While taking some hard-won time today to unwind, I stumbled across a digital edition of a turn-of-the-(last)-century magazine called Outing. Published from the 1880s into the 1920s, Outing ran the gamut of outdoor sports, notably hunting, fishing, hiking and the like.I'd found a compendium of 1918 issues, more than 800 pages in all, and what appealed most to me were the ads. I present three of them here -- two for Colt firearms and one for Webster Marble's venerable edged tools -- trimmed by an endearing excerpt from a 1915 article entitled, "Knives I have Known: How Various Types Meet the Real Woodsman's Test of Ability to Slice Bacon" by C.L. Gilman.
"Neither as a weapon nor as a means of giving his prey the thrust of mercy has the knife any claim to a place on the belt of the wilderness adventurer. And right here the knife serves, if one may borrow some from the Book of Rites of the Boy Scouts, as a ready guide to the three preliminary degrees of woodsmanship."First, there is the tenderfoot, who carries a sheath knife of the bowie pattern on his hip ready for cutting the throat of the buck he expects to find posing for his rifle and for that hand-to-hand grapple with an infuriated bear which lurks pleasantly shuddersome in his imagination.
"Next comes the 'second-class' scout who, having found no fighting or throatcutting to flesh his maiden steel, makes pompous parade of his wearing no knife at all.
"Finally, there are a few who, having passed and persevered through the two first stages, may fairly lay claim to the title of 'first-class scout' who have a real use in mind for the blades which dangle from the reefing straps of their breeches. And that use is generally slicing bacon with a little skinning and general whittling on the side. A good bacon knife will peel the hide from a muskrat very neatly and then -- after sundry and searching purifying processes -- go back to slicing bacon.
"Careful case-keeping on the uses made of a sheath knife during twelve months of woods living shows the slicing of bacon far in the lead, snipping browse second and general whittling, potato peeling, and skinning trailing along in the order named."
