Barringer High School - Athenaeum Yearbook (Newark, NJ)

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I WONDER WHY. Time works wonders. With the patience of a saint, Iago calmly waited for the end. “O, beware the fury of a patient man,” Now comes: “ The night That makes me or fordoes me quite.” He has guarded every point liable to be attacked, and now his plan is a success or a failure: now will he receive his reward or his punishment. Mistaken Iago: Cassio lives, Roderigo lives: not to share 25 in the reward, but to aid in the punishment. The building totters—falls: before him is a death of torment; yet he is unmoved. No muscle betrays his agitation: he is the same calm, imperturbable Iago. Nay, he even cranes his neck forward to see Othello stagger to the bed and die: it is a pleasure to him. “ O, villain, O, Spartan dog! More fell than anguish, hunger or the sea. Look on the tragic loading of this bed.” I WONDER WHY? BESSIE W HARVEY, ’93. rpH E child looks out with wond’ring eyes, To him the world’s a great surprise. In vain he strives to understand The myst’ries wrought by Nature’s hand. He asks—“ Why don’t the waves stand still? What makes the trees grow on the hill ? Say, does the sun light heaven, too? What holds the stars up in the blue? Why do the clouds go sailing by? I wonder why?” The youth sees many puzzles, too, Though often of a graver hue. The keynote now he seeks to find, To myst’ries of the human mind. He cries,—44 I cannot understand Why men grasp evil by the hand. Why do we duty shirk, for fear ’Twill bring perhaps a frown or sneer?” Alas, in vain he still docs sigh,— 44 I wonder why?” Too soon the youth has reached his prime, Hut still his wonder grows with time. He queries still as when a boy,— “ Why do some suffer, some enjoy? Why is it some men roll in gold, While others die of want and cold?” Vice prospers, hearts are sold and bought, Our sweetest plans oft come to naught. Our hopes are blighted while we cry 441 wonder why?” Old age comes on; he wonders still, 44 Why must man lose his power and will? Why must his mind and strength decay? His eyes grow dim, his hair grow gray? Why must he lay his loved ones low? Is there no lasting joy below ? Some toil for wealth, for fame some crave, Then leave them for the silent grave, Why is it that we all must die? 441 wonder why?” Poor tired heart, when thou art free. These problems shall be solved for thee. Eternity holds naught concealed. There hidden truths shall be revealed. Rejoice; sodn shall a heavenly light, Banish for thee earth’s darkest night. Why spend thy days in fruitless quest, So near the land where all are blest, Where weary souls no more shall sigh— 4 I wonder why ?”

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24 I AGO. I AGO. WM. II. OSBORNE, ’90. “ Honest Iago.” IN the ancient days of gnomes and fairies, when superstition and wild imagination pictured impossibilities to the untrained minds of savage Britons, it was popularly believed by those barba- rians, that his Satanic majesty preferred to transact his business by proxy, so he kindly imbued with his spirit some choice human being, and thus established an agency on earth. Perhaps, in delineating the character of Iago, the poet intended to convey some such impression, for, in none other of Shakespeare’s plays, is there a character so much resembling Mephistopheles. Not a hundred yards from the Rialto, in Venice, once stood the mansion of the venerable Brabantio. Upon the scene of action enters a young man not yet thirty; a young man clad in a sombre suit of dark green, with brown topped boots and sword at his side ; a cavalier, a soldierly looking fellow he appears. His thin black hair is already streaked with gray; he has a thin, gristly nose and the slightest possible pointed mustachios and goatee; rather oblique eyebrows and gray eyes; cold, keen, gray eyes. This is Iago, honest Iago. A handsome face, truly, but wicked; a sinister, sly, deep face: honest Iago— deep, devilish Iago. Iago was the friend of Othello, the friend of Cassio, the friend of Roderigo, and—the enemy of them all,—honest Iago. Slighted by the Moor and subor- dinate to Cassio, he hated them both. It was not a passionate hate, but a cool, gentlemanly, inward hate. “ When a man bleeds inwardly, it bodes no good to him:” when a man hates inwardly, “it bodes no good to others.” With a villain, hate and revenge are synonymous. Mask- ing his revenge under a plausible excuse for jealousy, Iago played the villian. To study the character of the general, to find his weakest point, to lay the plot—in the fertile mind of Iago, “ is but thought of and tis done.” We cannot but admire the consummate art of the villian. Evidently a master of intrigue in war, it was pastime to lay a plot in peace. Shakespeare has a happy faculty of voicing through the mouth’s of his villians some of the most virtuous expressions of thought. Thus Iago gives utterance at times to the most beautiful sentiments: yet they serve only the more to blacken his character. His evident reluctance to discover Cassio to the Moor, his “divided duty” between friendship and justice, testify to the cunning of this Satan. Pretending to pour oil upon the rankling wound, Iago carefully sprinkled it with salt; in making light of Desde- mona’s alleged fault, he made her appear the worse. O, he was no common butcher, this Iago: a practiced surgeon, one to perform the most delicate operation, to separate the finest tissues. In completing his great scheme, Iago was never heated, but always calm, cool, and collected. The proper (improper) consummation depended on a c x)l head and sound judgment: a false step might prove fatal—to Iago. Iago was no courtier, no ladies’ man: “You might relish him better in the soldier than in the scholar.” He was but an honest solder: it was not his cue to play the flatterer like a common villian, an obsequious knave; no, no, he knew better.

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26 TWO FRIENDS—BRUTUS AND CASSIUS. TWO FRIENDS—BRUTUS AND CASSIUS. GINEVRA TOMPKINS, ’90. J HO has read Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” and not been impressed by the profound knowledge of human eharaeter there displayed? How true at the same time to history and to their own individuality are the personages that live in this effeetive play! We see Ca'sar, “ In all but name a king,” hesitate to accept the crown he would gladly possess, we detect his ill-concealed fear and superstition, we hear his boastful words and then—he lies before us “still in death.” We are thrilled by the mas- terly eloquence of the talented Antony and we follow the noble-minded Brutus, the avaricious and ambitious Cassius, through the vivid scenes to the time when “ in their death they were not divided. Assuredly, the most prominent figures of this “tragedie” are the two friends, Brutus and Cassius. It may have been the very difference of their characters which united these Romans in the ties of friendship. Each nature was completed and perfected by the other. Brutus’s gentle and steady disposition restrained the impulsive nature of Cassius: Cassius had the keenness in judging men’s actions which Brutus lacked. Brutus had the virtue, the nobility of character, the dis- interestedness, of which his friend pos- sessed but little. The friends enter the play on the day of the feast of Lupercal when Ca:sar is thrice offered a crown. Meeting on the street, Cassius determines to discover how Brutus regards the present state of things in Rome. Adroitly turning the conversa- tion upon “great Caesar,” he puts into words the thoughts that have troubled Brutus of late. He hints that Rome can be saved only by the death of the despot. But from what different standpoints each regards the perplexing question ! Brutus sees the state’s threatening danger and feels the oppression of Caesar's ambitious rule; Cassius simply hates the ruler. Brutus, the friend of liberty, declares, “ If it l e aught toward the general good. Set honour in one eye and death i’ the other. And I will look on both indifferently; For let the gods so speed me as I love The name of honor more than I fear death, while Cassius, possessing but little of his friend’s patriotism and stung by some personal slight visited upon him by Caesar, cries, ...............................11 Cassius is A wretched creature and must bend his body If Qesar carelessly but nod on him. Why should that name be sounded more than yours? Upon what meal doth this our Casar feed, Thut he is grown so great? Brutus passes several sleepless nights in deciding between the claims of personal affection and the demands of patriotism. Cassius, knowing that Brutus has been aroused, spends the time in seeking new friends to the conspiracy. In the grey light of early morning, the conspirators meet at Brutus’s home. Brutus says: “Give me your hands all over one by one.” Cassius: “ And let us swear our resolution.” “ No, not an oath! cries ltrutus, “ What need we any spur but our own cause To prick us to redress?' And Cassius, knowing that Brutus must be won, and seeing that he will never be bound by oath to such an undertaking, acquiesces. But when his friend opposes the assassination of Antony, Cassius does