Loyola University Maryland - Evergreen / Green and Gray Yearbook (Baltimore, MD)

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THE LOYOLA ANNUAL 21 in fWcfeer ' (A Story.) Y es, sir, there are good men in plenty, and some of them are extra good. But, sir! You got to hunt a terrible long ways before you will run on another like Billy Lacaque, boss of the river, white water birler, handler of the bully boys from the Saranac. “ Billy was a man clear through from his caulked boots to the little, old felt hat that he used to stick on his head; and game ! why, say partner, he was so ‘ doggone ’ game, he didn’t know it! “ It all come about this way : Billy wanted the girl and wanted her bad, and at first it seemed like he was agoing to get her, too, but then ‘ handsome ’ Charlie Morris, sort of breezed in, and she sort of dealt Billy a cold deck, and turned her ’tentions all to Charlie. Billy aint say in’ nothing cause it aint his way to go clamorin’ around promiscuous like, sheddin’ his grievances on the public ear. You could see he was hard hit, though. “ That winter Smith and Fitzhugh, the greatest lumber- men north of the Great Lakes, having some ‘ eighties ’ to clear up on the little Red, had got together one of the finest logging crews that had ever been seen. Billy was foreman, and he did the choosin’, but old man Smith had come down and asked special to have Charlie put on the job, him being some con- nection or other. So Billy had him installed as barn boss. “ Well, all that winter it was the same old thing— work, work and then some more work, wrestling with the wilderness, fighting death in a thousand shapes. There was some got

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20 THE LOYOLA ANNUAL been hidden for many a day behind the curtain of Time. Somehow or other, a lump rises to the throat, a mist is dim- ming the eyes, a tear falls unnoticed on his cheek. The pass- ing years will take away his sorrows, will heal his wounds, in his happiness memory will again come. She will lead him back to the days of his sorrow. With delicate and tender hand she will touch again the old wounds, will lay bare the old sores and all unbidden a tear will drop from his sorrow-dimmed eyes. At all times and in all places memory comes. She passes with soft, silent tread, and with sympathetic loving touch she tints the years gone by. She calls us back to scenes in the dim recesses of an almost forgotten past; she leaves behind a perfume of old lavendar and rose, and, best of all, — a tear. Edward K. Hanlon, ’09. puff ! (A Triolet.) The smoke wreaths curled, Fantasies sped; King of a world ! The smoke wreaths curled, Care’s tent unfurled, — Age and love wed; The smoke wreaths curled; Fantasies sped. Edwin B. Kelly, ’10.

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22 THE LOYOLA ANNUAL carried back all that two hundred miles, in a bateau, crushed from all semblance of themselves by those terrors of the lumberjacks — the tops of trees. “ Billy knew his business. He had been on the river ever since he had been old enough, to handle a miniature peavey that his father had made for him. So by Spring he had about three million feet of lumber piled up on the skidways, all ready for breaking out at the sign of the first freshet. “ Charlie and he had been getting along fair-to-middlin considerin’ there was no love lost between them. Everyone expected him to make life sorter hard for Charlie, him being in his power to complete. “ Well, one morning early, Billy walked into the quarters in his driving costume, an’ lemme tell you, a finer lookin’ man never walked than Billy Lacaque, when he got rigged out in that same costume. He wasn’t handsome — his jaw was too square and set for that- — but he was fine. With a bright, silk handkerchief knotted ’round his brown neck, his chestnut hair peepin’ out in curls from under his hat; his stagged-off pants showin’ just a touch of bone and muscle, where they joined his caulkers; his broad shoulders and thin race-horse flanks, all made a picture that, seen once is never forgotten. “Well, sir! He walked in there and told the boys to ‘ allons,’ for she sure was comin.-’ The boys jumped, for a freshet aint agoin’ to wait for no one. As they stepped outside the shanty they heard her roaring. There had been an un- usual heavy snow that winter and there was going to be extry strong water now. “ The boys stood by to break out the skidways when it struck. It’s no easy job to break out a skidway forty feet high and a mile long with the power of an avalanche back of it. When they stick, and you have to walk right up under this wall, and pry and jerk with your peavy until they start, and then make your get-a-way with a thousand tons of board