A Campfire Girls Test of Friendship | Page 6

back to camp."
All the girls from Camp Halsted fell in with her suggestion, delighted by the idea of such an unplanned excursion. It was easy enough to arrange it, too, for the little steamer would be back on her return trip early in the afternoon, even though she did not make very good speed and had numerous stops to make, since Lake Dean's shores were lined with little settlements, where camps and cottages and hotels had been built at convenient spots.
"We've heard you singing a lot of songs we never heard before," said Marcia to Bessie, as they took their places on the boat. "Won't you teach us some of them? They were awfully pretty, we thought."
"You must mean the Camp Fire songs," said Bessie, happily. "We'll be glad to teach them to you--and they're all easy to learn, too. I think Dolly's got an extra copy of one of the song books and I know she'll be glad to let you have it."
And so, as soon as Bessie explained what Marcia wanted, the deck of the steamer was turned into an impromptu concert hall, and she made her journey to the strains of the favorite songs of the Camp Fire, the Wo-he-lo cheer with its lovely music being, of course, sung more often than any of the others.
"We were wondering so much about that," said Marcia. "We could make out the word Wo-he-lo, but we couldn't understand it. It sounded like an Indian word, but the others didn't seem to fit in with that idea."
"It's just made up from the first syllables of work and health and love, you see," said Eleanor. "We make up a lot of the words we use. A good many of the ceremonial names that the girls choose are made that way."
"Then they have a real meaning, haven't they?"
"Yes. You see, one of the things that we preach and try to teach in the Camp Fire is that things ought to be useful as well as beautiful. And it's very easy to be both."
"But tell me about the Indian sound of Wo-he-lo. Was that just an accident, or was it chosen that way on purpose?"
"Both, I think, Marcia. You see, the Indians in this country had a lot of good qualities that a great many people have forgotten or overlooked completely. Of course they were savages, in a way, but they had a civilization of their own, and a great many of their practices are particularly well adapted to this country."
"Oh, I see! You don't want them to be forgotten."
"That's just it. It's a good way to keep the memory of earlier times alive, and there seems to be something romantic and picturesque about the Indian names and the Indian things."
"That's one of the things I like best that I've found out about the Camp Fire since you came to Camp Sunset. We used to think the Camp Fire meant being goody-goody and learning to sew and cook and all sorts of things like that. But you have a lot of fun and good times, too, don't you?"
"Yes, and there really isn't anything goody-goody about us, Marcia. You'd soon find that out if you were with us."
"Well, I'm very glad that so many people have been led to know the truth about us," said Eleanor, with a smile. "If everyone knew the truth about the Camp Fire, it would soon be as big and as influential as even the most enthusiastic of us hope it will be. And I'm sure that we'll grow very fast now, because when girls understand us they see that we simply help them to have the sort of good times they enjoy most. Having a good time is a pretty important thing in this life."
"I--I rather thought you would think that we spent too much time just having a good time," said Marcia, plainly rather surprised by this statement.
"I don't say anything about you girls in particular, because I don't know enough about you," replied Eleanor. "Of course, it's easy to get to be so bound up in enjoying yourself that you don't think of anything else. But people who do that soon get tired of just amusing themselves, so, as a rule, there's no great harm done. They get so that everything they do bores them, and they turn to something serious and useful, for a change."
"But you just said having a good time was important--"
"And I meant it," said Eleanor, with a smile. "Because it's just as bad to go to one extreme as to the other, and that's true in about everything. People who never work, but spend all their time playing aren't happy, as a rule, or healthy, either. And people who reverse that, and work all the time without ever playing, are in just