Story Telling for Camp Fire Girls By Ellen Kate Gross Chief Guardian, Children’s Playground Association of Baltimore, Md.
Reading edition
Apropos to our conversation at the Richmond Congress in regard to stories for Camp Fire Girls, the following plea is submitted to your editorial board with the hope that your splendid magazine will help us in one phase of our work.
In furthering the development of the Camp Fire Girls, there arises the necessity for a supply of Indian folk tales well told and embodying the out-of-door spirit of the Indian and his ideals. Moreover the various points of the law of the Camp Fire can best be exemplified through stories which develop the ideal held up. This law is to
“Seek beauty
Give service
Pursue knowledge
Hold on to health
Glorify work
Be happy”
The following suggestive list may illustrate how this method can be carried out,—the thought and meaning of each precept being developed through one of the stories named.
SEEK BEAUTY
Hawthorne, “The Great Stone Face.”
Kingsley, “Water Babies”—in parts.
GIVE SERVICE
Robert Louis Stevenson, “Prince Otto.”
Stockton, “Old Pypes and the Dryad,” in Fanciful Tales.
Biographies and Autobiographies.
Example “Florence Nightingale.”
“Lucretia Mott.”
“The Little Hero of Haarlem”
Emile Poulsson, “Nahum Prince,” in “In the Child’s World.”
BE TRUSTWORTHY
“Ruth and Esther,” told in Hamilton Mabie’s “Stories Every Child Should Know.”
GLORIFY WORK
19th Psalm.
Lives of Burbank, Edison and other Inventors.
“The Basket Weaver.”
“Beowulf,” in Hamilton Mabie’s “Legends Every Child Should Know.”
“The Message to Garcia,” by Elbert Hubbard.
BE HAPPY
“King Midas.”
“Ugly Duckling.”
“Pine Tree that changed its Leaves.”
King Arthur tales.
If some of these stories or similar ones, and also some Indian legends could be published in your magazine from time to time, it would be a great help to those who are working with Camp Fire Girls.
“Wohelo”
“Wohelo,” the musical cry of the Camp Fire Girls was sounded by more than nine hundred of them at the first Grand Council held in the 69th Regiment Armory, New York City, recently.
Clad in the picturesque attire of the American Indian, they sat in a big circle around three lighted candles, representing their three foundation principles, and groups of lights representing real camp fires, a Camp Fire ceremonial which is performed to the music of “Burn, Fire; Burn!”
Under the supervision of the guardian Hiltini, who is Mrs. Luther H. Gulick, three other guardians, Mrs. Bradley, Mrs. Weber and Miss McCarthy, representing respectively Work, Health, Love, lighted the camp fire by the Indian expedient of rubbing two sticks together.
The call of the Camp Fire Girls, “Wohelo,” is formed by the first syllables of the three foundation words of their organization: Work, Health, Love.