Oakwood Collegiate Institute - Oracle Yearbook (Toronto Ontario, Canada)

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ras oAKutnuJoRAcLs Qibere is Qeulh For some, life is a mere breaking of bread to eat, and a toiling to earn the bread. Most people spend so much time procuring the means to liye. or. like unfortunate students, learning to' live, that they die with- out having lived at all. Those who think about such things are compelled to cry: What is this life if full of careg we have no time to stand and stare '? For some the world in which they move is but a row of houses, a passing of street cars: to them the music of the spheres is mute. But there are those who live with rapture. For them, there is a glamour over all things. They are never bored. They do not need to read a newspaper at breakfast. They do not need to fiddle with their watches for occupat- ion while waiting for a street car. There is a secret which these people cherish, that puts a subtle difference into life for them. It is the power of associating one thing with another. When they see a street in the rain, with the streaming light of lamps like wavering plumes, they do not register merely the sensation of wet feet. They remember perhaps another night in the 1'ain when they were happy, or of Dickens tramping through London in the rain, or they think of those lamps like plumes. There are some to whom the smell of lilac recalls vague remem- brance of a tree that used to grow in grandmother's garden, grand- mother's dark, cool drawing-room and a table with a bowl of lilacs, sweet, drooping, and little white tidies on the chairs. And there are some to whom this constant inter-association of things they see, of music, is al- most painfully sweet. Their minds are alert, not from the standpoint of a mathematician or business man, but from a poet's standpoint. They have a sensibility such as Keats had. Images leap into their minds. This is like that. That is beautiful. There is colour, beauty, a rapture in their heads, buzzing, clamouring, exultant. And there are some whose faculty of associating the beautiful is so abundant and imperative that they dream over their vision and write it out for others. This faculty, this magic, is not an unusual one, though there are few who express it in writing. Our senses are manifold and acute. Why do we not make our minds an urn to hold the beautiful '? Why do we not let the colour, the sounds, the fascination of people flood into our minds and make them glad '? Why do we keep our minds aloof, cold and grey, like empty rooms, when there is so much to fill them '? Should we not be amazed at the abundance in the world, the extravagance of loveliness? And there are those who claim the world is drab, that they are bored, that although they are happy at moments, the procession of the days bores them. Let us tell them, the ones who are lonely, the wealth that is there which they do not see. There is gold at the end of the rainbow. The reason some never find it is because they do not see the glory of the rainbow, but only the grey, softly-dropping rain. But, there is gold! There is gold! ' Bughp Why do we go to the rugby games? No doubt, very few students, even among the sober, deep-thinking i'ii'th-formers, have ever figured out why they go over to Crang's every lfriday afternoon during the rugby season and shout themselves hoarse in a frantic endeavour to make their team Hold that line! Ilut the writer, having been requested to kindly compose a short Page Efghf

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THE OAKWOOD ORACLE pessimistic utterances earn them front-page prominence which is not given to the man who asserts that the world is not going to the dogs and that there is a life after death. Politicians influence electors with their sob stories. A political party, on becoming the Opposition, automatically becomes a pessimistic party. At present the country is being ruined by a low tariff and soon '? it will be because of a high tariff. The summer of 1928 should be remembered for an abundance of peace and prosperity and especially as it showed up those ever-present apostles of the Gospel of Gloom. Qfter Thoughts anti last minute jaetns The little breezes tell us the cafeteria is under new management. They also say that bacon and cabbages have been substituted for onions. We still see the soup, however. Have you noticed the shining new cash register we have '? Fourth Formers say the First and Fifth Formers are somewhat similar. They are both blissfully ignorant, and both have the look of self-importance on their faces. Now is the time to compose your spring songs. While you are at it, scatter a few Oakwoods through it and enter it in the song contest. Who knows, you might win and get high honour as a poet. Start letting your hair grow immediately, boy poets. The school is, I fear, slipping back into the Elizabethan era. A ter- rible epidemic of puns has broken out. However, our hope of salvation is that to every pun-cracker, or punster, there arises what moderns term an anti-pun complex. Everybody likes experiments. Here is one for you. Go up to your victim and pun the worst pun you can think of, and watch him. Observations follow immediately. He will turn blue around the gills, make a diabolical face, jump up in the air, kick his heels, and tear his hair, and end by grabbing you around the neck. The next person to propound a pun will be punished. On Wednesday morning, November 28, the noted English actor, Mr. Irvin. gave the thirds, fourths, and fifths a most interesting talk on Henry V and Julius Caesar. I noticed that a few Lower School classes came in to stay. It was a good way to pass a period and a half. There are two things we would like Mr. Dunkley to explain to us. One is, how to translate into Latin the phrase In the consulship of Caesar, something happened. The other is the impersonal passive peri- phrastic, It had to be resisted bravely by our men. On Friday, November 30, we are to have a theatre-party. The onli' difficulty is that more people are selling tickets than are buying them. Four out of five now sell tickets, the fifth is supposed to buy them, and wont. As one goes down the hall, suddenly four or five people rush at you, waving pink and blue tickets madly. Then, they argue among them- selves as to who saw you first, while you slink away unnoticed, and later pull out your own tickets and descend upon a fell student. Another dif- ficulty is that more tickets have been printed than the theatre will hold. It is a waste of pretty colours. Page Screw

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THE OAKWOOD ORACLE editorial, after divers vain attempts to write something interesting and brief, decided that he would apply his mighty intellect to this weighty probfem. However, having gone so deeply into the subject that he was practically immersed in it, he tin the ecstacy of day-dreaming about the closing minutes of the junior finalj almost forgot to write the required article. Nevertheless a few conclusions, which may throw a little light on the subject for the benefit of our first-formers, were arrived at after much studious scratching of the head, and other expressions of deep thought. It was decided that the root of all interest in the game is the prehistoric tactics used by the players. In the eyes of the fair sex, such exhibitions of the real manly qualities in a fellow excite much admiration, for girls do love to find that their sheik can be a man like her father after all. To her, it proves the case for the modern boy, who, in the eyes of her fond parents, is a thing to be despised. She delights in triumph- antly pointing out to her parents her boy friend's name among the columns of the daily newspaper, because of his spectacular tackling or brilliant broken-field running. How the girls love to see the players straining every muscle and giving all they have for the honour of their school! They deem him who has to be carried from the field a hero to be equalled only by him who runs seventy-five yards to score the winning touchdown. So much for the weaker sex! To sum it all up, one might say that girls enjoy rugby because it brings out the true he man spirit in a boy. As for the male section of the student-body, it suffices to say that it goes where the other section leads itl laugh ! Smirk, chortle, giggle, gurgle, grin, roar, chuckle, snort, snickerl do it any old way as long as you laugh. It's just as easy to laugh as to cry, and far more fun. The thing that lifts school from a dreadful bore to a pulsating centre of interest is the fun we have. Mr. Robb lifts us out of the depths with a joke. Mr. Brown re-enacts some touching scene between a boy and his sweety. Mr. Dunkley tells anecdotes, and Mr. Hanna's lectures sparkle with brilliant metaphors and quotations. Only we pupils know how much a laugh can brighten up a period. When the class funny man approaches, we forget about detentions and grin. Here's to the funny man. Glu Q9ur Jfnrm Cfhiturs - Another editor has been dragged from the depths of despair. No longer does he dream dread dreams, gone are the days when he refused food, tore his hair and growled at those pests who kept asking how the Oracle was coming along. To you, dear Form Editors, do we owe this amazing transformation. The last day on which material was to be accepted was past, and what had we '? By actual count, four articles: an editorial by the editor, a story by the editor-in-chief, and two jokes. But some days later you rose to the occasion by swamping him under a deluge of stories, jokes, cartoons, poetry and near-poetry. But, dear Form Editors, will you kind- ly tell us this: why did you wait so long? Page Nine