Plainfield High School - Milestone Yearbook (Plainfield, NJ)

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THE ORACLE. 17 there have been prodigies and triumphs of youth in every age. The roll-call of youth in the days before the term included almost all ages under the allotted three-score-and-ten was a remarkable one. Its names were splendid and inspiring, from David the shepherd boy, who began his history as king at eighteen, to Chatterton, the poet, finishing his tragic chronicle at the same age; from Alexander of Macedon, ruler of all the eastern world before he was thirty-three, to James Watts, the Scotch peasant boy of eighteen, who made possible our wonderful steam engine; from Napoleon, sweeping western Europe at twenty-seven, to Raphael, finishing his deathless work at thirty-seven; from Charlemagne, master of a nation at thirty, to Shelley, master of poetry at twenty-one. So the list runs, emphasizing more particularly warriors, statesmen, and poets, the most prominent of whom established their right to the name of great before the age of twenty-five, and many of them when not yet out of their teens. The stories of the world’s famous warrior-youths are especially inter- esting. Possibly the most picturesque of all is that of David, the shepherd boy who came down from the hills of Judea, where he had tended the flock and watched the courses of the stars, to become champion of his people against their Philistine enemy, Goliath. “A youth, and ruddy and of a fair countenance,” he was, yet “he prevailed over the Philistine—and slew him.” A story of wonderful power is that of Alexander, world conqueror. It seems almost impossible to account for the boy who pressed from victory to victory throughout the known world, who subjected kings and nations to his will, who knew nothing but triumph and the lust of triumph all his life, and who at last sighed for more worlds to conquer. Not only has the military world produced youthful leaders, but political circles also have exhibited precocious geniuses. English history has given us William Pitt, the second Earl of Chatham, whose useful genius dis- played itself with an almost unnatural precocity, and whose influence was greater than that of his king before his twenty-fifth year. By the side of Pitt we may place his rival, the celebrated Charles James Fox, whose talents were developed so early that he was elected to Parliament when not yet twenty, and who at twenty-one was a lord of the admiralty and a sharp thorn in George III’s side. Our own America has produced such statesmen as Patrick Henry, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Jefferson, who, while still comparatively young, helped to win for their country the independence which she has since been cherishing. Then, too, there are prodigies of youth in the literary world—men who gave to the world some of the finest works in literature before the age of

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16 Gi OA Gis on the point of setting out, dog-train before the door and driver merrily cracking his whip, when an urgent summons was brought him to attend a small boy who had broken his thigh. “Johnnie’s” sufferings relieved and his injured limb plastered in a plaster cast, the doctor hurried forward to his first patient. As they were hastening past a wretched little hut in the wilder- ness of snow, the Doctor was again hailed and asked to look into the con- dition of a poor little orphan girl, half dead from starvation. He found the child wrapped in rags and laid on the floor of the shanty, a pitiful spectacle. The little one was ministered to and the Doctor set out for the third time, finally reaching his destination in spite of delays and appeals. Such is the life of Dr. Grenfell. And does he regret the other life in the outside world which he has given up? Does he realize how great is the work he is doing? Perhaps he best answers himself. “I am no martyr,” he exclaimed impatiently to a friend who put to him a like question. Indeed no. He is a healthy, hearty, humorous man, eager to get out of life all there may be in it for him, rejoicing boyishly in the risk and the danger, glad of his freedom, always merry and brave, cheerful and strong. His ideal of existence seems to be expressed in the words he so often uses: “The great joys of this life are its opportunities for service.” VALEDICTORY ESSAY THE PRIOMPHS ORWOU LE: GERTRUDE LAURA HUNTER. HERE is one respect in which the aging world and the aging individual are alike. With each the limit of usefulness advances as each in- creases in years. The boy who at ten considered the man of forty as ready for the chimney-corner and Taylor’s “Holy Dying,’ himself at forty is carrying a banner of red or orange or blue to football matches, and is splitting his throat over valorous deeds on the diamond or gridiron. So it is with the world. Part of it elected a “young” man of forty-three to the presidency a year or so ago, and insistently spoke of his youth in connection with such a position of trust. Over a century ago, however, William Pitt, a man twenty years his junior, was managing the office of chancellor of the exchequer, becoming premier of England at twenty-three. We are in the habit of referring to Alphonso as “the little king of Spain,’ imagining him with the curls and the broad white collar of infancy. It would be safe to say, however, that when the world was younger, nobody regarded the eighteen year old Alexander as “‘the little prince of Macedon.” Whatever the world may regard as the limit of youthfulness, however,

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18 Teor A GIR. “the sere and yellow.” One of these was Thomas Chatterton, who was destined never to know of his triumph. Chatterton claimed to have found in the Church of St. Mary of Redcliffe some poems which he ascribed to a priest of the fifteenth century. It was later discovered, however, that the poems were his own, but it was not until after the poet, tired with the struggle for existence, had committed suicide, in his eighteenth year. Chat- terton’s poetical work is among the permanent treasure of the English language. A trio of youthful poetic prodigies is composed of John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Lord Byron. From Keats we have the “Endymion,” written at the age of twenty-two; Shelley has left “Queen Mab,” which appeared when he was only twenty-one; and Byron wrote his ‘Childe Harold” at twenty-four. What literary masterpieces might have been the production of their versatility can hardly be estimated. All three of the poets died before completing their work. The most wonderful of all youthful geniuses, however, must be placed in a separate class. It is she whom the world knows as Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orleans, she who defied courts and judges, she who, best of all, was the purest of Christians. It was a triumph of the rarest sort when, a girl of eighteen, she took the city of Orleans; it was another triumph as she calmly and wisely and unanswerably furnished her own defense in the faces of some of the world’s best jurors; it was a triumph, too, when she lay down her life at the stake, a short time after, in the streets of Rouen. If there have ever been prodigies of youth, Joan of Arc is the first. What has been the influence of the lives of these geniuses upon the world we cannot tell with any degree of certainty. What can be their influence upon our individual lives is for each of us to decide. Like them, we must go forth into the world; like them, we must choose our careers. It may be that from among us, this class of 1906, unimportant in the eyes of the world, will arise geniuses such as those whom I have mentioned. It is not for us to know now. But it is enough for us to know that, whatever be our destina- tion, we have the inspiration of all that is good in the past, and the will and determination of the present to succeed.