Sure Pop, the Safety Scout, drew a long breath and watched the
automobiles whirling recklessly down the busy street. "But say, haven't
you twins had enough stories for one day?"
"Not much we haven't! What did the King do next?"
No doubt about the twins' being thirsty for adventure! Sure Pop smiled.
"Well, a single wave of the King's hand dismissed his people. Looking
very sorrowful, he opened the great book in which he keeps the record of
everything that happens over here in the New World.
"I looked where he pointed, and trembled. For this was what I read:
"'UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
'Fathers and mothers and boys and girls killed by
accidents last year....
'Injured, blinded, crippled, and maimed...'
"He ran his finger across the page to the totals, and I saw that the
first total ran clear up into the thousands--and the second one into the
millions!
"'Colonel Sure Pop,' said the King, 'if only the thought you put into
the mind of that lad you saved this noon, might be put into the mind of
all America!'
"'Your Majesty means--Safety First?' I asked.
"The King nodded. 'All the lives lost in all our battles,' he said
grimly, 'are but a drop in the sea as compared with the slaughter of a
single year in a single land!'
"'Oh, Your Majesty, let me go and teach them Safety First--now, before
another life is thrown away!'
"'No, Colonel. Not yet. The time is not yet ripe. But--perhaps we can
make a beginning. Come to me again tomorrow night, at midnight, and we
shall see.'
"The next night I went to the throne room and found the King studying a
big map. He had a red pencil and a blue one in his hand, and he pointed
to a lot of red rings he had drawn on the map.
"'Those,' he told me, 'are America's great mills. In them and the other
factories, thousands upon thousands of workmen are killed by accident
every year--by accident, Colonel, not in battle.
"'And that is not all,' the King went on. 'These blue lines mark the
trails of the great iron horses--the railroads. Last year these iron
horses trampled out thousands of lives in America alone. And all because
the Americans haven't learned to _think_ Safety!'
"That was too much for me. I pleaded with him to let me come straight to
America and help end that awful suffering. But the King shook his head.
"'The more haste, the less speed, Colonel. Before you can help America,
you must help yourself; and the quickest way to do that is first to
teach Safety to our own people. Let me see you win your spurs here in
the Borderland, and then--to America you go!'
"'Teach Safety to our own people?' I repeated, a bit puzzled. 'How ought
I to go about it, Sire?'
"'Go through all the Borderland,' said the King, 'and muster an army of
Safety Scouts. Train them to know signs that spell DANGER, as an Indian
scout reads the signs of the trail. Teach them to report every danger
signal they see--and they will teach their neighbors, and so the
knowledge will spread. But above all, be sure your Safety Scouts are
well chosen.'
"'But how?' I asked. 'Shall I pick out wise people?'
"'Colonel of the Scouts,' said the King, shrewdly, 'the wisest are not
always the safest. Have you never thought why it is "bad luck to go
under a ladder"?'
"'Never,' I owned up. 'I've always thought of it as just a proverb.'
"'True. But proverbs without reason would be like trees without roots.
Stop and think: sometimes a ladder breaks or slips, which is bad for the
climber--and bad for any one who happens to be under that ladder just
then. And sometimes a painter's heavy paintpot falls--and woe to him who
walks under the ladder then, be he the wisest man in the kingdom. Now
go, and one moon from tonight bring me a full regiment of Safety
Scouts.'
"So out through the Borderland I went, saying over and over to myself,
'It is bad luck to go under a ladder,' and waiting for the King's
meaning to be made plain.
"First I went to the home of a great wizard, the wisest man in the
Borderland. As I neared the house, the door opened and the wizard came
out, a heavy book of wisdom under his arm.
"He had a long black pipe in his mouth. Pulling out a match, he lighted
his pipe, threw the burning match over his shoulder, and hurried on
toward the city.
"I started to run after him, when a flicker of light caught my eye.
There in the straw that littered the roots of the ivy vines by the
steps, a little tongue of flame was lapping up the tangle of leaves!"
Bob jumped to his feet as if he had heard the clang of a fire bell.
"Good enough for him, the old fossil! Did it burn his house down?"
"Came mighty near it," said Sure Pop, looking at the scars on his hands.
"He had a sick wife in there all alone, and if I hadn't happened along
just then--
"Well, anyway," he went on cheerfully, "I got the fire out at last. And
the King's meaning was made plain--it is one thing to have wisdom and
another thing to use it. So I didn't ask the wizard to join the Safety
Scouts, after all."
"I should say NOT!" cried Bob and Betty with one voice. "But where _did_
you find your Scouts?" added Bob.
"Well, the next idea I had was to ask mothers, for mothers give up much
of their time, anyhow, to keeping children out of harm's way. I found
one whose house looked so trim and neat, and her children so clean and
happy, that I had almost made up my mind to invite her to join--when my
eye fell on a shining butcher knife hanging beside the kitchen table,
where even the baby could reach it without half trying.
"And that wasn't all I saw. There was a saucer of fly poison on the
window sill! Then I saw the mother starting to carry out a pail of water
to scrub the steps, when the brass knocker on the door gave a thump, and
she left that hot water right there in the middle of the floor while she
talked to a peddler!
"Just then the baby came toddling across the room. He got safely past
the scalding water and the fly poison, but the next moment I saw him
climb up on a chair, open the medicine chest, and grab a bottle from the
bottom shelf--the bottom shelf, Betty, of _all_ shelves in the house!
Out came the cork, and up went the bottle to his lips, just as I saw to
my horror a skull and crossbones on its label. Like a flash I--"
"What's a skull and crossbones, Sure Pop?" broke in Betty.
"Poison sign!" explained Bob, shortly. "Don't interrupt! Go on, Sure
Pop!"
"Like a flash," said Sure Pop, "I bounded to the baby's side and
snatched the bottle away. I tell you, I did some earnest thinking as I
left that house. I realized that it would never do to ask that mother to
join our army of Safety Scouts, for until she herself had formed the
Safety habit, she could hardly be expected to teach Safety to others.
The adventure of the baby and the poison bottle had opened my eyes to
the real meaning of the King's words about finding Scouts who could read
the little signs that spell DANGER.
"By the way, I told the poison bottle story to a great doctor the other
day, and now he's doing his best to get a law passed requiring that all
poison bottles be of some special shape, different from any other
bottles. That will make them much safer, even in the dark."
"But how can they be made different in shape?" asked Betty. "What shape,
Sure Pop?"
"Three-cornered, probably. That certainly would be a life-saving law, if
he could only get it passed. Just think! There were several thousand
deaths in the United States last year from that one cause alone--just
from mistaking bottles of poison for other medicine."
"But what I can't see," said Bob, "is how anybody _could_ mistake a
poison bottle. They all have skulls and crossbones on them, haven't
they?"
"Stop and think a moment," said the Safety Scout. "Suppose baby has
croup in the night, and mother is roused out of a sound sleep and rushes
to the medicine chest; she's only half awake--the light is dim--poor
baby is gasping and choking--not a moment to lose. She isn't likely to
stop and read labels very carefully, is she? But if she felt her hand
close over a _three-cornered_ bottle, it would wake her up in a hurry.
Even in the darkness and in the excitement--if she had been trained to
think of a three-cornered bottle as meaning DANGER, perhaps death--it
would stay her hand as surely as a red light stops an engine."
"I suppose," said Betty, "that when folks are badly hurt, or awfully,
awfully sick, other folks lose their heads and don't know what they
really _are_ doing."
"Betty, you've hit the nail right on the head. Now that's why we must
fix things so safety won't depend on level heads or time to think. The
danger signal must pop right into our heads from force of habit. The
sooner American boys and girls--yes, and the grown-ups, too--get the
Safety habit, the sooner 'Safety First' will change from phrase into
fact.
"The first day I ever spent in America opened my eyes to the price your
country is paying for the word 'guess.' The more I studied the
situation, the oftener I noticed folks saying 'I guess' where they
should have said '_I know_.' In nearly all of America's accidents,
guesswork is the real cause.
"The moment I realized that, I said to myself, 'It's high time America
dropped guesswork out of its daily life.' My work was cut out for me: I
began right then and there to study out ways of getting folks to stop
guessing, once for all, _and be sure_--sure pop!"
_Stop guessing, once for all, and be sure._
--SURE POP
[Illustration]