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Show SCOUTS (Conducted by National Council of the Boy Scouts of America.) TROOP OF BLIND BOY SCOUTS Troop 79 of Hartford, Conn., has Its headquarters In the Connecticut Institute for the Blind, because that's where Its 17 scouts live. They are blind. Most of them are stone blind; some can distinguish light from dark, and a few dim objects. Troop 79, to all Intents and purposes, does all Its scouting in the darkness of the blackest black-est night there can be. Not much fun In that, you say; not much likelihood likeli-hood of scouting efficiency ; no first-class first-class scouts In Troop 79. No? You should see them building their human pyramids, and doing other athletic feats difficult for boys with full eyesight. eye-sight. : G. S. Ripley, scout executive at Hartford, who visits this troop and sees them at camp, says that each boy makes his 100 per cent of noise. They move about as confidently as any group of scouts, and are not discouraged discour-aged by frequent bumps Into strangers . who don't know how to get out of the way of a blind man. "Don't mind that," they say, with a grin, when the stranger apologizes, "I am used to It." These blind scouts are working right along toward first-class rank. They do their signaling by the telegraph tele-graph key in the Morse code. They can apply bandages, they know first aid, can use knife and ax, and can tell the points of the compass. Several Sev-eral of them have passed the fire-light, lng tast. In the cooking tests they estimate es-timate by the time elapsed and the heat thrown out by Are, just how well the food Is cooked. In the store window win-dow test a large table is substituted covered with objects which the boyj feel of carefully and then write descriptions de-scriptions about. They found this rather difficult. A few of these blind scouts can swim a little. One of them, a good athlete but absolutely blind, dove . ruly Remarkable Are the Athletic and Other Feats of the Sightlest Youths In Troop 79 of Hartford Conn. from a tower 7 feet above the water, and also jumped from a tower nearly 20 feet above the water and wanted to dive from the latter, but the director direc-tor would not permit the attempt The only time Mr. Ripley ever heard this scout complain was when he was not allowed to dd his nhare of camp duty. |
