Clifton Springs High School - Cliftonian Yearbook (Clifton Springs, NY)

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THE CLIFTONIAN all they have contributed to our education. They have fulfilled their debt to us to the last measure, and to our Principal and teachers we extend our warmest thanks for the interest, kindness, tolerance, and labor which they have given to us unstintingly. To the Juniors we give thanks for kindness and cooperation, friendship and respect, which they have given us in a truly sportsmanlike manner. To my classmates, so kind and true, although you may not become great men and women, even though fame does not come to your door remember this: “God does not need Either man’s work, or His own gifts: who best Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best: His state Is Kingly; thousands at His bidding speed And post o’er land and ocean without rest:— They also serve who only stand and wait.” In behalf of the members of my class I again thank you all, and reluctantly bid you farewell. DORIS CASE ’29. Dedication: TO THE “OLD SCHOOL” With crash of hammer, bang and bing, My ancient timbers shake and ring; New bricks pile up before my eyes, And no one listens to my sighs. For many years my roof has spread Atove the wise and foolish head. Many classes have climbed my stairs In fours, and fives, and sometimes pairs. My days of usefulness are past, And time has conquered me at last. I willingly step out of the race, To let some new one take my place. So we dedicate this to the poor old school, Where we were taught by rote and rule— May happiness and all good cheer Be with it, and its memory dear. DORIS CASE ’29. The CLIFTONIAN THE STAFF Doris Case.......Editor-in-Chief Elva Lannon.....Associate Editor Edward Walters.....Sports Editor Robert Goodman--Business Manager Alice Cost...........Joke Editor Lillian Smith...Senior Reporter Marjorie Roth...Junior Reporter Dorothy Brown... Sophomore Reporter Nan Quigley....Freshman Reporter School Life School life is really a very serious thing. We who are now in our Senior year, and who have now been graduated, realize that school is not the circus that we thought earlier in our school career. In our first few years, we were filled with awe, and considered school about the most serious thing on earth. Oh, if some of us could only have gone on thinking that way! But, no, school became a playground for us. Little did we care for our teacher’s scoldings or advice. In the upper grades, the work became harder, but we felt it an imposition when our teacher asked us, kindly at first, then a little more imperatively, to take more work home at night. Then High School, what a lark for some of us! Everything was so entirely different from the grades. If the Freshmen could only realize what High School is really going to mean to them, they would certainly dig right in. Many of us who have finished are wishing “Oh, if I could only do it over again, what a difference there would be.” School duty is a very serious piece of work, cut out for each one of us to do. Therefore, let us, one and all, perform it to the best of our ability. Olive V. Griffiths ’29. It’s all right to begin at the bottom, except when you’re learning to swim.

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8 THE CLIFTONTAN tory and Civics cannot help but understand and sympathize with the efforts of government to rule so vast a country. When we see all the struggles, dissensions, prejudices, narrow-mindedness, fears and intolerance with which our forefathers had to cope in order to form this nation, we stand in awe of the giant task and in reverence of their deeds. We take up the responsibilities as voters and citizens with a great deal of deep consideration and will try to do our best to make our government the finest in the world. Our sciences tell us of the miracles which God and man have wrought. This, Herbert Spencer tells us, is the worth of science—“For direct self-preservation, or the maintenance of life and health—For the most perfect production and present enjoyment of art in all its forms the most needful preparation is science—and for purposes of discipline—intellectual, moral, and religious —the most efficient is, once more, science.” Our literary course covers a wide held taking in the best plays, poems, stories, books and essays. Our course in dramatics often reveals hidden talent which trains us in poise and diction. Next to acquiring good friends the best acquaintances are those of good books. Our High School course has acquainted us with some of the very best. We can enjoy the novels of Eliot, Dickens or Hawthorne; we can travel with Stevenson or live in another day and age with Tennyson or Scott. When the pensive mood reigns we can soar with the philosophic poets or with the more serious writers, Carlyle, Emerson, Burke or Lamb. Our knowledge of the lovely poems of Shelly or Keats, and the lively philosophy of William Cowper combined with the lyrical narratives of Mil-ton give us a moment of thought and feeling with the immortals. In Shakespeare's plays we find a rich philosophy of life, we meet various characters both weak and strong, but all to be admired, as the great writer weaves his magic spell of plot over them. What more characteristic of Shakespeare than Macbeth’s speech comparing this life to a stage whereon we are but actors. Cut, Out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. All these stories, plays and poems give us a rational and totally delightful means of spending leisure moments. A man’s value lies in his ability to think individually and act collectively. We have been taught the ability to cooperate with our fellowmen and produce the best results, by means of our Athletics and our Sportsmanship League. We have learned how to conduct our affairs in peace and harmony as a class, without friction between the individuals. The object of education is not only to produce a man who knows, but one who does. We have been taught the value of accomplishment by being furnished worthwhile goals for which we must work. Our abilities, capacities, and talents have all been brought to the surface. We know what we like best to do and how much of it we can do. And last, but not by any means least, we begin to learn the value of friendships. For twelve years there have been others beside ourselves fbr whom we have had to make allowances, for whose benefit we have had to set aside some of our own interests, and have had to suit our personality to theirs. It has undobtedly done us good, made us more tolerant, more confident and better t sn we would have been without this social contact. In return we have received confidences, trusts, and sympathy, to a full degree. Indeed, as you see, there is much to be said for education. Long may it rule the young lives of future generations. Well may it do its part in helping to make us good citizens, and so make the world a better place to live in. Now, with most heartfelt gratitude, we thank the Board of Education for

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10 THE CLIFTONIAN Thoughts On Life At the beginning of our lives, we are given, whether we will or no, blocks of pure white marble. On this marble, we must chisel, day in and day out— every moment of our lives. We have nothing to say concerning this. But we have something to say as to what we carve. We can make our blocks into rudely-shaped, distorted, marred nothings if we like, or we can shape them into beautiful, artistic, pure-white images. Realizing that we must carve upon our blocks unceasingly, we are determined to make of them things of beauty, which shall be a joy to those about us. Marjorie Roth ’30. Glory The crumbling tombstone and the gorgeous mausoleum, the sculptured marble and the venerable cathedral, all bear witness to the instinctive desire within us to be remembered by coming generations. But how short-lived is the immortality which the works of our hands can confer! The noblest monuments of art that the world has ever seen are covered with the soil of twenty centuries. The works of the age of Pericles lie at the foot of the Acropolis in indiscriminate ruin. The plowshare turns up the marble which the hand of Phidias had chiseled into beauty, and the Mussulman has folded his flock beneath the falling columns of the temple of Minerva. Neither sculptured marble, nor stately column, can reveal to other ages the lineaments of the spirit, and these alone can embalm our memory in the hearts of a grateful posterity. As the stranger stands beneath the dome of St. Paul’s, or treads, with religious awe, the silent aisle of Westminster Abbey, the sentiment which is breathed from every object about him is the utter emptiness of sublunary glory. The fine arts, obedient to private affection or public gratitude, have here embodied, in every form, the finest conceptions of which their age was capable. Each one of these monuments has been watered by the tears of the widow—the orphan—the patriot. But generations have passed away, and mourners and mourned have sunk together into forgetfulness. Someone duly impressed, as now he hurries you through aisles and chapel, utters with measured cadences and unmeaning tone, for the thousandth time, the name and lineage of the once honored dead; and then gladly dismisses you, to repeat again his well-conned lesson to another group of idle passers-by. Such, in its most august form, is all the immortality that matter can confer. It is by what we, ourselves, have done, and not by what others have done for us, that we shall be remembered by after ages. It is thought that arouses intellect from its slumbers, which has “given lustre to virtue, and dignity to truth” or by those examples which inflame the soul with love of goodness, and not by means of sculptured marble, that we revere Shakespeare and his kind. Alice E. Wiemer ’30. ZEZXZ3Z Big Events PRIZE SPEAKING CONTEST:— On March 7th, we gave vent to our rhetorical talents, the occasion being the Annual Prize Speaking Contest. This memorable event took place in the Sanitarium gymnasium, and in spite of the fact that one arrived on the scene late and several were overcome with “stage fright,” it went off very well. Those who took part were Dorothy Cornell, Olive Griffiths, Alice Wiemer, Elva Lannon. Marjorie Roth and Albert Bosshart. Albert Bosshart won the first prize and Marjorie Roth, the second. SENIOR DEBATE:— The Senior Class entertained the Parent-Teacher Association on March 14th, by debating for them a subject which is of interest to everyone—“Resolved, that installment buying has been harmful to the nation.” The affirmative side was upheld by Lillian Smith, Doris Case and Herman Mark. Although the negative side, composed