Saint Ursula Academy - Scroll Yearbook (Toledo, OH)

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laves of Fashion ES, slaves of fashion is a perfect sketch for us women who will go to any lengths to please our admirers of the opposite sex. The motto of the foreign females seems to be as the twig is bent, so grows the tree. For all their excruciat- ing, diabolical rituals begin when they are still in the age of innocence. Little Chinese girls must have their feet bound tightly so that they can never grow. Consequently, when they have advanced to womanhood, their feet have been left unchanged and they are doomed to hob- ble around on lily feet. And among the native tribes of Africa and South America, even more fantastic beauty habits are employed. The women have tried to imitate the giraffe by wind- ing many, many iron coils around their necks until it had become sometimes even more than a foot between the chin and the shoulders. Were these coils to be O 1- rf' VI, 1-I I removed, neck would immediately collapse under the weight of the head. Binding heads to make them pointed, and wearing rings and bones in pierced ears and noses is nothing unusual among the blacks of the tropic jungles. They even go farther in the Ubangi tribes by suspending a large brass hoop from their lower lip to make it protrude a1!mzrtiz'ely. But we women of civilization are not exempt from such grueling procedures. In fact if a Ubangi beauty were to hap- pen into one of our beauty salons and catch sight of a permanent wave ma- chine, she would undoubtedly shriek in terror, thinking that she had fallen into a tribal torture chamber. And so the feminine world lives on, shackled by such outrageous methods of beautifying, all for fashion. North, South, East and West we are all women tempted by vanityAbut it's our trade and we en- dure it. SUZANNE STRAUB '45 Liife Begins At . I am languishing in a deep coma. It seems I've been in this state for five long days. My eyes are beginning to blind now. I see a faint ray of light before me. Things are becoming much clearer and more distinct. just a few more minutes and I shall be wide awake. I can feel each second creep by and now I can hear the ringing of bells, bells, bells, bells- liberty bells. Suddenly I awaken into a world of brightness. Around me I hear a most stupendous rejoicing. Finally! Finally! At last! It's two-thirty. Friday afternoon. A week-end of hilarious fun. Life begins at two-thirty every Friday. For it is then I leave the dreary side of my life for two blissfully blessed days to see how the world around me is getting along. .. lf M But woe is mel the week-end seems to fly with lightning speed. Practically in a split second Sunday night is behind me and Monday looms over me menacingly. There is nothing during the five days but agonizing struggle before I can return to the freedom of another cherished week- end. ' As I sit in my first class Monday morn- ing, I can feel my eyes close, the souvenir memory of the glorious past leaves me, only to be covered up by the darkness of stark reality. Again I can feel the sec- onds passing only to remind me this is one week out of thirty-six. Please tell me I'm just dreaming. KATHLEEN MCCORMICK '45 30 THE SCROLL

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Communism as a philosophy or a political power is not a threat to the United States, but Communism as a foreign policy is. Thus declared the Reverend Wilfrid Parsons, SJ., professor of Political Science at the Catholic University of America, in his talk entitled, Is Communism a Present Threat to the United States? Father Parsons, who opened the Catholic Forum series of 1945, continued by saying that Communism is just another ism , a philosophy or a plan for man and society. He referred to the founder of Communism, Karl Marx, and said that Communism is often called Marxism, that the chief danger lies in Communism as a foreign policy to further Soviet Russia's expansionist aspirations, lt is a menace in that it has the ability to break down the patriotic allegiance of men and women in other countries to support and gain adherents for the Soviet cause. Father Parsons said he believed that Communism has not penetrated the brains of the people of the United States very much, because it is too alien to our traditions. He concluded his speech with the thought that Communism would probably never wholly affect Catholicism. Distinctly and characteristically of the Cronin genre, The Green Years has been acclaimed among the popular bests of the last few months. It recounts in the author's effortless, fascinating style the early life of Robert Shannon, a Catholic Irish-Scotch lad who is forced, because of the tragic deaths of both his parents, to make his home with his Protestant maternal grandparents. Although he is treated kindly by the immediate family, any manifestation of Catholicism on his part is met by ridicule or petty acts of violence by the townspeople-all reminiscent of the Chisholm epi- sode in the first pages of the The Keyr lo the King- dom. His faith is severely tried and becomes thread- bare in more than one instance-at one crucial point he even repudiates it-but in the end he comes back to God, a prodigal who is made heir to a meagre fortune left him by his great-grandfather. ln the character of the aforementioned patriarch Dr. Cronin has achieved a master creation of rascal- ity, but withal a great heart and a sympathetic under- standing of the plight of the not-too-epical hero. It is a book which affords an emotional exper- ience not soon forgotten. Is Communism a Present Threat to the United States? By Reverend Wilfrid Parsons, SJ. Lecture Review By Vera Morrison -tl.,- The Green Years By A. DI. Cronin Book Review By Patricia Bechtel THE SCROLL

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Novacaine Blues AVE you ever been trapped in xi dentist's chair for an hour? Well, if you have, I extend my deepest sympathy. I walked into the waiting room, and noticing that a woman was ahead of me, I sat down and tried to quiet my shat- tered nerves. I ventured a smile at her once but she was just as discouraged as I fif not more soj. I read Look, Peek. Click, Pic, and Squint from cover to cover. A few min- utes later I was beckoned into the death chamber. I groped for the chair and when I had finally cautiously sezfed my- self, the nurse put a big white bib on me fit looked more like a tableclothj. Then the dentist approached! He opened my mouth and examined every bicuspid and molar minutely. Then all of a sudden he jammed into my mouth a pliers, a mirror, Rupp and Bow- man's january supply of cotton, a ten- foot drill, both of his hands, and asked how my sister was! There was a large window directly in front of me. Beyond I could see a gray stone building fifteen stories high, one hundred and seventy-two windows on the West side feighty-five with venetian blinds, forty-three with drapes, and the remaining forty-four were just plain ordi- nary glassj, sixty-seven doctors' ohfices, fifty-nine law firms, thirty-eight real estate offices and eight fellow dentists. That's quite accurate! In order to be relieved of any amount of pain I asked for fzomraizze. The needle jabbed into my jaw and I could feel it come out behind my left ear. Then I saw that drill again and it was coming right for me. The noise went through my brain until my thoughts were whirl- ing like the spin-dryer on an Easy Wash- machine. Then it was over! My numbed jaw had no sense of feeling, much less pain. I went home unhappily, and vaguely re- membered that I had forgotten to tell Dr. Wally how my sister was. DCJLORIES Rim M i2i.iN '47 Chemistry Tirades Ho hum! It's midnight now and that budding little scientist is finally in bed. Midnight, you know, is that weird hour when the ghosts begin to walk. Hi Ho! fhe's that crazy man who was murdered in this house. Nice fellow, too, in spite of the fact that he's headlessj. I'm a chemistry book, and boy, is that a life! I'm always up late and out early. Some- times I think that imp is brainless. just listen to what happened: She was experimenting up in lab with all sorts of long-named things. I know all about them, but she doesn't. She has tc ask me all the questions and she's older than I am. To get on with the story-she had the zinc in one hand and the hydrochloric acid in the other. Did she know what to do? No! And why? She didn't even look at me last night. Sister told her to perform an experiment to see what the acid and metal were composed of. And what do you think she did? Poured the acid on to the zinc! It was awfully pretty while it lasted. The fire, I mean. Can you see this burn on my cover? Guess where I got it? In the big fire that burned the school down. The moral of this is: don't pour acid on zinc without looking at your chemistry book the night before. Ho-hum. Say, you kept me up even later. Good night! ELIZABETH MCNERNEY '46 THE SCROLL 31