other handy-men in the making. "It was in the evening in a big red-brick school in Blackley, in Lancashire, the master of which, Mr. Ben Wilde, seems to have been endowed with an uncanny gift for knowing just the jolly boyish things that a boy wants to learn and which at the same time are good for him to learn. He has a class for boys in camp cookery, for instance, another in pathfinding (my small guide was a member of this class), another for joinery, another in leather work; one for swimming and life saving, and lastly one that he calls specifically a "handy-man" class.
It is an extraordinary sight to walk into a classroom and see from thirty to forty small boys looking eagerly on while a teacher cuts up beef steak or neck of mutton, potatoes and vegetables for a camp stew. In this class they learn how to light a fire, which is not always the simple task it sounds; how to make "damper" of flour and water as they make it in the Australian bush; how to prepare and cook a rabbit, or a hotpot, or a soup. Forty boys attend this camp cookery class every week.
Then there is the leather workers' class, which, oddly is even more popular than the camp cookery class. It has an attendance of nearly 100 boys a week. Here they teach a boy to sole and heel his own boots, to patch a split boot, to make a leather hinge, to repair anything from a stirrup leather to a school-bag. ◇◇
Pioneers and Pathfinders.
The "pioneer" class, again, comprises many boyish delights. Here you may see small boys solemnly "cutting
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