Lillian Roy - The Woodcraft Girls in the City

“Atmosphere! Good gracious, Zan, can you ask for more!” laughed Jane, in response to Zan’s call. “Did you ever smell such an odour of the turpentine that comes from pine?”

The girls all laughed but Nita complained pathetically:

“If you girls knew the job it was to smear all that paint on the old stuff, you wouldn’t poke fun at the trees. Why, the duck soaked up my paint as fast as I put it on, so of course I had to use gallons of turp to make it spread at all. Even then, it dried before I could shade any bark on my trees.”

“You all say I am too matter-of-fact a cook to be an artist, but I bet I could take a handful of the superfluous paint on those trees and knead it into something resembling ‘tall timbers’,” now commented Hilda.

“No one could! Why we had to hang the duck along the wall of our attic and stand on an old library table while we painted the tops of the trees! Just try to make bark or leaves on a tree that has to be painted with a heavy kalsomine brush. Our arms got so lame before we painted an hour that we fairly cried with the ache in the bones,” said Elena, defiantly.

“Yes, and Elena’s attic is so bespattered with raw umber and ivory black that Mrs. Marsh says she will have to stain the entire floor now to make it look decent again,” added Nita.

“Well girls, we are all genuine Woodcrafters, so we hail with thanksgiving this scenery that fills our lungs with the pungent odour of the forest. I, for one, will breathe deeply of this pine product!” laughed Miss Miller, turning the criticism to fun.

“Well, all I can say is that I feel grateful for these great stout logs that will protect us from Winter’s icy winds and the hungry horde of howling wolves – the menace of pioneers in the forest!” added Zan.

“They’re all right in Winter but how about the longed for shade in Summer when the fierce rays of the sun beat upon our unprotected heads? We have no branches overhead,” remarked May, whimsically.

“Now you’ve all joshed Nita and me quite enough – let’s proceed with the Council,” said Elena, looking beseechingly toward Miss Miller.

So the meeting was opened and during the singing of the Prayer of Invocation, the Guide focussed her camera and took a snap-shot of the girls standing in the “Scenic Woodland Council.”

After the Tally of the last meeting had been read and other business disposed of, Miss Miller said:

“Is there any particular work you girls plan to do this coming week?”

“O Chief!” said Nita, jumping to salute Zan. “We really must plan some new dances for this Fall, especially if we are going to celebrate a big Hallow E’en Council and invite our friends.”

“As this is the last week of September, we haven’t any too much time, either,” added Jane.

“Well, let’s commission Nita to dig up some new and entertaining folk songs that can be acted out in a dance,” suggested Zan, looking to the Guide for approval of the idea.

“Elena, make a note in your Tally that Nita will find us some new dancing songs before next Council,” replied Miss Miller.

“O Chief!” now spake Hilda. “When we broke camp for the Summer we were all quite keen to win coups for needle-craft, carpentry, and other work. Besides, we want to secure degrees for some of the big stunts like Mrs. Remington’s Tribe have won.”

“Oh, that reminds me! Elizabeth Remington said she would gladly help us to learn how to start the pottery and carpentry work. Then too, she said her mother thought we ought to plan to have a Little Lodge attached to our Tribe, as many Big Lodges have,” cried Zan, eagerly.

“It is very good of Elizabeth to offer her time to help you girls; as for the Little Lodge, I would not think of it till your two Bands are filled and the Tribe is chartered and well under way,” replied the Guide.

“O Chief! Can’t we start the pottery work first ’cause Zan knows a lot about designing since she started that class-work in school,” suggested Hilda.

“I was not aware that Zan had graduated from the School of Design so soon. Did you really finish in two lessons, Zan?” teased the Guide.

“Oh, you know what Hilda means – she thinks that now I can find out about real designing we all can profit by it,” explained Zan.

“Instead of pottery which is a step beyond carpentry, I would suggest that the Band make some objects in wood according to the Manual rules for winning coups ,” advised Miss Miller.

“Why can’t you old members wait a little while and give us new members time to win the flower, star, and tree coups such as you earned at Camp this Summer?” asked Frances Mason.

“We can all begin together on carpentry and at times when we are not together, or you new members are not in on some of the things we do, you can catch up on those easy winners,” said Zan.

So the entry was made in the Tally Book directly after the note reading: “Nita will find new folk songs for a dance before next Council.”

It read: “Begin some object in carpentry using own designs and material, suitable to claim a coup with all provisions met.”

“Now that that is off our minds let’s have Miss Miller tell us an Indian myth or story. We haven’t heard one since that last week on the farm,” petitioned Jane.

“And I happen to know that she received a package of books from the Smithsonian Institution at Washington,” added Zan.

“How! How!” chorused the other girls, so the Guide felt called upon to contribute her share to the Council meeting.

“I really had planned something so different from this, that I must have a moment in which to think,” murmured the Guide.

“Oh dear me! That’s always the way with us! We are so impatient to make Miss Miller work for her honourable position, that we generally manage to ‘cut off our noses to spite our faces,’“ sighed Elena so plaintively that the others laughed.’”

“My original idea will not spoil by delay, so I will tell the story now which is really much easier than the work I planned,” rejoined Miss Miller.

“Well, at least tell us what your plan was and let us judge of its merits,” declared Zan, coaxingly.

“I never satisfy idle curiosity if I recognise it, but I will tell you a story of what happened to some Eskimo Indian children who indulged in this undesirable inclination to their undoing.

“This myth is told by the Sea Lion-town People from Alaska and is called, ‘A Tale of a Red Feather,’” began Miss Miller.

“A group of children were playing ball with a woody excrescence which they had found in the bole of a tree. It had been rubbed down and polished until it was smooth and shiny as could be.

“As they knocked the ball back and forth, shouting with glee if one of their band happened to miss it, a small red feather floated down from the clouds and blew gently to and fro just over their heads. As it was wafted about in the eddying breeze, it attracted the attention of the youngsters who watched it with eager curiosity.

“It never came nearer the earth than just above the heads of the children and as they speculated concerning it, one of the boys declared it must be a magic feather. Another said it might be a prince bewitched by an evil spell-binder, and still another said it was from a Red Eagle that soared from the Happy Hunting Grounds.

“The latter idea seemed to take hold of the children and they cried ‘We want it if it fell from the Happy Hunting Grounds.’

“So most of them jumped up trying to catch it as it floated over their heads. The tallest boy, making a high leap, seized it, but instead of bringing it down to the ground with him, his hand stuck fast as if by some unseen power. He struggled but could not release himself and gradually he was drawn up from the earth.