Adel High School - Scarlet and Black Yearbook (Adel, IA)

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the people hold feasts and family reunions, all business accounts are settled, gifts and good wishes exchanged and the rites of ancestor worship are per- formed in the ancestral halls. The streets are gay with banners: flags and lanterns wave and the people are buying new clothes, having their heads freshly shaved and patronizing the public bath houses. I am invited to a feast on the evening of the l6th at the home of a Chinese doctor in one of the hospitals here. These Chinese feasts are no insignificant affairs, as the following menu will show you. These dishes were actually served at a wedding feast which one of my friends here attended. The classification is Chinese. Fruit: Pomegranates, pears, oranges: Dried fruits: Cand-ied melon seeds, sugared peanuts, green plums fsimilar to our olivesy, sandja ielly fthe sandja is a small, red fruit resembling crab apples, 5 Vegetables and meats: Shrimps cooked in oil. smoked ham, smoked fish, pickled tripe, salted duck livers, sea weed, ducks' eggs pickled in lime fthese eggs are buried in lime until they are black and perfectly preserved. They are considered a great delicacyj, sweet breads, Large bowls: Sea slugs, fried duck, stewed fish. winter bamboo with pheasants, eight precious foods fthis dish is a conco'tion, of lotus seeds, cypress berries, dates, barley, honey, sandja, lichees fa nutj and rice, all moulded together. It is most deliciousj, crabs, pork balls fried in oil, clear soup with chicken sinews and fish stom- achs: Small Bowls: Clear soup with shrimps without shells, fried kidney, shrimps with water bamboo, chicken skins, garlic sprouts with pheasant. Korean meat, pineapple, Dessert: Dark-cloud-covering-snow fa poetical name for rice with a covering of black seeds. Fortunately it isn't considered discourteous to refuse any of these dishes and it is rather difficult to overeat with chopsticks! One of my schoolboys asked me the other day if foreigners never ate with chop sticks. I suppose he thinks us perfect barbarians. I wish I could tell you of the interesting street scenes I see every day on my way to school. Many of them ludicrous beyond description and others pitiful to a painful degree. If you will come over to see me I'll take you for the most exciting ride you ever had, not in a Thomas Flyer, but in a rick- sliaw with a brawny coolie to pull you, through narrow streets so crowded with donkeys, wheelbarrows and pedestrians that your heart will be in your mouth most of the time for fear you'll run someone down or be spilled out in the mud yourself. . I would appreciate more than I can tell you, any letters you high school people or alumni might write me. I have heard from a few of you and should like so much to hear from others. It is sweet to be remembered any time, you know, but especially so when you are twelve thousand miles from home, With best wishes for all of you, especially the Junior class, and a hope that the l9l6 Scarlet and Black may be the best annual ever publish by the Adel High School, I am. Your sincere friend, A E.. GRACE TAYLOR.

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law. In fact her only weapon is her tongue and she uses it freely enough sometimes on both her husband and children. Nanking is a city of about 350,000 It was built some time during the second century B. C. and has always been famous as 'an educational center. lt is surrounded by an immense wall twenty miles in circumference, from thirty to seventy feet high and thirty feet thick. There are twelve massive gates, constantly guarded by soldiers and closed every night at nine o'clock. There are places, at intervals, where one can climb to the top of the wall. It is a lovely place to walk and affords a fine view of the city and the surrounding country. The country around Nanking is very picturesque, with mountain ranges on every side and the broad, yellow Yangtze winding along the north and west. It is not at all the barren, desolate place I had always imagined China to be but is green all the year round, with rice and wheat fields, lovely groves of feathery bamboo and hundreds of clear little ponds fringed with willows and covered with lotus and water lilies. I wish I could picture for you the view from my bedroom window. On the horizon about five miles to the east rises old Purple mountain, one of the landmarks of Nanking. The Chinese name is Dzi Ging Shau, or Purple Gold Mountain, and it is happily chosen, for when the sun is bright the whole mountain is a mass of old gold color and in the early morning and evening or an dull days it is a deep purple. In the foreground just beyond the mulberry grove on the other side of our compound wall is a lovely green hill crowned with an old Buddhist temple, called Bu Dje Co, or North Star Temple. There is a steep, winding path leading to this temple, which is occupied by both priests and soldiers. The entire hillside is covered with graves, as indeed is every vacant space in Nanking. We are so accustomed to walking among graves here that we think no more about them than we would of a landscape of wild flowers at home. In fact, the footpaths and old narrow paved roads winding over the hillsides among the graves are our favorite walks. On the hill just back of our house is a little Chinese schoolhouse. It is a tiny, little place with a hard dirt floor and two infinitesimal windows, so high up in the wall that they let in next to no light. The only furniture con- sists of the high tables and benches without backs and an altar with a dust- coverecl Buddha and two or three incense burners upon it. Here the twenty little boy students spend every day in the week from seven o'clock in the morning until dark writing Chinese characters or shouting aloud long lists of characters whose meaning they do not know at all. The teacher is a long-haired, untidy, consumptive-looking individual who lives in the school- house and has a garden and a few chickens. When I looked in one evening recently he was smoking a long-stemmed pipe while the children wrote characters in that cold, dark, dingy room which we would consider unhealthy for even animals. I am at present having my winter vacation, the first I've had this year except Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's days. It comes at this time of year on account of the Chinese New Year, which is the 12th this year. The government has officially adopted January lst as the beginning of the year but an age-old custom cannot be changed in a day and the people still celebrate the old date. The government schools have a three weeks' vacation so the mission schools conform and we have our holidays at this time instead of at Christmas time. The Chinese New Year is the great event of the year. Formerly business houses, schools and all public places were closed for the entire month. Now they are closed the greater part of the week,

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Qv- ' -- ' -- ' -- '- 'Y -- ' -- ---- ' -:L L::t. v.:1 Letter from Scott Snyder -af.. ..Av.-f.. ,fa Jn. gf C. J. -. -. v. W. ,. -.. ,. v. c. -. -. -.g. Editor Scarlet and Black: Your request for a story for the l9l 5 issue of the high school annual is an appreciated one, but I fear that anything in the nature of a reminiscence from a member of the class of IB93 will be ancient history to your present-day readers. The band of hopefuls released from the Adel High School in that year have not, so far as I have learned, set the world afire in the way their parents hoped, but they had their share of enjoyment while in school and accumulated the usual amotmt of knowledge from the text books and a corps of competent instructors. They were no better and possibly no worse than the average class. They gave Prof. Wilson and his estimable wife as much trouble and as much joy as any other crowd. In spite of the fact that we all thought our graduation was the main event in history that year, we did not command nearly so much attention as the world's fair in Chicago or as the birth of a number of Adel babies, some of whom are doubtless members of the class of l9l 5. I might tell you of the love affairs of Bert Byers and Kate Russell, of the achievements of Victor fCaesarJ Johnson in the Latin class, of the painstaking efforts of Millie Campbell and Viola Morey to fit themselves for teaching, of the sisterly efforts of Cora Marsh to help the rest of the class in their studies, of the many dates asked of Mame Crawford by the young men of her acquaintance or of the popularity of Grace Nye and the awe in which we all held her father, Rev. C. L. Nye, but that would be telling tales out of school. The only thing I have to offer is about the other member of the class of '93--how he came near shattering the hopes of his parents by failing to receive leis sheepskin. The Other Member was inclined to put in his time playing football and baseball, letting someone else figure out his prob- lems in geometry, or learning to play a horn in Verne Russell's band, rather than to become a shining light in the educational world. Things broke well for him as a rule and tomorrow was a day little thought of. All he seemed lo care for was three invitations to the dining room daily and a batting average of 300. When it came time for selection of final oration subjects and the attendant rehearsals. Prof. Wilson assigned the Other Member to his wife, who was the principal. Mrs. Wilson assigned him to her husband, and neither knew that he was not working hard to close his high school career in a blaze of glory and nine pages of Henry Clay oratory. The commencement exerrises were held on Thursdav and things went on smootl-ly until Monday of that week, when Prof. Wilson broke up a contemplated fishing party by casually announcing that he would like to hear the Other Fellow rehearse his oration. Because there was nothing else to do, a confession was in order. There was something doing in Mr. Wilson's private office right away. A subject was chosen, assistance given and on Thursday night the people of Adel were treated to a highly-elevating