Butler High School - Magnet Yearbook (Butler, PA)

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6 THE SENIOR MAGNET AUNT JANE'S VENTURE INTO SOCIETY Gretchen Rebhun “Susa May Amelia, come right down here,” called old Aunt Jane, to her delinquent niece, who was primping as usual before her glass. “Ain’t no use of your a-puttin’ on them sickly airs, as if you was one of them alinguishing specimens that inhabit the place what the newspapers calls society. Now, see here, society ain’t nothin’ anyhow; it is just a merely pretence of what you ain’t, an’ you never was society and never will be.” “There you air with yer pirky bow settin’ a-side ways on that matty head. O’ course it is style, but style never called fer a mess like that. Take it down and braid it in them two skinny braids what becomes your moon face. Laws me! times were when style didn’t count and neither did the catchin’ of a mere man. Yer Aunt Aspinwallie didn’t believe in either, and look at her, she’s happy—she ain’t worried. But there I ain’t a-lecturin’ on the crimes of matrimony but on society. It never did nobody no good and I reckon it did me worse than nobody.” “Why, Susa May, I kin jist look back on most any episodes of my life without one mite of a quiver, but when I think of my one and only venture into society, I just fair have hysterics.” Susa May knew her aunt had started on another tale of her youth, so thought she might as well humor the old lady and listen while her aunt rambled on. “Seems only yesterday since Seth took me for his blushing bride—not blushing for pride or joy, but for shame, ’cause there was Seth a-wearin’ a vivid purple tie with a green pin check suit. I was too mortified to speak, except when the parson shouted ‘I do’ at me; even then I yelled ‘I do’ at the wrong time onst, when Seth should have sed it. Folks said I was a mite too eager. But then I have learned since that Seth never did have no sense of combinations, but the worst proof of it was his bridal outfit. “There I be wanderin’ agin an’ for-gitten to tell you about society and my Waterloo. “Well, you see, since I was a bride it was natural for me to have a party of some kind, after I had kind of settled down in my feathered nest. It was more of a nest without feathers but I guess it was nigh like a house behind the golden gates in my eyes. So naturally, I wanted to show off before the green eyes of the older married ladies, an’ bein’ an earnest church member, fer my age, I invited the ‘Ladies Aiders’ for my first show-off. “It weren’t no use to try to have a party on nerves at the same time, so with my nerves a-jumpin’, I started into fussin’ up my rooms. “Some wise man said as how ‘A woman’s house is her soul.’ Well if it is, my soul in them days must have been scoured clean for I fair wore my kuckles thru a trvin’ to make the place shine. I washed and stretched the chair tidies until they looked like pieces of cobwebs, like hung in Mrs. Wosen’s best room. She sure had a black soul accordin’ to her house, but the merriest face in all Rubenville. But ter come back to my story. “By the way, Susie, since you have finished braiden’ your hair, ye might as well shell them peas while I talk a mite. “Well, as I was a-sayin’. I had my

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THE SENIOR MAGNET 5 to a place by the roadside and barked, howled—perhaps some one might be near and hear him. But no answer came. So he pointed! He grew colder and colder—his body began to stiffen, his cut paw pained, his eyes burned— and still he pointed. Surely help would come soon. Seconds seemed as hours while he stood there; he thought he had been there for days. At last he was ready to give up—but no—he remembered the words his captain had spoken to him. How plainly they came to him— “Don’t give up!” Two hours later, when darkness had begun to fall, and a lull had come in the fighting, Boh Morse’s ambulance came dashing along the narrow road. He stopped short as he saw the other car standing there for he recognized it as Tom’s. A quick search told the truth. “Captain Tom” was dead! Bob Morse was unnerved: he dared not move; his gaze rested on Tom’s face, upon the face that had ever been so happy and yet so firm,—upon the face of the man who had been the very life of the di- vision—a man whom everyone had loved. And he was dead! “Ho Bob! come here.” He started, —it was Walton’s voice. Morse stepped out into the snow again and saw his helper standing a few yards away, an astonished look upon his face. But what was that beside him—something nearly covered with snow? He went up and looked, stood for a moment as if he had been struck dumb, and then smiled and murmured, “Bim.” There, standing in the snow which had nearly covered him, his pink nose held high and his tail straight, was Bim—frozen to death—pointing directly at the ambulance in which his dead master lay. And some time, when this great world war has ceased and men have returned to peaceful fellowship, if you should chance to visit Italy, near the city of Venice, you would see, I am sure, the bronze cross erected by the members of Unit L to “Captain Tom” Weston, and close beside it a small marble slab upon which this inscription is written: “To the memory of Bim, zvho zvas only a dog, but who gave his life for humanity and his captain.”

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THE SENIOR MAGNET 7 house a shinin’ and my parlor all opened and aired. I’d even took Grandpa Sheller’s picture down an regilded the frame, and had glued the handle on the big vase, what was one of my prized weddin’ presents. Went even so far as to varnish them legs on grandma’s horse-hair sofy. Laws, I was so busy that the air fairly clicked electricity when I sizzen through it. “Seth said as how all he could do was to shave the lawn, and he did. Haerts and flowers! I’ll never fergit how he went a-rampagin’ around that twelve by eight weed patch, the slivers of grass a flyin’ up and sticken’ where they lit, making Seth just look like a dilapidated straw man. “At last everything was ready, the crullers all a dainty brown and so ap-petizin’ they fairly made my mouth water, but I daren’t eat one for fear there mayn’t be enough. I set ma’s big coffee kettle on and hurried up stairs to slip on my best silk and take a last peep around. Seems as if a powerful lot of things was awry—first a wrinkle on the bed quilt, or a tidy on crooked, or a candle not lit. It was style in them days to have candles lit in the bed-room and fer layin’ off the company’s wraps. So when I about had my dress hookekn, I had clean fergot the coffee, until I smelt it. I hustled down stairs fergittin’ to fasten the rest of the buttons. I went to take off the coffee when Seth, overcome by how sweet I looked, just naturally made me upsot the stuff all over me. Then the brass knocker sounded. I grabbed a pink check apron and tied it over the stain and flurried me to the door. There was Mrs. Simons and Mrs. Perwingle, both particular in house and dress. I just had time to show them to the room and slush Seth into another to get slicked up when the knocker clanked agin. More and more come until the required thirty had arrived. There they sat, all stiff as so many pokers; there I sat, red with embarrassment and the combination of pink apron and purple coffee stain dress. “First. I felt they looked at grandpa’s regilded picture, then at the cracked vase, then at me. I was too tongue-tied to speak and break this general survey, when all at once the silence was broken by Seth’s voice from the stairs: ‘Hey, Jane, where’s my suspenders ?’ “I could just have fallen through. I could fairly see Mrs. Prim’s hands a-risin’; she always was so particular abount edikate. All I wished was to get away from their quisitive glances, so I excused me and I flew up stairs to fall into Seth’s arms a-crvin’. Seth just a-petted my hair and sent me back into that lion’e den with instructions to talk about the flannels the Aiders were makin’ for the heathens in India. Well that kept them busy for a good spell and then came time to eat. “I thought sure I’d redeem myself then and it was right proudly I brought in the plates of gelatine and crullers, then coffee and candy, and I settled down to eat like a nesting hen. First one coughed, then another. I looked all around to find out what they had et that was wrong but their faces was like that of a stone jury. I felt sort of quaky and so I began to taste everything to see the cause of the coughs. “Everything was fine in my estimation until I came to the crullers, and no wonder they coughed; they should have choked. I had used salt to coat them instead of sugar. I could just see that hulking Seth pourin’ the salt into the sugar furkin. I was always foolish about a-lettin’ him monkey around the kitchen.