Wesleyan College - Veterropt Yearbook (Macon, GA)

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Mary Joe Barron and Susie Baldwin are sent out by the United States Government through the South- ern States to put up stations for the Marconi system of wireless telegraphy. They are now at Wesleyan putting up one to be connected with the principal points in town — Mercer, Isaacs, John S. Hoge s and the baseball park. What shocked me most, and yet I can not say it surprised me so much, was to see my old friend and class president, Margie Burks. I am in a magnifi- cent theater, witnessing Shakespeare s great tragedy, Othello, and there in the middle of the stage she stands as “Desdemona.” Poor Margie ! she had met with tw o bitter disappointments at Wesleyan. The dream of her life was to have her class present a great drama, but two flat refusals from the president and faculty broke her heart. After graduation, she tried to have the whole class go on the stage to finish raising money, as she said, for Susannali Wesley Memorial Fund, but I think she wanted them to do this out of spite. A sudden change and see 1 Outside of town on a large signboard a woman is painting an advertise- ment. I recognize Vesta Pace, and stop to chat about the good old days. She tells me that she could easily have been a Raphael, but after careful thought, decided to cater to the popular taste, so she put aside her ambition, and finds painting posters and adver- tisements more profitable. Scene followed rapidly one after the other, and I seemed to be at one place and then again somewhere else with no time intervening. Lizzie Heal Rogers, the cynic, is a journalist whose especial duty is to criticise the love poems that are submitted for publication. I must say that she cer- tainly ought to know how for she had enough of it to do as literary editor of the Wesleyan. Can this be Woody Schley with wings all over her as if she were about to fly ? Yes, it is. Poor Woody lost her mind perfecting the flying machine. Ever since the Sophomores gave the Seniors that toboggan slide. Woody seemed not quite right. She went to work on this invention and tried to make everything fly. See what over-enthusiasm will do for the young ! I am very much surprised at seeing Annie Barrs st Wesleyan in charge of the Davenport building, the fine new gymnasium. I wonder how Annie engages in such work without wearing her hair down in a long plait. Wliat a time she used to have with that hair I I hesitate and then ask her to tell me the charm that keeps it from falling down. Forthwith, she shows me a remarkable hairpin which she has just patented, and owing to its remarkable service to all athletes, she hopes to realize a fortune. I am glad that Annie is doing so well. Whom do I next see but Minnie Aikens up to her tricks flirting with the boys on the streets. I thought that time would remedy that, and I am so astonished that I just stand and look at her until she is out of sight. Now I am walking along the pike at the World’s Fair held in Macon, on the one hundredth anniver- sary of the founding of the city. I see a crowd gathered aroimd some one, and on going closer I find her to be the Great White Mahatma. While she sleeps, the interpreter standing over her is revealing to the anxious people the magician’s innermost thoughts. Vhat! Amazed, I stand as if petri- fied. It is not the Great White Mahatma, but Myra Mizelle. I can but laugh ! The studious Myra must have spent her Junior year taking lessons from Katie MacLaggan, the great and only fortune-teller. But to think of Myra telling such a story for the sake of a little money! No one ever dreamed of her in this light. Going on down the pike, I see Saidie Flowers up on a stand, selling all kinds of quack medicines. She is advertising especially her newest cure for all ailments — insomnia, studying, laziness, heartache, homesickness, Sunday headaches, kleptomania, quar- relsome dispositions and cutting recitations. I only regret that Saidie had not made this discovery in our day, for then we all could have been graduated with medals and honors. I am not surprised at seeing my old class-chmn, Aline Bradley, in a convent. Something seemed to weigh upon her mind in her last year at Wesleyan. There were rumors of many suitors to her hand, and of her not knowing whom to choose. If such is the case, I do not wonder at her becoming a nun. When I ask her how such a change in her life came about, she only smiles sadly and tells me how the past has gone by, and that she lives only in the present Some say that Aline thinks she looks well in a nun’s attire and poses as an advertisement for Dr. Flowers’ “All Trouble Cure.” But I can not believe that she would sacrifice everything in the world to vanity and put her religion to such a base use. But maybe she is going to found a home for the heartbroken. Waldron Roberts, through the influence of some of her best friends, studied law soon after leaving Wes- leyan, and is now retained on the leading legal ques- tions of the day, even while Dean of the Law Faculty at Mercer. May Clarke is a widow. May always thought that she would look beautiful in black, and she had an eye for business. She was a rich old man’s darling for three very happy years, when he most considerately died, leaving her his fortune. Now she consoles her- self with a long black veil, a pug dog and a coy look. 20

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PROPHECY OF CLASS ' 05 A Dream of Fair Women After a long day of rummaging among old papers and souvenirs of college days, I sat at my window in the gloom of the fading day. The shadows of evening were growing too heavy for my weary eyes, and, unconsciously, I let slip from my hand a small magazine while I remained immoved, oblivious of everything present, and thinking only of my old days at Wesleyan. I had been reading the June number of the Wesleyan of the year 1905, which told in graphic language all about our Class Day. Yes, it has been a long time since then, although in youth the years slip by without a reckoning. My days at that grand old College were in the dim distance, and other duties and pleasures had almost crowded out of mind thoughts of the old days, but memory is a hard thing to expel when urged on by a reminder such as a college paper. And now my thoughts are nth my girlhood days, five happy years of which were spent at Wesleyan. I recall the presidents of the College, the teachers, my friends, and class-mates, and all those who were graduated with me. We have never met together again, not since we said “good-bye” the night of our banquet — we who fought so valiantly shoulder to shoulder through all the College struggles, and who shared with one an- other so much joy. I am at College again and am living over all the many bright hours in which the class of ’05 participated — the banquets, receptions, class days, and lastly our triumphant graduation day. It was at these times that we learned to know each other well and found out how great was our love for our class and College. The sun sank lower and lower — only the amber and lemon yellow beams from the last rays played on the horizon. The colors were deepening and intermin- gling into the grayness of the twilight. The chill of evening was rising around me. But unconscious of the beautiful change going on, I sat with my head on the window-sill remembering. It was May thirty-first, nineteen five. As I re- called this scene, a deep sadness filled my soul and a mist seemed slowly to rise up and fill my eyes until all was misty around me. I was no longer in the past but was actually speaking with the girls in the present, and the strangest part of it was Uiat I saw’ them, not all together, but they were scattered over the face of the earth, some in one place, and some in another. Can this be Ophelia A. Smith playing professional baseball ? Now all eyes are turned toward her, and loudly do the voices jeer when she “muffs” an easy “fly.” Ophie, I remember, was a ball enthusiast, and would become so wrought up when her Univer- sity was beaten that she would nearly lose her mind ; vow that if she had had such and such a play to make, she would have made no error, and enumerate all the possible scores that Mercer could and would have made. But who would have dreamed of Ophie’s throwing away her intellectual strength on baseball ? The dream of my life is realized. At last, I can hear the grand opera. How beautiful are the chorus girls 1 Why, there are my old class-mates. Pearl Peacock, Natalie Thomas, Nona Johnston and Ruth Martin. I am not shocked at seeing them there as I recall to mind that their first appearance in opera w as at Wesleyan during their Senior year when the “Silver Cloud” was presented. As the opera scene faded away, old Wesleyan rose before me. That must be the Susannah Wesley Memorial, completed since our day, and there is another dormitory, the Hardeman Building and a gymnasium, all newly built. I w’onder who has Mr. Giierry’s place. Why, Mary Joe Carmichael. The board of trustees had become convinced that it would take a woman to rule at Wesleyan, and that Mary Joe is the one woman best suited for the place. I w’ish you would look at her interviewing those two frightened girls for breaking unconsciously items M and N, of Rule 69. I can even hear her say clearly, in her same voice grown sterner under the responsi- bility of her new position: “Young ladies, you are restricted to the premises for seven weeks, except in cases of Providential cause and attendance on relig- ious service.” Ethel Walker is the teacher of physiology at Wes- leyan. There she stands explaining to her class the structure of the human skeleton without even making the slightest shudder or shedding a tear for the one departed, just as though she had always been accus- tomed to taking such things without tears. I look again and to my greatest amazement see Eloise Guyton conducting a dancing school at the old College. Well, the Wesleyan girls are certainly with their few light rules, allowed many privileges. I understand that Eloise stayed at college so many years that she felt out of place anywhere else, so had to go back and keep up her reputation “casing,” and Eloise is a fine college detective, on the “Unknown Friend.” Look at Julia Wade — a bride. There she is as pretty as ever she was as a college girl. Well, she waited a long time for the wedding march to strike up. How I wish some one would tease her, so I could see her blush. 19

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