Bridgewater State University - Alpha Yearbook (Bridgewater, MA)

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'-' bribed or by other means inveigled into reading the Fifteen chapters we have completedl that the novel in not an autobiography or, possibly, a confession. True, we have been a waitress, but that does not mean, because the plot of our novel is based upon a college-girl waitress falling in love with a cook, that we have ever been in love with a cook. Most un- kind of all are the lifted eye-brows we observe when our reader arrives at the love scenes. How little faith they have in the power of a keen imagination! It is necessary, too, in order to avoid being considered insufferably conceited about our own skill, to assure everyone that we are writing the novel just for the fun of it and that it is not, of course, intended for print. That is, we must be outwardly modest. Inwardly we must feel utter satisfaction with our own cleverness and talent, for when we compared our amateur attempts with 'fThe Qld Wives' Tale or The White Swan , we would otherwise be in grave danger of being consumed with a sense of our own inferiority. Beside all these discouraging elements there are the technical obstacles to be met, and these are no longer few. So there you have us- -the novelist in our bed of roses. In reality, as innocent and sim- ple as a country school girl, in our friends' eyes a gay old rake with a wild and shady past. In the eyes of the world as unassuming an individual as Uriah Heep, in our own heart sub- limely self-confident. VVe struggle on the one hand with the people who read our story, and on the other with those who are acting in it. Take back your envy-you who do not write! MARX? G. CHILDS OUR PLACE IN SPACE Space is measured by the distance light travels in one year. The orbit of the Earth about its sun is only one ten-thousandth of a light year or 600,000,000 miles. The Earth is about 91,500,000 miles distant from the sun in the north latitude winter and 94,500,000 miles distant in the summer. Therefore the diameter of the orbit is about one-thirty-two- thousandth of a light year. To gain a better conception of the Earth's position in the solar system, imagine a circular field and two and a half miles in diameter, place a library globe two feet in diameter in the very centerg eighty-two feet away put a mustard seed. The globe will represent the sun and the mustard seed Mercury. At a distance of 142 feet place a pea, and another at 215 feet. These will represent Venus and the Earth, both as to size and distance. A rather large pinhead at a distance of 327 feet will speak for Mars, and a fair sized tangerine a quarter of a mile distant will stand for jupiter. A small lemon 2f5 of a mile away will play the roll of Saturn, a large cherry 3X4 of a mile distant will answer for Uranus, and a fair sized plum at the very edge of the field will be Neptune. A new planet, approximately 3,768,000,000 miles from the sun, was discovered March 13, 1930 by Prof. Lowell and later named Pluto. This is the most important discovery in the twentieth century and has added 950,600,000 miles to the radius of the solar system. Nearly as important are the explorations of the Milky Way system or galaxy. This galaxy is composed of millions and billions of suns similar to our own sun. These fiery bodies assume a mass which is somewhat similar to a pair of saucers the edges of whose concave sides are joined. Gur own solar system is located slightly to one side of the center 145 .

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l93l NORMAL GFFERING A NEVV TEACHER'S EXPERIENCE I kept him after school. He was only a little boy, and as the minutes of the afternoon ticked off in steady pro- cession, the feeling in his heart turned to childish hate. The shouts of his friends reached him from the street, and added to the misery of which I was the cause. He had to do ten examples in arithmetic before he could leave the confining schoolrooml The hard, don't- care attitude which he had so manfully maintained throughout his ordeal, suddenly gave way to childish sobs. The tears ran down his face and made big spreading spots on the arithmetic paper over which he struggled. Sobbingly, he declared that he could stay no longer, but I, hardening my heart against his pleadings, simply stated: You are to do ten examples correctly before you leave this room, tonight. After much mingling of tears and long division, the paper was completed, and he, still crying, left the room one hour after his schoolmates had been dismissed. Without one look in my direction, he stamped down the stairs, pulling his cap down over his eyes, as he went. The more I thought about the incident, the worse I felt, for viewed from the child's eyes, the punishment rnust have seemed severe. I, who so wanted to be liked, feared that the punishment which I had meted out had incurred the boy's lasting dislike. I made foolish resolutions that I would never keep a pupil after school again unless it was necessary and the only alternative. The next morning, still feeling badly about it, for I did so like Alec, I went to school. With the ringing of the first bell, I was interrupted by a childish voice bidding me Good morning. Turning, I beheld Alec standing beside my desk, and in his outstretched grimy hand, he held a bunch of flowers. At the same time, he said: May I stay after school and clean the boards for you tonight, Miss Eddy? Such is the forgiving nature of a child. CLAIRE F. EDDY B3 ON VVRITING A NOVEL VVe had reached the mature age of eight when the overwhelming urge to write a book Cat that time the word novel was not in our vocabularyb first took possession of us. Such minor difficulties as deciding whether or not twenty hundred thousand dollars was too im- probable an amount for a thirteen year old hero to inherit and whether or not it would be possible to go to Europe in a sailboat bothered us somewhat, but on the whole the master- piece progressed smoothly and with speed. We have always remembered with resentment and just indignation the remark of our brother Cat that time aged fourteenj who said, when the finished work was read to the family, that it was surprisingly like the book Campfire Girls in the VVoods , which he had presented to us that Christmas. To be sure, we had never been a Campfire Girl and had therefore been forced to draw upon the Christmas book for material and local color, perhaps, but anybody should have been able to see the obvious, and, we might say, the startling points of difference between the two.. And now, nearly thirteen years later, we have again felt the overmastering passion. Difhculties are no longer minor ones, nor are they few. Most important among them looms the practical impossibility of convincing our family and friends fsuch of them as have been I 144

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l93l NORMAL OFFERING of this galaxy. If the plane of the galaxy is drawn within a yards length, the solar system becomes invisible to the sight through any microscope available. VVhat does our galaxy include? The Milky Way system is composed of the solar system, star clusters, comets, star dust, gases, and meteoric clouds all of which move about in a systematized manner through this disc-shaped body which is about 150,000 light years through the plane and 15,000 light years from pole to pole. Is there anything outside this galaxy? The Milky VVay system is a vast cosmic unit Whose space contains much cosmic energy. The so-called spiral nebulae are now known to be other galaxies or Hisland universes like our own Milky VVay system, the nearest of which -Androneda-is 1,000,000 light years away. There are hundreds and thousands of these spiral nebulae: therefore there are at least that many galaxies. The existence of other worlds detracts nothing from this one nor reduces the complexity of the problems of the human race. The enormous extent of the universe, and the success astronomers have had in exploring it, increase our respect for the power and dignity of the human mind and should inspire high hopes for its future development. ERNEST H. COTE ON LETTER-WRITING Ever since Cain scratched to Abel, on the convenient flat surface of a boulder, the first message of war the world has ever known, this universe has been letter-conscious. Letters have become by process of elimination and evolution, not mere expressions of emotion, but instruments of destiny, whose portent is only fully realized by their proud receiver. One has but to recall two out of many such instances in history to be convinced of the truth of the above statement. Mark Antony wrote memorable epistles to the Roman Tribunal, whose intrinsic work- manship was merely enhanced by the alternation of war correspondence, and news of Cleo- patra, the alluring. These possibly may not have aided the Roman campaign in Egypt, but they did make possible the dissemination of timely beauty hints, and notices. Lord Chesterfield perpetuated his own memory and evaded the criticisms of his con- temporaries, by producing a series of letters to his son, the contents of which have stirred young men to better things for several royal lifetimes. We discover a wide range of use in this field of letterwriting. Letters of amorous pur- port were highly in vogue a few decades ago. So replete were they with saccharine allusions to nature and to all heavenly creatures, that they fully deserved the lavendar ribbon in which their careers were lovingly ended. At present much that is classic has been brought into the mercantile world, and modern self-respecting tradesmen send cheerful reminders to their favored clients at the beginning of each new month. The over advertised Mr. Average Man feels keenly his responsibility to this heritage of the ages and exercises a doubtful ability on all possible occasions. It may be only in mid-summer when his better half is away and he elaborates on the respective conditions of the cat and the canary, but the opportunity exists and is seized. The youth of the nation away at camp or college is soon initiated into the complex mys- teries of exaggerating pleasures and underestimating disadvantages while composing a so- 146