Some years ago the Boy Scouts of America gave a wonderful birthday party.

It was Dan Beard's ninetieth birthday, and fifty thousand Boy Scouts gathered in the Hall of Peace at the New York World's Fair, to sing, "Happy Birthday, Uncle Dan!" to the grand old man of American Scouting.

When Dan Beard was a boy in Painesville, Ohio, and later in Cincinnati and across the Ohio River in Covington, Kentucky, there were no Boy Scouts. But Daniel Boone was his hero, and he wanted to be just such a woodsman. So he taught himself the lessons of woodcraft and handicraft that he was later to develop and teach to generations of American boys.

He learned to make fire without using matches. He learned to go through the woods without making a sound. He and his friends sent one another messages in picture writing like Indians. They made smoke signals. Once they fought a forest fire. Again, Dan rescued a boy who was caught in a flood. He paddled up the Licking River in a real Indian dugout canoe and found a runaway bear.

Life was even more exciting with the approach of the Civil War. Dan saw Abraham Lincoln on the way to his inauguration and caught inspiration from him.

Under Dan Beard's leadership the boys learned that being a scout like Daniel Boone was more than having good times. They learned to be brave and helpful and cheerful; they learned not only how to live in the woods, but how to protect them and the wild creatures in them.

Dan Beard became a man of many talents—a civil engineer, an artist, a writer, an editor. He could do anything with his hands, and his American Boys' Handy Book became one of the best-beloved books ever published. When he found how boys responded to the things he wrote about camping, he realized that boys naturally love the outdoors, and he decided to do all he could to encourage this spirit.

So he helped organize the Boy Scouts of America and became its guiding spirit.

He taught boys how to find pioneer adventure in everyday life. Dan Beard: Boy Scout is full of such adventures. It is the story of a real boy's happy and useful life out of doors, a friendly book for all Cubs.

Miriam Mason, who has previously contributed four popular books to the Childhood of Famous Americans Series, now adds a fifth—and the best of all.

From the dust jacket