r words to this effect, he committed the boys to my especial
care, adding the suggestion that I begin my services by putting myself
actively in touch with them in their various sports, pursuits and
pastimes.

In this connection the Boy Scout movement at once occurred to me, but
promptly I put it from me. From a cursory investigation I gleaned that
no distinctions of social caste were drawn among the Boy Scouts; that
almost any boy of a given age, regardless of the social status of his
parents, might aspire to membership, or even to office, providing he but
complied with certain tests--in short, that the Boy Scouts as at present
constituted were, as the saying goes, mixed.

Very naturally I desired to restrict my activities to boys coming from
homes of the utmost culture and refinement, where principles of
undoubted gentility were implanted from the cradle up. Yet it would seem
that the germ of the thought touching on the Boy Scouts lingered within
that marvellous human organism, the brain, resulting finally in
consequences of an actually direful character. Of that, however, more
anon in its proper place.

Pondering over the problem after evensong in the privacy of my study, I
repaired on the day following to Doctor Tubley with a plan for a course
of Nature Study for boys, to be prosecuted indoors. I made a point of
the advantages to be derived by carrying on our investigations beside
the student lamp during the long evenings of early spring, which were
then on us. What, I said, could be more inspiring, more uplifting, more
stimulating in its effects on the impressionable mind of a boy than at
the knee of some older person to wile away the happy hours learning of
the budding of the leaflet, the blossoming of the flowerlet, the
upspringing of the shootlet, and, through the medium of informative
volumes on the subject by qualified authorities, to make friends at
first hand, so to speak, with the wild things--notably the birdling, the
rabbit, the squirrel? Yes, even to make friends with the insects,
particularly such insects as the bee and the ant--creatures the habits
of industry of which have been frequently remarked--besides other
insects too numerous to mention.

And, finally, what could better serve to round out an evening so
replete with fruitful thought and gentle mental excitement than a
reading by some member of the happy group of an appropriate selection
culled from the works of one of our standard authors--Wo