Excerpt.........When Arthur Trevor caught the flying machine fever and organized the “Young Aviators,” neither he nor the other boys who joined the club meant to do anything but make toy aeroplanes. There was certainly no reason for them to fores ... Read more

Excerpt.........When Arthur Trevor caught the flying machine fever and organized the “Young Aviators,” neither he nor the other boys who joined the club meant to do anything but make toy aeroplanes. There was certainly no reason for them to foresee that their first tournament was to turn the young aviators into Boy Scouts, and in the end, into real Boy Scout Aviators owning a practical aeroplane. But there were signs from the first that the “Goosetown gang” was going to make trouble for the “Elm Street boys.” The beginning of everything and the clash between the “Goosetown gang” and the “Elm Street boys” was in this wise: Arthur Trevor’s father was a lawyer. Like the parents of most of Art’s companions, he lived in the best part of Scottsville. Here, on Elm Street, the trees were large; the residences were of brick, with wide porches; gardeners saw to the lawns, and nearly every home had a new automobile garage. Therefore, the boys living here—although they thought themselves neither better nor worse than other boys—were usually known as the “Swells” or the “Elm Street boys.” As a matter of fact they were just as freckled of face, as much opposed to “dressing up,” as full of boy ambitions and with nicknames just as outlandish as any Goosetown kid. But the Goosetown boys did not take that view of things. In Goosetown there were no automobiles. Houses were decorated with “lady finger” vines. While there were many gardens, these were devoted mainly to cabbages and tomatoes. If the lads living here had taken more interest in their homes and less in playing hooky they might have felt less bitter toward their supposed rivals. They came to understand this in time, too, but this was not until the Boy Scout movement swept through Scottsville. Although the two crowds did not mix, and seldom came in contact, in some mysterious boy way each contrived to keep well advised of the doings of the other. For instance, Art Trevor, Frank Ware, Sam Addington and Colfax Craighead, although busy making aeroplanes in the loft of the Trevor garage, were able to discuss the latest Goosetown gossip—how the gang playing cards under the big sycamore beyond the railroad bridge had quarreled with Nick Apthorp because he broke a bottle of beer, and had ducked him below the river dam. This news had become gossip because Nick’s head had come in contact with a submerged log and he had been rescued barely in time to escape drowning. Less