Published in the 1959 printing of The Golden Anniversary Book of Scouting
The British capital lay in the grip of a dense pea-soup fog. It had rolled in during the night and had enveloped the whole city and its smoky yellowness. The famous London buses crawled cautiously along but other traffic had come to an almost complete standstill. Street lamps had been lit before noon. They shone with a feeble glow that penetrated only a few feet into the murkiness.
A man walking slowly along the poorly lit street stopped under a lamppost and tried to orient himself. He had the feeling that he had gone astray but in what direction was he to turn?
A dark figure emerged from the gloom. A boy moved past the man then turned and came back. “Can I help you, sir?” the youngster asked.
“You certainly can,” said the man. “I have a business appointment somewhere around here. I’ll be much obliged if you’ll tell me how to get there.” There was no mistaking the man’s nationality – he spoke with a decided American accent as they reached the destination the American pulled a shilling from his pocket for a tip.
“No thank you, sir,” the boy said, “not for doing a good turn.”
“And why not?” The American asked.
“Because I’m a Scout!”
“A Scout? What does that mean?”
“Haven’t you heard about Baden-Powell’s Boy Scouts?”
The American had not. “Tell me about them,” he said. The boy told him what he could of himself and his brother scouts and all the fun they were having in scouting.
But the American wanted to know still more.
“I know where you can find out,” said the boy. “Our headquarters is close by, on Victoria Street. The General may even be in the office today.”
“The General?”
“Baden-Powell himself, sir.”
“Fine,” said the American. “Let me finish my errand. Then if you have time we’ll go to your headquarters.”
The boy waited, then showed the way to the Scout Office and disappeared before the American had a chance to learn his name.
At the Boy Scouts headquarters, the American 51-year old William D. Boyce – newspaper and magazine publisher from Chicago, Illinois – met the founder of the Boy Scout movement, the British military hero, Lieutenant General Robert S.S. Baden-Powell, and learned about the scouts from the Chief Scout himself.
Boyce became tremendously impressed with the possibilities of the movement that Baden-Powell had started. Through his business enterprises, he had many dealings with boys, but no experience with them had ever struck him as forcibly as his first encounter with a Boy Scout.
When he left for the United States a few days later, he carried with him a trunk full of Scout literature uniforms and insignia. The moment he arrived home, he took steps to introduce the Boy Scout idea to America. He counseled with his friend, Colin H. Livingstone, of Washington, D.C., and with other people in the country’s capital and with them established a new corporation:
The name: BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA
The date: February 8, 1910
In this way, a good turned unto a stranger by an unknown English Scout brought Scouting to the United States.
