automobile. Now we're going to give the people of the United States and
Canada a glimpse of an amusing novelty, a scout bee-line hike. The next
picture shows the young heroes climbing over a house which happens to be
in their path."

So that's how it happened that part of our bee-line hike got on the
screen. Most movie stars get a lot of money, but anyway we got a lot of
cookies. And that's how it was that people away out in California could
see our young hero lassoing a wild and woolly wicker table and
massacring a whole tribe of cookies. We came right after President
Harding. He was lucky because if we'd come along about ten seconds
sooner on that film we'd have been climbing over the top of the White
House. Just after us on that film came a railroad train that had been
wrecked. That was one thing we escaped on our hike anyway.

Mr. Tom Gilligan was a nice fellow. He went around the country taking
pictures of all sorts of things, famous men smiling and shaking hands,
and houses burning down and people being crushed by falling buildings
and everything. He said Pee-wee lassoing cookies was one of the best
things he ever took. He said he'd like to take Pee-wee again.

I said, "Take him for all we care; you're welcome to him. Only don't
bring him back."

It wasn't hard climbing over that house, but Tom Gilligan made us do a
lot of fancy things. He said people would like that. So we had Pee-wee
roll down the shed in back of the house and spill all the stuff out of
his megaphone. It's worth thirty cents and the war tax to see that.
You'll see me standing up on the peak of the house hugging the chimney,
and holding my hand above my eyes and scanning the distant country to
the West. This is what it said on that picture: "_Scout Blakeley picking
out the bee-line to the West, guided by his distant beacon._"

It was easy sliding down the roof in back; we just slid down onto the
back porch and down to the ground.

In back of that house is Monument Park. It isn't very big, you can put
it in your pocket. Tom Gilligan said he'd go a little farther with us to
see what we ran into next.

Now from Monument Park we could see the big poplar tree good and plain.
The reason for that was partly on account of the park being so open and
partly on account of the land beyond being low, because all the while we
were going down toward the river. West of the park there aren't so many
houses because in Bridgeboro a lot of people don't like