The girl who goes camping with a crowd of boys and girls realizes how much depends on the mere strength of the boys; at the same time she herself has an opportunity of showing not only her athletic proficiency and nerve, but also her superior common sense.  She will really have to leave the heavy work of pitching the tents and chopping the wood to the boys, but she cannot sit down and fold her hands meanwhile.  She can be collecting materials for the beds of balsam on which they hope to sleep in comfort, or she may gather chips for the fire, or she may be helping to unload the wagon or canoes in which they have come.  When the tents are pitched she has a woman’s prerogative of “putting the house in order,” and during the time of camping keeping it so.

If there is actually a case of nothing for her to do, far better for her to sit down and keep quiet than to get in the way of the boys and bother them.  A young man who in his first season as a guide in the Canadian woods took out a party of girls from a summer school on a camping trip told me that he would never do it again, because they gave him no relief from a continual rain of questions.  A case where zeal for knowledge outruns discretion.

After the tents are pitched and the fire made by the boys, it is plainly up to the girls to get supper.  Let us hope they have practised cooking for some time before they went camping.  Every one gets so desperately hungry in the outdoor life that meals are of first importance, as tempers are apt to develop unexpectedly if many failures are turned out.  If the girls are good cooks, however, and wash the dishes after each meal the division of labour will be fair to all concerned.

A girl is more or less dependent on her boy friends for instruction in sports and considerably anxious for their approval.  Even if she has a woman instructor, in nine cases out of ten she requires some kind of praise from some man before she is satisfied with her performance.  Sister may tell her that she steers her canoe with beautiful precision, but unless brother remarks carelessly that “the kid paddles pretty well” she will hesitate to take her canoe in places where expert paddling is required.  When you know that you can do some things as well as any boy you still have to rest content with the grudging assurance that “you do pretty well for a girl.”

XX

ONE HUNDRED OUTDOOR GAMES

The following games are described in this chapter: 

    All-around Athletic Championship
    Archery
    Association Football
    Badminton
    Balli-callie
    Bandy
    Baseball
    Basket Ball
    Bean Bag
    Best College Athletic Records
    Blind Man’s Buff
    Boulder On
    Bull in the Ring
    Call Ball
    Cane Rush
    Canoe Tilting
    Cat, or Cattie
    Counting-out Rhymes
    Court Tennis