Butler High School - Magnet Yearbook (Butler, PA)

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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.

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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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THE M A G N E T SUSPENSE. (By Lcyland C. Stauffer.) ON E dark and dreary evening I walked the streets in despair. My wife was dying, and God knows what agonies I suffered. My very soul seemed to cry out in its bitterness against the irony of fate. I shunned the more densly populated streets, and sought the open and untrafficked ways. Above the cruel insistence, the maddening repetition of the counts I held against the cruel world, as in a second nature, t felt that I was being—. Oh, no, it could not be! It was only a trick of my grief crazed mind. As I turned up a dark, narrow and unfrequented street, a sharp and penetrating wind whistled down the avenue, buffeted from house to house ’till it met me, wreaking its vengeance ten-fold. Hatless and insufficiently clad, I was completely at the mercy of the whirling, shrieking gusts which beat and surged across my unprotected chest and my still more defenseless face, with a passionate and unrelenting fury of temper. Yet what was that foul clamor which was borne along by this gale? There suddenly seemed to be a dozen ringing, gutteral and screeching voices, each trying to reach my ears. Obstipui; stetemnt que comae; vox fancibus haesit! This demonstration of unearthly powers was exceedingly weird. The very tones of the voices were now enough to drive a music-loving soul crazy with despair of ever reaching the acme of their loveliness one moment—yet the next, and dulcet tones had changed to gruff, compelling accents, driving voices, or to murderous, commanding notes. The singular point of this medley, so supernaturally heard, was that though the voices changed, the words remained the same : “You are followed by him who would kill you! Escape while you may!” “Was this fancy?” I asked myself. Did I really hear the voices ringing in my ears, or was I becoming insane in my grief? I stopped to reason. If I were mad from grief, why did my brain manifest a mania so different from the cause of my derangement? The very fact that 1 was able to reason, to argue, pointed favorably to my sanity. Yet why was I plagued in this manner, when I could already scarcely bear the burden with which life’s chances had loaded my heart, my brain? Great was my relief when I came to a cross street, down which the horrible blast blew not. Hard! What was that! A heavy, padded sound, as of footsteps, manifested itself, coming up the street which I had just abandoned. It was true! I was followed! I fled, yet I stopped and re-assured myself. This was no portion of town for a murder; the man was following me to a more suitable spot for his deed. Were I to run it would only hasten my death, for I must again pass through the slums on my way to my home, in the better end of town. So I set out at a quiet, sedate pace, as befits a man in his later years. Still that ominous pat, pat, pat. pat of my pursuer’s feet followed. By this time my grief for my dying wife was forgotten—a sign of my cowardice. Suddenly, a thought flashed across my mind. I had over twenty thousand dollars in my wallet. For the money I cared nothing; I was rich. For my life, everything. Drawing out my wallet, I took a bill and, with a shaking hand and a fountain pen, wrote: “To him who haunts me: Take this money and go thy way. Harm me not.