RICHARD HARDING DAVIS, as a friend and fellow author has written of him, was “youth incarnate,” and there is probably nothing that he wrote of which a boy would not some day come to feel the appeal. But there are certain of his stories that go with especial directness to a boy’s heart and sympathies and make for him quite unforgettable literature. A few of these were made some years ago into a volume, “Stories for Boys,” and found a large and enthusiastic special public in addition to Davis’s general readers; and the present collection from stories more recently published is issued with the same motive. This book takes its title from “The Boy Scout,” the first of its tales; and it includes “The Boy Who Cried Wolf,” “Blood Will Tell,” the immortal “Gallegher,” and “The Bar Sinister,” Davis’s famous dog story. It is a fresh volume added to what Augustus Thomas calls “safe stuff to give to a young fellow who likes to take off his hat and dilate his nostrils and feel the wind in his face.”