Central High School - Red and Black Yearbook (St Louis, MO)

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T WAS on a Monday morning early in 1865 that father and I presented ourselves at this school. It was cold, and in all essentials We still appeared in our pioneer attire--that sort of clothes wore well. Cn the first floor of the High School we met a young girl, no doubt a pupil. She must have been a lady, for she almost suppressed a smile, and in the nicest way directed us to the room of the principal on the next floor. We went up, not without misgivings, approaching awe. The principals desk was in the room of the senior girls. Their desks faced the entrance: and as we came in, the customary response was instantaneous. I shall not attempt to repeat a scene to which I, at least, was not new. They were nice girls-some of them I met often in later years, when We were all graduates of the High School. But nice as they were, all human nature is akin, and the effect of our unheralded apparition was not unlike the first stampede in the boarding-school. With the principal it was different. He was tall and slight- wearing a black cutaway, I think, which helped me to feel at home. I had one, too: mine was brown. His hair and beard were dark and wavy, setting off features as regular as a Greek's. A kindly smile played about his lips as he took my hand. The mission was soon told in father's broken English. There was ground for hesitancy. We applied in the middle of the year, which was against the rules: besides admission was conditioned upon regular examination. I could not meet a single one of the rules. But we were in America, and we were fortunate enough to strike a respecter of the reason of the rule. He gave me a piece of chalk and sent me to the blackboard. The principal asked questions, and to the tune of unmistakable sup- pressed laughter, I gave undeniable evidence on that blackboard of my unpreparedness. But the principal was a man of resource. He saw one cause of my trouble and turned to German. That was my salvation. I could write German well enough to make me bless my stars that no lithographer ever captured me as an apprentice with the prospect of designing visiting cards for life. Well, said he, about some things you know nothing: about others you know more than half the junior class, and since you are a refugee, I will give you a chance. In that fashion I was admitted. As we left, he said to me that I must come to his house in the eve- ning so that he might show me how to catch up and use my books. How American it all seemed to me: and how American it was, judged by the modern rule-ridden methods. Now and then the principal would appear unannounced before the lower classes to try them out. One day he asked a question of our class, which was met with common silence. With that well-known twinkle of his eyes, looking at me, he said, I know one boy who can answer my question 3 I did, and I never knew whether I was more grateful for his generous help or for the rare luck that carried me through. But the luck of a refugee did not stop there. At the end of the school year we had the usual examinations. I made them all but one. Grammar was and is a mystery to me. I never knew Why natural speech should be complicated by so many conflicting rules: to me they always seem like obstacles to free expression of thoughts. I read the paper of questions: and certain that I must fail, I took it to the teacher's desk and said I could not answer a single question. I know you can- not, he said, and we will not say anything about it. He never did. and I did not for fifty years: but at the time I thought how wonderfully American it all was. Since then I have hesitated to mention this ex- perience. I would not have missed the general influence of that school- the association with members of my class, and with the faculty, who counted among them not only the principal, Mr. Childs, but his assist- ant, Horace H. Morgan: Davidson, a Greek scholar known in this coun- try and abroad: Miss Schaefer, after- wards principal of Wellesley Col- lege: Denton I. Snider, etc. I was admitted to the second class, School life 100 years ago as an artist thinks it was. Notice the drinking bucket, the rattans, the slate, and the fact that children are of all ages

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Old Benton School on Sixth Street between Locust and St. Charles where the high school was begun in 1853. Home of Central until 1856. law. If I ever go to court, he'll be my lawyer And so the classmates of Camp- bell Orrick Bishop recognize the genius which is to make him many years later one of St. Louis's most prominent judges. Thus the first step taken toward secondary edu- cation in the vast region from the Mississippi to the Pacific, from Canada to Mexico, culminates in the graduation of these thirteen boys and girls who are the first to carry the ideals engendered at Central out into the world. The succeeding two years see an increase in the enrollment, but with the year 1860 comes the election of Republican Abraham Lincoln, and the secession of most of the South- ern states begins. As the call from both sides comes for volunteers, the young students lay down their books to shoulder arms and to help lndus- try meet the increased demands of War. Some join the ranks of the Confederate Army and some the Grand Army of the Republic, for the high school is a democratic in- 'rv stitution and the sons of proud Southerners attend as well as the sons of German immigrants. The crisis of Missouri's status-whether she is to be Union or Confederate--passes, and the sight of soldiers drilling becomes a familiar and thrilling sight to the young high-school pupil on his way to the High. The views of the German element in St. Louis, to whom slavery was not only abhorrent. but alien, rule the city. The following summer the school closes several weeks earlier than usual because of curtailed funds. Year after year the bloody war is drawn out until the last set of the great tragedy which had its beginning at Fort Sumter is played out at Appomattox. But through the war-years the high school continues its task of education. Many refugees from the South flocked to St. Louis during the war, and one such refugee from Texas was young Charles Nagel, son of German im- migrant parents. Fate had great things in store for the German- American refugee who spoke English brokenly, and to whom the High School was the first rung on his ladder of success. He was destined to become na- tionally known, for his long career as lawyer and member of the Missouri Legislature was climaxed by his appointment as Secretary of Commerce and Labor in President Taft's Cabinet. I now turn the microphone over to the Honorable Charles Nagel, '68, Central's most distinguished alumnus. Let him tell you of the school, of St. Louis-of America-in the late Sixties. The Honorable Charles Nagel: w+nvw++:e::.-::-::::--::--Y-4vvseee:e: Page Twenty-four ' fi:-0:1 lm

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and showing some signs of progress, I was urged to try for first place. This was done less because of interest in me than from a desire to defeat an unpopular member. I made the attempt. Three times I paired him in the examinations: and then I went down with typhoid fever. Two of us had contracted the fever and the principal came to see us. My classmate died, and the principal contracted the disease. I-le came back to school too soon. The last time I saw him was one bitter morning when the school building was on fire. There he stood, without an overcoat, fighting the flames with the water turning to ice on his clothes. I'Ie won that fight, but had a relapse, and we never saw him again. I was at the I'ligh School about two and one-half years. Our school gave a play to raise a fund to lay the foundation for a public library, and I was asked to carry the flag. I felt sorry for the girls who took the parts of the Southern states-the prescribed declarations did not seem to come natural to them. I adored the girl who represented the Union-the very girl that, had almost fallen off the front seat when father and I first invaded the senior room. How the spokesman of war did make the windows rattle: and how gentle and quiet he really was. How the company could drill and march under the severe discipline of a classmate who had always made a joke of everything serious. But however interesting it all was, it seemed as nothing compared to the fact that I was bearing the Stars and Stripes every night for a whole week in a large hall packed to the guards. I was not even dismissed when, the first night, marching across the stage, I hooked the gas chandelier, all ablaze, with my flagstaif and came near precipitating the stampede of an admiring audience. The refugee boy had his day: errors were overlooked, credits were marked large. Our class was a chivalrous one-natural champions of the girls. I had my one big fight to resent a careless remark about a girl classmate, and to take my place in the esteem of my class. I wrestled with the studies-wondering now what trigonometry and calculus could pos- sibly have meant. We had German, a little Latin, and French. Two of us fthe other, Washington E. Fischel, who afterwards became a distinguished physician, and my dearest friend for lifej even sent a whole school into hysterics by our performance-in French-of the duel scene in Moliere's Tartuffe. My friend never complimented me on my French, but in duelling he thought me rather realistic. Declaiming was at its height then. We still took patriotic speeches very seriously. I had some advantage in that I could saw the air more promiscuously with my long arms than my less-favored classmates, Willis's Prometheus was my specialty: and after I had for the first time gone through the suffering tortures of that recitation, my class- mates held out great hopes for my future. I have since then been at great pains in public speaking to keep my arms and hands from interfering with what I am trying to say: Salvini, in Othello's address to the Senate confirmed my growing conviction upon that subject. Other- wise, all moved along in a beaten track of common harmony. I made many friends, chiefly in my class, and have much to remember in gratitude. How much they gave me in just accepting me as one of them! My escape from grammar was rewarded by my selection as valedictorian by my class- mates. My subject was True Manhood. I held forth to an audience that was not entirely new to the ordeal. Teachers were as relieved as I was at having me recite my piece without a breakdown. In that audience sat Father and Mother-grief not forgotten, but happiness un- deniedg and with that the Texas refugee boy walked off the stage. - , ij ,Wm ijxlxl UI fx V09 1 ' -F ,q'm 2'.-' I '1 ' , 3 li ff' 3-'Ti ' 1. :-fLi',If.J -'--- .,,', .1 ---- ---- -N sf.. M' I' I NU- -. ' ..u, +l'i1Wl-' i I, . .1 'L . X Ag i T TT .J mm. .. ,L I. .-:..,' - X num , ,f jzfgg I A. , - yn- 1 D 11' 'at 'L - , , 0 , . V gi umm 'I 1-5, hx X ' , .m .6-5. -. X X . .,... K... A , W.. ffzfdrxf.:-: .- ist 1 J ff iv ff- .6i-.,mi:'- 55,5 Af, ' .,-','j-,'c-,'jf':f M3 ?,'ftQ3f , an ' 1 W ',f?i'f'i- .1 gf. ,- -f iqzk. , Agngcgjvl niggas- rim. 5 I' ' , ,. l Q, '. ,:::Ef3' army' :- ,, , qv. -' .v5:',V 02? ' url 'Q oiilocg 3 is fm ii .vw .ww , ., , Zm . I Page Twenty-six