Knox College - Gale Yearbook (Galesburg, IL)

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SENIORS

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Frank Wilson William Beattie Walter Lewis Doris Shearer The Senior Class It’s a racket—turning graduates out of this college! It’s a business just as turning logs out of a sawmill is a business. Who are we, then, to cast soulful glances about us, thinking it will never be the same without us? Waxing weepy over leav- ing dear old Knox is sentimental drivel. This place is a prison and we ll be glad to get out of it. We live in the Crustacean Age, and we of the younger generation are proud to keep softness inside a shell of suavity. We shall never miss our comrades in the senior class. We'll find other friends. There’s a whole Future ahead of us. But the poem haunts us. We have been, if only a little, “Like dancers who wait, in a pause of the music, for music The exquisite silence to fill.” Rot! What do we care if college days are ending? We're leaving a pile of outgrown and sadly worn garments, garments for lich we have no further use. Let's make graduation a rummage sale! Let’s be matter-of-fact and sensible about it. What do we care about Knox? It hasn't been all gaiety as the sentimentalists would have us believe. Our classmates were thrust upon us. We didn’t choose them for friends. Why should they be sacred to us? We have been extremely patient to put up with them for four years. Why does that poem insist upon coming back to us? “And we, who on music so leaflike have drifted together, Leaflike apart shall be whirled Into what but the beauty of silence, silence forever?” Alas, we feel our courage failing us. Bring the ice water and the black bordered handkerchief! No! We won't be Sentimental Our particular senior class does not matter. It happens every year. We are inconsequential. But what is this lump in our throat, and why are our cheeks wet? Idiot! Can’t we stiop this blubbering? Why. do we choke, looking at the faces of our comrades? It must be the effect of that poem. It rings in our ears. We can’t forget it. “And already the minutes, the hours, the days, Separate thoughts and separate ways; Fall whitely and silently and slowly between us, Fall between us like phantasmal rain and snow And we, who were thrust for an instant so sharply together Under changing skies to alien destinies go.” P TWENTY-SIX