A very stirring marching song, without doubt, but what would they do if the leader’s name happened to be something like Mary Louise Abercrombie or Elizabeth Van Der Water?  They just couldn’t have a Captain with such a long name, that’s all.  And there you have unfair discrimination creeping into your camp right at the start.

In “Scouting for Girls” there is some useful information concerning smoke signals.  In case you are lost, or want to communicate with your friends who are beyond shouting distance, it is much quicker than telephoning to build a clear, hot fire and cover it with green stuff or rotten wood so that it will send up a solid column of black smoke.  By spreading and lifting a blanket over this smudge the column can be cut up into pieces, long or short (this is the way it explains it in the book, but it doesn’t sound plausible to me), and by a preconcerted code these can be made to convey tidings.

For instance, one steady smoke means “Here is camp.”

Two steady smokes mean “I am lost.  Come and help me.”

Three smokes in a row mean “Good news!”

I suppose that the Pollyanna of the camping party is constantly sending up three smokes in a row on the slightest provocation, and then when the rest of the outfit have raced across country for miles to find out what the good news is she probably shows them, with great enthusiasm, that some fringed gentians are already in blossom or that the flicker’s eggs have hatched.  Unfortunately, there is no smoke code given for snappy replies, but in the next paragraph it tells how to carry on a conversation with pistol shots.  One of these would serve the purpose for repartee.

FOOTNOTES: 

[5] Supply Captain’s name.

LIII

HOW TO SELL GOODS

The Retail Merchants’ Association ought to buy up all the copies of “Elements of Retail Salesmanship,” by Paul Westley Ivey (Macmillan), and not let a single one get into the hands of a customer, for once the buying public reads what is written there the game is up.  It tells all about how to sell goods to people, how to appeal to their weaknesses, how to exert subtle influences which will win them over in spite of themselves.  Houdini might as well issue a pamphlet giving in detail his methods of escape as for the merchants of this country to let this book remain in circulation.

The art of salesmanship is founded, according to Mr. Ivey, on, first, a thorough knowledge of the goods which are to be sold, and second, a knowledge of the customer.  By knowing the customer you know what line of argument will most appeal to him.  There are several lines in popular use.  First is the appeal to the instinct of self-preservation—­i.e., social self-preservation.  The customer is made to feel that in order to preserve her social standing she must buy the article in question.  “She must be made to feel what a disparaged social self would mean to her mental comfort.”