Plainfield High School - Milestone Yearbook (Plainfield, NJ)

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ORACLE 7 That evening as Amos-stood on the stoop of his little house hanging up his oil-skins, he heard his name called and turned slowly toward the road. ‘There he saw a small procession headed toward the cottage. In front came a stranger, long and lank, looking very uncomfortable in his ‘“‘store clothes.”” He carried a bundle and seem- ed on the whole to be very embarrassed and not at all at his ease. He wa s surrounded by a crowd of rag-a-muffins, one of whom carried a soap box and was strutting along a few yards ahead of his inferior companions. As they came up to the bewildered Amos, the ‘“‘store clothed”’ Banquo began: “Ere you, Amos? I-I came from over on Cape Cod, ah, ah, from your wife’s sister’s. She er- died goin’ on a week ago, and I er-brought you all her young un bein’ as there want no one else to ah keer fir it.” Hastily, he thrust the bundle into Amos’s arms and with a great deal of hemming and hawing beat a hasty retreat follow- ed by his former escorts. Amos stood looking down at the bundle and at the soap box at his feet. Icy, frying pan in hand, had come to the door and stood looking over his shoulder. “Bring him in,” she grunted and stolidly turned to the stove and the process of frying fish. Over the hot stove something inside of her seemed to melt. A warm stimulant flowed through her starving heart. The long days without company, save the scrany little chickens, were over. She would be busy enough now. It would cost an awful lot to clothe and feed him. At that she went over and looked through his possessions in the soap box until she found his bottle. Soon the baby was kicking his heels in the air as happy as a lord. Then Icy called Amos to their evening meal. As usual no one spoke but paid strict attention to eating. Several times they caught each other looking toward the little fellow in the bed. As Amos strolled toward the door for his evening pipe, he stopped with pipe half-filled and turning more abruptly than Icy had ever seen him do before, drawled. ‘‘Icy, I reckon that little feller,’ and he jerked his thumb in the direction of the baby, “will take a powerful sight of feedin’, so if you all will pay half with some of your egg money, I ’spects we kin buy a frying’ pan. This story is-founded on fact, Amos and Icy being real characters on Block Island.

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6 ORACLE Che Hrvuing Pan By RutH Ratston, Winner of Babcock Prize They did not own a frying pan; they never had owned one and they had been married thirteen years. On Block Island before the Summer hotel came and brought meats and fancy foods of all kinds, everybody existed on fish. Swordfish for breakfast, fried; sword- fish for dinner, fried; swordfish for supper, fried. For a change it was “yellow fin” for breakfast, ‘‘squiteege’’ for dinner and weakfish for supper. Change the order as you might, they all three tasted alike and before going in the frying pan were one and the same. But Amos and Icy didn’t own a frying pan. Before every meal Icy would fly across the dusty road and borrow a frying pan and then a little later fly back and return it. This had been going on for thirteen years, for a frying pan costs money and Amos and Icy were not ex- travagant. One day in early August when old Sol seemed determined to burn up the little cottages that straggled along the road, or hung by one hand over the cliff, Icy enroute to borrow the frying pan for her lunch, had a strange feeling. It was all the more strange because Icy was not accustomed to have any feelings, except those of hunger and thirst, heat and cold. ‘This was a thrilling feeling, the feeling that something was going to happen! MHaving acquired this strange sen- sation Icy cuddled it and and kept a tight hold of it for it was new and delightful. But the day was uneventful and six o’clock came and the sinking sun cast a rosy glow over the sparkling waters and tinted the gray sails of the fishing fleet as the little boats danced home. The bigger crafts rounded the breakwater with as bright a step as their feeble bodies would allow. For they were the last of the two-masted schoon- ers, which, for so many years, had gone out at three in the morning and returned at sundown. The boats lined up at the pier, and the fish were weighed and carried to the trading house at the end of the pier. Amos, although not very old, looked as knotted and grizzled as the old boat, and smelled just as fishy, as, rubbing his hands on his trousers, he walked up the road, his yellow oil-skins flying over his shoulder. Every day Amos walked up the road in the same way at the same time. Usually he smaked his pipe; Amos had only smoked a few cigars in his day, and then he would smoke a little and put it away ‘‘jes ter make it keep.”

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ORACLE A Ouest Hor 1915 I. Four years through rough trails winding, Both joys and troubles finding, Ever onward we have forged from day to day. And now four years are over, Our fates about us hover, And make our four years’ toiling seem as play. Il. Our Quest is still off yonder, But hope, where e’er we wander Will still through trackless forest show a way. That path, of pain or beauty, Is still our path of duty And through the woods we’ll follow it today. III. And when the path we’ve followed Through vales by trouble hollowed, And stumbled up the craggy steeps of night, When into daylight coming, Like joyful pigeons homing, What use shall we then make of our new light? IV. If through the world behind us Some old friends seek to find us, Shall we not run to help them with their load? If those who stumble, tarry Beneath the strain they carry, Shall we not gladly help them on the road? We And so through pain and pleasure, Though others joy may measure With gold or worldly power to crush the small, Let’s push on, and together Thru fair and foulest weather Our Quest shall be “True happiness for all.” A. B. McKAY, ’15.