down a tree" in the school yard or in the classroom. The tree is a length of telegraph pole, maybe, sunk into a round hole in a gigantic block of wood. Or you may see them building a model bridge of thin three-foot rods and string. When they have got the intricacies of that model fully into their heads they will go out into the country and build a real bridge, perhaps across a stream, with real poles and real rope.
Of the pathfinder class the chief work is map-reading and drawing, route-sketching to guide a stranger, and learning the entire geography of the district. These boys go out on Saturdays with compass and chain learning the elements of surveying. Or they visit, say, the Ship Canal and learn all that Manchester's shipping means to the place. Any of these boys will tell you in an instant where is the nearest place to get a doctor or a motor-car, a telephone or a fire alarm; how many horses there are in the district and who owns them; what time the local post office shuts and where you can get a telegram away after this office has shut.
The swimming and life-saving classes attract some 130 boys a week; the "ambulance and nursing" classes nearly as many. To watch small boys making beef-tea for invalids, gruel for toothless grannies, milk and barley water for babies, might make one smile were it not for their immense seriousness in these tasks. I was assured that many of the members of this class do really valuable work in homes of invalids where comforts and means are few.
And lastly is the handy-man class. The course here comprises all sorts of useful things besides carpentry and iron working. One night a master painter from the district will come into the school and show the boys how to paint
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