Brackenridge High School - La Retama Yearbook (San Antonio, TX)

Page 13 text:

Gay blossoms and friendly companions brighten our lives at Brackenridge

Page 12 text:

 6n Boston Boulevaro west Detroit, Michigan 20. December 1934 Miss Olga Soholz, Brackenrldge High School San Antonio, Texas. Dear Miss Scholz: I am enclosing a few paragraphs, according to my promise, about my Father, Mark Twain • With kindest regards. Sincerely yours, CCG:H Enel • My father, Mark Twain, adored youth, and to the day of his death was inspired by the presence not only of young men and women, but of children. By inspired, I mean that the careless joy of youth aroused his instinct to create. It was a spark on which his genius took fire. And then, being himself endowed with vivacious energy, he naturally preferred the companionship of those who were also filled with vivacity. He missed that faculty in most people his own age. Another quality my father enjoyed in the disposition of boys and girls was their unselfconscious interest in things outside themselves. How they thrilled at the sight of a bird in its nest, a boat on the river, a kite in the wind! How they yelled out their joy when they zipped down a long white hill stretched full-length on a double ripper. The spontaneous, natural happiness of youth should serve as a spiritual example to older men and women. Unfortunately there are ihose among children who are anything but unselfconcious. They derive their chief pleasure from showing off . And this my father abhorred as if it were a loathsome disease, as indeed it sometimes is. Undue consciousness of self is an incalculable stumbling-block in every walk of life—large or small. When Father discovered undue self-interest in adults, he was repelled, but not surprised. In children he did not expect it; therefore this unlooked-for misfortune heightened the evil effect. One of the great attractions about Huck and Tom is their ability to get fun out of adventures that do not inspire vanity; that, on the contrary, cultivate energy, ingenuity, imagination and courage. These boys' deeds are not always of a virtuous nature, but at least they are not clouded by the sickening fumes of vanity. Mark Twain had a love of adventure that kept him young within the border of old age. There was nothing stagnant about his mind and heart. They were continuously in action. In spite of the fact that he talked willingly and brilliantly, he was inclined to sympathize with the man who said: Get out and do something — work, sweat, hike, hump yourself — starve if need be. But dig on and deliver. Then talk if you want to, but the chances are, you won't feel so much like it. Although my father loved to play hookey when a boy, he did not desert school to pass an idle day. By no means. He crammed it full of work so exacting, that had he been ordered to attack such projects by anyone but himself, he would have felt abused and outraged. Work and humor were Mark Twain s instruments of happiness and he kept them faithfully sharpened. —Clara Clemens Gabrilowitsch.

Page 14 text:

Waving palms and Old Glory continue to grace our Brackenridge Campus