. The ends of the tent are of course still open, and in all warm
weather they will remain so. But to keep out rain and cold winds four
flaps should be made, to hang at the front and back and on each side of
the perpendicular supports to the ridge-pole. They should be somewhat
larger than the space they are to cover, in order that they may lap
sufficiently to close the opening completely. All during the day, if the
weather permits, these "flaps" should be turned back on the roof of the
tent, and the three feet of perpendicular canvas wall on either side
should be turned up on the roof also. In this way every whiff of air
will blow through and under the tent all day. At night the sides and
ends may be left open or not, as the temperature and weather suggest. In
this way a healthy and inexpensive camping-house can be set up on the
most approved sanitary principles. If you are particularly aristocratic
you can lay down three pieces of three-inch joist across the tent floor
and place a plank flooring over them. But the cool summer or fall ground
is quite good enough for the average sportsman. To avoid heat a second
cover of canvas can be stretched over the tent, as shown in the
illustration.
[Illustration: AN INEXPENSIVE AND SUITABLE CAMP.]
Having secured a high knoll, spring-water, and a tent to live in, the
next question is food. Here again a great deal depends on whether the
sportsman is out for big game, small game, or fish. Big game means
camping in the West far from any habitations; small game may mean near
to town or miles away; fishing is usually near civilization. Where it
is possible, therefore, milk, fruit, vegetables, and even meat--such as
chickens--should be bought from the nearest farmer, who usually will
sell you what you want, or rather what he has, and what it will be well
for you to be satisfied with, if you pay him cash on receipt of goods.
If the camp site is ten or more miles from a house, then can goods and
what game you secure must fill the bill of fare, with a possible journey
to civilization once a week. The cooking is simple if a definite plan is
followed. It may spoil the whole camping trip if it is not run on a
methodical plan. At least fifty feet from the tent, and usually down in
some near-by hollow, a "lean-to" should be constructed--that is, a
slanting roof some six feet in height, and made of entwined branches.
This may and should be curved, or made on three sides of a square,
leaving a small space for an ordinary small one-cover laundry stove, or,
in fact, any kind of a stove, which you can scrape up in the town or
houses nearest your camp site. This primitive lean-to will keep off the
wind from the stove, and you can cook there all that a camp of five or
six boys want or should have. So much for the camp. There are more
extensive outfits, of course, better ones in every way, but here is one
that will cost little, except in time and care in selecting a site, and
any boys, no matter how limited their pocket-books, can have such a camp
if they have the time to give to camping at all.
[Illustration: A GOOD CAMP LOCATION.]
The costume of such campers may be anything they see fit to wear.
Usually knickers with stout shoes and a cheviot shirt is the best thing.
Extra shoes and trousers must be carried along, because one is always
getting wet if water is near, and wet shoes and clothes are not healthy.
The best way to sleep in such a tent is to put on a thick suit of
pajamas or some regular camp sleeping outfit, and then to roll yourself
up in a blanket, and lie either on the ground or on a bed of bows, which
is easily made. Rolling one's self up in a blanket is a science by
itself, and an old-timer will give as much care to his "rolling-up"
process each night as a mother will to tucking a baby in its crib on a
cold night. In the first place, one end of the blanket is laid on the
bows. Then the camper lays himself out on that end. He then draws the
longer end of the robe over him as he lies on his back. This leaves
nearly half the blanket still unused. He then turns on his side, so as
to make the spare portion fall down behind his back, and by rolling
completely over on his stomach, carrying the part of the blanket already
under him with him, he will finally get to the other end of the robe,
and by then rolling back again he will find himself wrapped up like a
mummy, and in a condition to keep out dampness and cold far better than
if he lay on a bed.
We have only a short space for a word as to the life in camp. And
perhaps this is the most important part of the outfit. If you want to
have a good time, keep yourself busy. Run down and take a plunge in
lake, river, or sea the first thing after rising; then eat as soon as
possible. After this, clean up camp. Give each man his work about the
knoll for the day, and then start in at once to fish or shoot or what
not. Never sit around and read or doze. Once a week, on Sunday, is quite
enough for that sort of thing. All should assemble to dinner at one, and
then the afternoon should be busy too. A hearty supper and an early bed
are two good things to end the day with.
[Illustration: INTERSCHOLASTIC SPORT]
[_The following paper on the Science of Football, by Mr. W. H.
Lewis of the Harvard Football Team of 1893, is the fourth and last
of the series begun in this Department in the issue of September
8._]
When speaking of defensive play in football, the general understanding
is that the side not having the ball is on the defensive, but in reality
a team is on the defensive so long as it is in its own territory,
whether it has the ball or not. In the present paper, however, the term
"defence" will be used in the ordinary sense--that is, of the side not
having the ball. The importance of a systematic and scientific defence
is emphasized by the fact that it is just half of the game.
_Defence to the start-off._--The defensive to the opening play is a
comparatively simple thing. The side on the defence should arrange
itself so as to cover pretty effectively its whole territory. The
placing of the men will depend largely upon the characteristics or
qualities of the individuals. They should be so arranged that an
interference could be quickly formed for a run, or a return made from
any part of the field, no matter where the ball might be kicked. The
present code of playing-rules requires that the ball be kicked at least
ten yards into the opponent's territory; but as an attempt is seldom
made to kick only that distance and no further, the three centre men are
placed on the 40-yard line to look out for a short kick along the
ground, and be ready to drop on it. If the ball pass them, they should
block the nearest man, who will always be the fastest and most
dangerous. The quarter-back is placed on the 30-yard line to look out
for a short kick, and to look out for the middle of the field. The ends
are placed between the 25-yard and 30-yard lines, well out near touch.
They are there to prevent any kick in their vicinity from going into
touch. The tackles are placed on the 20-yard line to lead the
interference in case of a return run. The right and left halves are on
the 10-yard line, and ought to cover all the ground between them and the
tackles. Lastly, on the 5-yard line is the full-back. The backs should
exercise good judgment, and allow every ball that will go into touch to
go there. If the ball comes anywhere near the goal-line, the full-back
should allow it to go over, so that it can be brought out to the 25-yard
line. As a rule, the man who gets the ball should run with it. If one of
the three backs gets it, the two tackles and the other two backs should
form the primary interference, and the other players should get around
the runner as quickly as possible. In the majority of cases it in best
to return the start-off by a punt. Possession of the ball is of little
advantage when it is in your own territory.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.]
_Defence to a scrimmage or down._--A given territory to defend and a
certain number of men to do it with is the problem of the defence.
Whenever the two opposing elevens are lined up on the field, there is
theoretically a line of 160 feet through any part of which the eleven on
the offensive may advance. The shorter the territory is made through
which an advance is possible, the better that territory may be protected
by the eleven men. The natural tendency of the rush-line the moment a
play starts from the opposing line is to pull open, because of the
effort of the men to break through on the outside of their opponents, as
in Fig. 1. The solid rings represent the line before breaking through,
and the dotted rings the line after breaking through.