ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: The Chief Scout Talks

Manawatu Standard, Volume L, Issue 1, 27 November 1929, Page 4

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: The Chief Scout Talks

No. 8.

What is the best time in the day P For all Scouts the answer is the early morning. >' All Scouts should accustom themselves to getting up early. The boy who wakes up and sees the sun pouring in upon him and then turns round for another nap will never do much good in the world. The air in the early morning is the best tonic that a fellow can have.

The Scout’s time for being most active is in the early morning, because that is the time when the wild animals all do their feeding and moving about.

In war the usual hour for an attack is just before dawn when the attackers can creep up unseen in the dark and get sufficient light to enable them to carry out the attack suddenly while the other people are still asleep.

So Scouts and Guides can train themselves to the habit of getting up very early, and when once they are in the habit it is no trouble at all for them to get up, like it is for some fat fellows who lie asleep after the daylight has come. Famous Early Risers.

Many successful men .are early risers and their best work is that which they do before breakfast. The Emperor Charlemagne, who was a great Scout in the old days, used always to get up in the middle of the night. The Duke of Wellington, who, like Napoleon Bonaparte, preferred to sleep on a little camp bed, used to say: “When it is time to turn over in bed it is time to turn out.”

If I had not got up early all my life I should never have had the time to get half the enjoyment that I have had out of it.

Mind you, if you take only one hour extra per day it means three hundred and sixty-four hours every year—or three weeks more of time thin your, average neighbour gets. Personally, I reckon to get at least thirteen months of life into each year instead of twelve.

Some people put in extra time at the end of the day, when body and mind are tired. That is not at all the same thing. There is nothing like early morning for getting over your work. There is a lot of truth in the old rhyme which tells you that “Early to bed and early to rise Makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”

WHAT TIME DO YOU GET UP?

(By Lord Robert Baden-Powell.)

Sleep in the Air. Then when you arc asleep don’t shut your windows .and keep the fresh air away from you. The blood needs loads of oxygen, that is fresh air, to keep it fresh.

Living indoors without fresh air quickly poisons the blood and makes people fe'el tired and seedy when they don’t know why.

For myself, I sleep out of doors in winter as well as in summer. I only feel tired or seedy when I have had to be indoors a lot—and I only catch cold when I sleep in .a room. Good Scouts take every chance they can get of sleeping in the out of doors—and by out of doors I don’t

mean inside a stuffy tent closed up so that no air can get into it. If you sleep in a tent see that plenty of air gets into it, otherwise a bedroom with open windows would be better for you. Keep Your Mouth Shut.

A Scout always sleeps with his mouth shut.

Some years ago Mr George Catlin, the famous authority on Red Indian lore, wrote a book called “Shut your Mouth and Save your Life,” and he showed how the Red Indians had for a long time adopted that method with their children, to the extent of tying up their jaws at night to ensure their breathing only through the nose. Breathing through the nose prevents

germs of disease getting from the air into the throat and stomach; it also prevents you from growing nasty things called adenoids, which are apt to stop the breathing power of the nostrils and to cause deafness and a lot of other troubles. For a Scout nose-breathing is also especially useful. By breathing through the nose and keeping the mouth shut you prevent yourself from getting thirsty when you are doing hard work. Also if you are in the habit of breathing through your nose at all times you don’t snore when you are asleep. And snoring is a dangerous thing if you are sleeping anywhere where you don’t want to be discovered 1 So practise keeping your mouth shut at all times. Don’t Waste Your Words.

Talking of keeping your mouth shut reminds me of Prempeh, the King whom we once captured during the course of an expedition to Ashanti on the Gold Coast of West Africa. When we brought in the King he was carrying in his mouth a kind of nut which looked like a big fat cigar. We found that he did this to prevent himself from talking too much! If he felt inclined to make some meaningless remark, or, in the heat of argument, to let out the hasty opinion, he could not do so without having first to take this impediment out of his mouth, and that gave him time to think twice about what he was going to say. Not a bad tip for some people.