The Boy Scouts of Woodcraft Camp

Boy Scouts #1

by Thornton W. Burgess

This is one of Thornton Burgesses' "Boy Scout Books."
This first one features Walter, a scout who has never been to camp. He and his fellow scouts experience lots of adventures and come to meet and appreciate people who have different background than their own.
The book has 15 images. Most are full-page.

360 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1912

About the author

Thornton W. (Waldo) Burgess (1874-1965), American author, naturalist and conservationist, wrote popular children's stories including the Old Mother West Wind (1910) series. He would go on to write more than 100 books and thousands of short-stories during his lifetime.

Thornton Burgess loved the beauty of nature and its living creatures so much that he wrote about them for 50 years in books and his newspaper column, "Bedtime Stories". He was sometimes known as the Bedtime Story-Man. By the time he retired, he had written more than 170 books and 15,000 stories for the daily newspaper column.

Born in Sandwich, Massachusetts, Burgess was the son of Caroline F. Haywood and Thornton W. Burgess Sr., a direct descendant of Thomas Burgess, one of the first Sandwich settlers in 1637. Thornton W. Burgess, Sr., died the same year his son was born, and the young Thornton Burgess was brought up by his mother in Sandwich. They both lived in humble circumstances with relatives or paying rent. As a youth, he worked year round in order to earn money. Some of his jobs included tending cows, picking trailing arbutus or berries, shipping water lilies from local ponds, selling candy and trapping muskrats. William C. Chipman, one of his employers, lived on Discovery Hill Road, a wildlife habitat of woodland and wetland. This habitat became the setting of many stories in which Burgess refers to Smiling Pool and the Old Briar Patch.

Graduating from Sandwich High School in 1891, Burgess briefly attended a business college in Boston from 1892 to 1893, living in Somerville, Massachusetts, at that time. But he disliked studying business and wanted to write. He moved to Springfield, Massachusetts, where he took a job as an editorial assistant at the Phelps Publishing Company. His first stories were written under the pen name W. B. Thornton.

Burgess married Nina Osborne in 1905, but she died only a year later, leaving him to raise their son alone. It is said that he began writing bedtime stories to entertain his young son, Thornton III. Burgess remarried in 1911; his wife Fannie had two children by a previous marriage. The couple later bought a home in Hampden, Massachusetts, in 1925 that became Burgess' permanent residence in 1957. His second wife died in August 1950. Burgess returned frequently to Sandwich, which he always claimed as his birthplace and spiritual home.

In 1960, Burgess published his last book, "Now I Remember, Autobiography of an Amateur Naturalist," depicting memories of his early life in Sandwich, as well as his career highlights. That same year, Burgess, at the age of 86, had published his 15,000th story. He died on June 5, 1965, at the age of 91 in Hampden, Massachusetts.

Reviews

[John Geary · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is basically a “boys book,” but for the most part I enjoyed it. It brought me back to my days of camp when I was a lad between the ages of eight and 13.
There were some passages that made me feel uncomfortable reading the book. There were a few racist-type remarks in the book, and although I’m well aware that’s the way people’s attitudes and viewpoints were in the 1920s when this book was written, it still bothered me.
Also, a couple of incidents involving animals bugged me.
The first one was where one of the scouts captures a bear cub and they take it back to camp and make it a pet. I don’t think scouts would have done that even the 1920s; I know we certainly would not have done anything like that when I was a scout in the 60s and early 70s.
The other incident involved one of the characters talking about how he split a crow’s tongue so the bird could talk better. Again, while I realize people’s attitudes towards animals were different 100 years ago, I was also surprised that Thornton W. Burgess – a man known for writing sympathetic wildlife stories – would include something like that in a book.
I did enjoy the book for the most part but I would’ve enjoyed it much more if the above described passages had not been there. That’s not to say they should clean it up; I’m not from the school of changing stuff to make it politically correct, because I do believe it’s an important historical reference as to how people’s attitudes were, back then. I don’t think we should whitewash history, because then we may forget some of the less than savoury attitudes we have towards other people and animals.
It did serve as a reminder to me about how even people considered to be decent people held certain attitudes that I’m glad to see are changing, if however slowly.
If not for these passages I probably would’ve rated the book 4 stars.

[Joseph D. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an oldie but talks to the morals and work ethic of a bygone generation. If you are interested in learning or understanding more about both the roots of The Boy Scouts as well as learning more about bushcraft. If anything this is a place I wish I could have sent my children to. I do recommend it as a read.

Joseph McKnight
http://www.josephmcknight.com

[Nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very dated, but excellent story

[Janelle]

Dnf. Not a fan of the narrator of the LibriVox audiobook. And reading another review I probably wouldn’t enjoy it anyway.