Biddeford High School - Olympian Yearbook (Biddeford, ME)

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THE OLYMPIAN , 23 f though their foolish independence seems to ask otherwise. Let us continue to open doors for women, tip our hats to them, walk on the outside when going down the street, and perform other such acts of courtesy. Business women or not, their sex demands courtesy. Let us show them that chivalry is not dead even though it is their own misguided sense of independence that has done much to strangle it. Harold Bean, ' 38. Janie's First Day of School. It was the first day of school, and Janie's mother was getting her ready to go to kindergarten. She was so anxious to start, she had seen her twelve year old brother going back and forth to school, the year before, and she was already determined that she would love it. Just the idea of carrying books and learning to read and write seemed to send a shiver through her from the top of her gold- en curls to the tips of her tiny feet. She was very proud as she walked along the street, feeling quite grown up in her little blue dress, which her mother had just made the day before, and her little black patent-leather shoes. When her father had looked at her this morning all dressed up, he had said Why, Janie, your dress just matches your eyes, and Janie had run up the stairs to mother's large mirror to see if her eyes did look like blue cloth. They hadn't to her, but then Janie was only five. As they turned the corner nearing the school Janie could see all the other little girls and boys playing. Why, Janie thought, these girls are all much bigger than I am. And they were too: they were at least seven or eight and only a few looked six years old, but Janie was only five. Sudden- ly she felt that she didn't want to leave Mother and come here with all these strangers who didn't seem to even notice her. Mother took her from a wide doorway to a large room which had windows all around itg and there, Janie saw, were other little girls and boys with their mothers talking to the teacher. Janie's mother also went up to the desk and said, Hello, Margar- et to the teacher. Janie thought that when you talk to a teacher, you shouldn't call her by her first name like that. But Janie's thought soon left this idea, for another little girl was coming in all alone. Her mother wasn't with her, and she didn't have a nice blue dress or patent-leather shoes: in- stead she had an old gingham dress, all patched in places, and she wore old brown sandals. lmmediately Janie felt very sorry for this other little girl: and the other children were laughing at her. Janie ran to the frightened child and, pulling her by the hand, brought her to the desk, and held her hand for fear that the poor child would run away. The teacher, seeing this, im- mediately started talking to the new girl and asked her name. She answer- ed that her name was Elizabeth but everyone called her Beth, that is, her mother had until she died, and mentioning her mother the child start- ed to cry. Janie's mother tried to com- fort the poor little girl and the latter, feeling friendliness, after a long time, told her story. She had been an only child. Her father had died, and her mother who had worked in the laun- dry had never returned after she had left for work one morning. When Beth had seen her mother again she had been lying cold and still in a big black box as Beth call- ed it. Everyone was crying in the room, except the children who did not quite understand, but they also were quiet. When asked who took care of her now, Beth said that an Aunt Martha who had a large family and no money at all, had taken her into her home. Janie, liking this little girl with straight but beautiful black hair, wanted her to come live with her, and: so it hap- pened that Janie now has an adopted