Baldwin School - Prism Yearbook (Bryn Mawr, PA)

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Milestone Donors Report Submitted by the Department of English Poetry— First prize: “We Come in the Cold of Morn,” Senior Poem, by Eloise Crowell Smith, published in The Book of 1922. Honorable mention: “Fantasie,” by Eloise Crowell Smith, published in the November Issue. The Department of English also commends “A Lugubrious Sonnet,” by Frances S. Oakford, published in Drama and Poetry. From the Lower School, “A |Winter Fairyland Song,” by Barbara Kirk, published in Stories, deserves special notice. IM AG IN ATI VE PROSE— First prize: “Francois Villon Celebrates Christmas,” by Elizabeth W. Barringer and Frances S. Oakford, published in Drama and Poetry. Editorial Prose— The Department of English feels that this year a piece of editorial prose of such distinction has been written that they have recom- mended a new prize to be awarded when there is work of this kind sufficiently distinguished to merit it. The School gives it for the first time to Religious Instruction in School: An Anszver,” by Frances S. Oakford, published in the May Issue. The Department wishes to recommend the sustained excellence of the editorials during this year. Humorous Writings— “The Journal of an Undeveloped Mind ” by Janet Turnbull, published in Croiv’s Nest, is worthy of mention. Business Management— The Department especially commends the work of Florence Clothier as business manager during 1920-1921 and 1921-1922, the two most difficult years financially that The Milestone has faced. When she took office, it was doubtful whether The Milestone could be printed during that year because of the soaring price of pub- lication and the business depression which made it unusually difficult to secure advertisements. Her untiring efforts and care- ful planning have made it possible for the regular six issues to appear each year. 10

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from a well-rounded education. Here comes the tyranny of the majority again. True, there are opportunities for very highly specialized training after one has finished school or even after college, but by that time many people have become too standardized to do more than dabble at a lot of things more or less successfully. Their one talent has been so over- whelmed by a dozen other things that they do not even know what it is. Is it any wonder then that we have so few great men in any field and those we have are not of this generation? One would think to glance at a book catalog that America had a won- derful modern literature, but of all that horde of books not one is truly great. Except for variations of style they are all on the same dead-level of mediocrity. Those who wrote badly have been pushed forward; those who would have written supremely well have been ridden on the curb. The “great American novel” will never be written under our present edu- cational system, nor can anything else really great and individual be accomplished by machine-made education. The majority benefit, of course. We may even become in time the best educated nation in the world; all graduates of our public schools may be able to appreciate music, art and literature equally—only by that time there will he no new art or music or literature to appreciate, for we shall have smoothed all the square pegs out of existence. Commencement program St. Anne, “O God, Our Help in Ages Past” Prayer...............................The Rev. Andrew Mutch (а) “How Should I Your True Love Know”..............Engtnel Glee Club (б) “Greetings” .....................................Brahms Glee Club and Chorus Awarding of Diplomas Address by William Allan Neilson, Ph.D., LL.D. on “Some Products and By-Products of Education” Chorale from “Die Meistersinger”.....................Wagner Glee Club and Chorus “The Star-Spangled Banner” 9

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jFurtfjer Cjjougljts on ttnoUmtg People One of the great disadvantages of a private school is that we are shut off from close intercourse with people of a different class from ourselves, with fundamentally different conceptions of life, with rich gifts for us out of their battle for a living or their love of beauty inherited from the Old World, with lives tragic from meeting the desperate problems which tear our civilization, with needs which it is our responsibility to meet. The challenge of the editorial of the last issue of The Milestone has made me want more than ever to share with you, if I can, some glimpses of this other side of life which came to me at the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers. I often found that these girls straight from the factory had a passion for making the world a more beautiful place and a vision of how it might be done that stripped away all the complacency of one who had had every opportunity. I think of a Russian Jew who came to this country when she was ten, who had gone to a private school in Russia where a funny little old man had taught her the alphabet, who went three years to school here in America and who then—thirteen years old—went into the factory. “I loved school, especially reading,” she said, “but I was the oldest, and I had to help support the family.” She has read most of the important contemporary writers, and she questioned me profoundly about meanings in such masterpieces as Dante’s Divine Comedy. With a will to beauty and utter selflessness, she has dedicated herself as a volunteer to organize her comrades; it is so that she has come to feel that, as she says it, “we cannot live to ourselves alone.” Many of the workers have learned this lesson in a bitter school. A Swede, because she had kept an expense account for years and knew how much money a week a girl needs in order to live respectably, testified before the minimum wage board of her state, lost her job because of this and could not get another in her home town because the Chamber of Commerce had “blacklisted” her for her testimony. A skilled telephone operator, who helped to make possible the present reasonable hours, who is therefore blacklisted all over the country and able to work at her trade with the telephone company, only if she were to change her name, nevertheless feels that the only thing that matters is to work for the good of all her comrades. A hatmaker from New York is a veritable Hamlet in her struggle to harmonize with her conscience the terrible facts she has to face. Again and again they expressed their sadness at the contrasts in life; again and again I wondered why they were not more bitter. One of them, a foreigner of rare gentleness and 11