Butler High School - Magnet Yearbook (Butler, PA)

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 THE £ MAGNET Vol. 15 JANUARY, 1916 No. 4 A JUST PUNISHMENT. (By Georgia Kline.) ON a Saturday afternoon Devona sat in a chair in the parlor of her home and gazed out of the window. The book she had started to read lay on the table. It failed to interest her, as the story was not the kind that appealed to her imagination. She opened a box of candy, then closed it. She had had enough and it no longer tasted good. Nero opened one eye and wagged his tail and whined, which was his usual way of asking Devona for some candy. ‘‘No, Nero, we’ve both had enough.” said she. The afternoon seemed long and the house was too still. Her mother had not yet returned from a call on a neighbor. It was a dull afternoon and nobody passed along the street. “What a dreary day,” she exclaimed. I wish something would happen.” Her wish was immediately granted. The center table commenced to rise up from the floor. The sight of a table ascending without any visible means of locomotion surprised and horrified her. After the table had described a circle in the air, it came over to where Devona was sitting and noiselessly dropped to the floor. The right hand of the brass statue pointed menacingly toward her. “You didn’t know when you were happy, did you? You want something to happen, do you ? Well, plenty of things are going to happen.” The hollow voice that uttered the words apparently came from the mouth of the statue. Never before had she heard a ,statue talk. A dense blue vapor issued from the head and coiled and swung around in the air. Soon the vapor took definite shape, and Devona was terrorized to see the vapor resolve itself into the form of a huge monster. High

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DEDICA TION. To each and every one, who, turning these pages, shall find something herein which he shall deem good.

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2 THE MAGNET above her head it towered. The ugly huge mouth grinned. “Sick ’m, Nero; chase him out of the house!” exclaimed Devona. The monster’s hideous grin broadened as he said: “I will fix your dog!” Standing on one leg, the thing waved the other foot over Nero’s head and pronounced some words that sounded like: “Pobo Sodo Babarich Kivitch, Gawba Hawba, Wawba,” and Nero immediately diminished in size and became a cloth and saw-dust image. “You mean thing!” exclaimed Devona. “You have turned my pet dog into a plaything!” Two big tears rolled down the face of the inanimate thing that had once been Nero. The monster then seized Devona by the arm and said: “Come with me, little girl !” She felt herself going down through the floor. Just how she and the monster could go through the floor without breaking something, Devona herself could not understand. “The triumph of mind over matter,” explained the monster. Down, down, down they went; down a great hole in the earth. “Where are we going?” timidly asked Devona. “To the land of ghosts,” answered her captor. Finally they landed on a grassy plain. A sheeted ghost appeared. “Now, don’t scream!” cautioned the ghost. But Devona did scream, and lustily, too. “Oh, you heartless creature!” groaned the ghost. “Look at what you’ve done!” Commencing at the ground, the substance of which the ghost was composed very slowly disappeared until there was nothing visible but the head. “How cruel of you!” continued the ghost. “Now all the other ghosts will laugh at me for not having a body.” A noise behind her caused her to turn around. An upright, grinning skeleton was facing her. Again Devona screamed. The skeleton’s lower jaw worked convulsively. “You wicked girl,” groaned the skeleton, “now I will have stomach trouble for the next seven years. Didn’t you know that screaming would interfere with my digestive apparatus?” The idea that a skeleton, which by the very nature of things, couldn’t have a stomach, being bothered with indigestion, struck Devona as being very funny, and she burst forth into a hearty laugh. The skeleton groaned heavily. “Now you’ve fixed me about right. Have you no regard for others’ feelings?” As the skeleton uttered these words it collapsed into a shapeless pile of bones at Devona’s feet. In the distance a tiger was approach-ing. “Great Scott! exclaimed the monster, “somebody has let the tiger out ! He won’t hurt spirits, but how he will enjoy making a meal of a school girl with pink-cheeks !” As the tiger drew near, Devona was startled by a noise that sounded like Nero’s whine. Opening her eyes, she beheld Nero, with his front paws on the center table and his nose pointing toward her candy. “Yes, Nero, I will give you another bon-bon for waking me from that horrible dream.” And Nero’s tail wagged violently as he consumed the dainty bit of sweet.