Arlington High School - Indian Yearbook (Arlington, MA)

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ARLINGTON HIGH SCHOOL CLARION. 1 1 louder and clearer upon his ear beat the dread, hoarse cry “ Fire ! ” Quickly he looked down at the structure beneath and with a look of horror saw the fourth story was a mass of roaring flames. The third and fifth were scarcely better off, and the mighty conflagration was eating its way with terrible rapidity towards his own floor. Even now, little bright tongues of fire curled out of the seventh story windows and pointed their bright fingers mockingly at Hiram’s pale face. He drew in his head and made a dash for the stairway. His slippered feet had pattered down three steps when he stopped short with a cry of horror. The five upper floors had already been partly burned away and the blaze, now under a powerful draught, roared up in a great column of flame five stories high, which threatened to change the sky-scraper into a rubbish heap in half an hour. For a moment Hiram stood still and tried to think cooly. He looked down the roaring pillar of fire and decided wisely enough that even an urchin clad in the toughest corduroy would hesitate long before shinning down such a trunk. He rushed over to the window again but one glance in that direction was enough. “ The time has come, ” he cried, “ when the fury of the elements shall yield to the cunning of the human mind. ” With this pet phrase scarcely out of his mouth, he ran over to the long white object and with a rapidity and ease born only of long prac- tice fitted the thing on to his waist and tightly drew the straps. His face now was of deathly palor, his eyes shone with almost unearthly fire, his hands trembled as he strained the straps and his whole form quivered with that tenseness of strain which a person can feel only in the shadow of death. With as firm a step as he could com- mand he sidled over to the window, his long red dressing robe flowing out behind and the two wings flopping awkwardly by his side. Stepping upon the edge of the chair he attempted to thrust his wings out. But, alas, they were too big. Quickly he jumped down and grabbing the chair, almost maddened by the thought of being trapped, he hurled it with all his might at the sash, with the result that it, together with a shower of broken sticks, pieces of glass and such bric-a-brac, de- scended on the crowd beneath. It was said afterwards that the bottomless chair would have collared one of the big policemen had not a pair of big lopping ears arrested its further descent. Having thus broken up housekeeping with characteristic energy, Hiram again mounted the broad sill. For a time he stood motionless as a statue, gazing far out over the dull gray sea of slated roofs to the distant horizon where the sun, barely peep- ing over the brim of the ocean, was begin- ning to shoot long streaks of rosy light over the arch of the sky ; wondering, doubtless, whether another such sun would see him in the realm of the living. The advertisers in the Clarion are worthy the patronage of its readers. They are a factor in its success. J. Henry Hartwell Son, DOW GTLIfiS, Undertakers . Medford Street, Arlington. ..Dry Goods and Small (Oares.. Tel. Con. Residence and Night Call 792 Mass. Ave. POST OFT ICE BL ' CK, ARLINGTON, MASS.

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ARLINGTON HIGH SCHOOL CLARION. i o THE MAJOR ' S INVENTION. In one of New York’s lesser skyscrapers there dwelt about a decade ago an old man of inventive tendencies together with a vagrant pigeon and an obsequious feline of uncertain antiquity. They lived together in a small chamber on the top floor facing Broadway. The fire escape on the building had, by some caprice of the builder, been beheaded, or else never owned a head, for it reached no further than the floor below, thus lowering the rent and placing the apartment in reach of the old veteran’s purse. The room also contained a few articles of a domestic nature, a highbacked bed, on which the aged veteran and his nocturnal comrade were wont to dream blissfully at night, a straight-backed chair, minus the most essential part, a pigeon-cote and a miniature bath in which the pigeon delighted to disport itself to the detriment of the wall near by, whose faded paper was all spotted and streaked. But the most peculiar thing in the room was a long, crooked, white object standing in one corner, a something, I hesitate to name it, but a something resembling per- haps a pair of wings. On closer scrutiny it appeared to be a double frame covered tightly with canvas, jointed in the middle and one side curving like a bay, of a size about big enough to admit a man’s body. A multitude of straps, strings, pulleys and such paraphernalia hung about in a tangle confusing enough, doubtless, to the uninitiated, yet of such ingenious arrangement as to settle beyond a doubt the genius of the eccentric old man. E. E. UPHAM PROVISION DEALER. The Choicest Beef, Pork, Lamb and other Heats. BUTTER, EGGS, LARD, CHEESE. GAME and VEGETABLES of all kinds in their season. TEL. CONNECTION. It was in short a portable fire escape of condensed style. For the old man had not been blind to the dangers of living eight stories above earth with no visible means of escape except a rickety old stairway which threatened at any moment to shudder and crumble into dust after the manner of the famous one hoss shay. Major Hiram Hallery was suddenly waked one night from peaceful dreams of descending rent by a vigorous scratching on his face and beard and opened his eyes to see his faithful cat most energetically sharpening her claws on his tender skin. Hiram did not relish being awakened in this manner and showed his resentment by send- ing the feline sprawling on the floor. But as he did so he felt a certain sharp sting in his nostrils and a smarting in his eyes (besides the various other pains which extended all over his furrowed face) and coughed violently. He jumped out of bed in a second and looked about. The room was full of thick smoke. As he stood there half dazed and still more asleep than awake, he heard a con- fused sound of many voices rising up from the street below and pouring in at the open window. A dull, roaring noise, now for the first time, became audible to him, and with a bound towards the window he pushed his head out and looked down. A vast, surging sea of upturned faces met his gaze and the shouts and cries re- doubled as the old man’s form became visible to the crowd below. For a time he looked down at them with an air of curios- ity rather than of fear. But all at once the great volume of sound which rolled up to him seemed to take definite shape, and T ) I -I. Gr. W. YALE, DENTIST, POST OFFICE BUILDING, ARLINGTON .

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ARLINGTON HIGH SCHOOL CLARION. I 2 A dull crash below, as some partition wall fell, roused him from his revery, and with haggard face he prepared to launch himself out on the air. He stretched forth gingerly one foot to the edge of the sill, he brought up his next, his left wing he squeezed through and last his right, and bending far over he prepared to give that one fateful leap which was to mean life or death to him. But as he had almost left his footing a sudden fear seized him, he waved his wings madly forward, and then tried to clutch the side of the casement. The crowd below became hushed and only the crackle of the flames cut the death-like stillness. For a moment he wavered there eight stories above the pavement, when the issue was suddenly decided for him in a most businesslike manner. There was a rush and a scramble inside the small chamber, a streak of fur flashed through the air as the obsequious feline before alluded to made a flying leap from the old bedstead, and landed all fours on Hiram’s back. What was to happen next was not left long in doubt. Poor Hiram, imagining no doubt that grim Death itself had fixed its talons upon him, gave one horror-stricken look over his shoulder and bounded out into the air. For a moment there he floated far, far above the crowd like a huge bird, his bare legs kicking convulsively up and down,, his bright red dressing gown floating far out behind like the train of a shooting-star, his great, broad wings fiercely beating the air, his drawn face and starting eyes, and above all the cat, perched securely on his back with a firm and perhaps painful con- nection with his neck, all presenting a sight calculated to change the seeming tragedy into an uproarious comedy. The pair had shot past five stories in as many seconds when Hiram’s equilibrium was suddenly disturbed, one wing went down and the other went up and Hiram’s position was changed accordingly. Indeed, it seemed as if he had passed the principal focus and now the concave mirror of the sky had inverted him and sent him towards earth in a position highly dangerous to himself. But fate again intervened. A sudden stop, a feeling as if a hundred switches had been laid over him and Hiram sat up in a cradle of telegraph wires. What his discourse was in respect to that great invention which bridges the widest seas, which brings together the uttermost parts of the globe and yet kept Hiram from the embrace of his dear old Mother Earth, is not exactly known. Perhaps the opera- tor took his words down as they sped along the wires, but if so they would be only a series of dashes and would not therefore interest the reader. A life net was spread below and when the word was given, Hiram, with his insep- arable prefix, flopped over and in a flash of white and red landed safely in the net. The cat still holds an honored place in Hiram’s household and his set dream ever since, prompted I suspect, by a considera- tion for his own neck, has been to make a miniature flying apparatus for his feline friend. Edward L. Viets, ’05. Try our Delicious Sodas and College Ices Milk Shakes by Electricity. C. W. GROSSMITH, REGISTERED PHARnACtST, Mass. Avenue, cor. Mystic St-, Arlington. Two-thirds of your life is spent in Hosiery. A practical acquaintance with the lines we carry assures you a contented other one-third. Central Dry Goods Co., 477 Massachusetts Avenue.