Butler High School - Magnet Yearbook (Butler, PA)

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6 THE SENIOR MAGNET stuck, and I was almost in the same fix. I used to think that I had a fair understanding of modern slang, usually being able to make out whatever the office boy tries to tell me; but the line of disconnected words that girl could talk was downright marvelous. I decided that, since Aunt Mae would have to bear with her all the time I was at work, it was up to me to take care of her in the evenings. I suggested that perhaps she was tired from her trip and would wish to retire early. Tired? Not she. The only time she got tired was on the morning after. That being the case, I took her to the theatre.” “The evening was a distinct novelty for me. I spent the intervals during which she was quiet enough for me to hear myself think, in trying to figure out how she got that way, and whether the rest of the crowd that looked about like her were really as bad off as she.” “One night wasn’t bad, but the second evening grew monotonous; and after three nights of it, her line was very much on my nerves.” “I came home early Thursday evening and as I was hanging up my coat and hat, I heard Marion and Aunt Mae talking in the next room. Neither had noticed my arrival, and I was unintentionally eavesdropping. Marion was speaking.” “Yeh, I really should beat it tomorrow, but Bob hasn’t proposed yet. I’ll have to stick around till he flops.” “I gathered from Aunt Mae’s reply that she thought the girl was joking. She hadn’t been out three evenings with Marion or she would have known better. I slammed a door to announce myself. “I determined after another desperate night, that although the Lord only knew how glad I would be when the girl left, Marion’s vanity would never be tickled by my proposing to her. Work fortunately being lax at the office the next day, I was trying to rest my head by glancing through a magazine. Suddenly 1 came upon advertisement which held an inspiration. The ad contained a sad story of a man who was not popular because of one thing. It ended with a trite sentence to the effect that the insidious thing about halatosis was that your own mother-in-law wouldn’t tell you about it. Now, unpopularity with a certain person was what I desired above all things. I started systematically through the magazine for other ideas on how not to be popular. I found some others I thought would do. You see I couldn’t make myself deliberately disagreeable to Marion while Aunt Mae was around, so I had to find some other way to get her to dislike me. That night we were to attend a ball for the benefit of one of Aunt Mae’s pet charities. I smoked some of the rankest cigars I could find and otherwise developed a fine case of halatosis. But the cigars gave me a headache so I stopped at a drugstore on the way to the ball and asked for a box of asperin. The clerk, making change for another customer with one hand, handed me a box with the other, and I swallowed a couple of the tablets as I hurried out of the store. As I was stepping into the car beside Marion, it occurred to me that those asperin tablets had tasted queer. I pulled the box out of my pocket and read a label extolling the virtues of “Breath of Spring Breath Purifiers.” We arrived at the ball. One of those ads I had read assured everyone that only graceful dancers could hope to achieve popularity. I intended to show Marion some of the worst dancing possible. I soon discovered that the girl followed so well that it

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Week’s Experience Howard Britton I was sitting in the lounging room of the club one evening last fall when my old friend Bob Merri-weather came in and made himself comfortable in a chair beside me. Mr. Robert Merriweather is quite a business success for a man of thirty-two. His own parents are dead, but he lives with a widowed aunt who gives him a mother’s care, and treats him as if he were a boy of sixteen. “Say, Bob, what’s wrong? You don’t look like yourself,’’ I said, for he was rather pale and worn. “Well, old timer,” he replied, “I’ve had a hard run. This is the first evening I’ve been comfortable for a week.” “What’s the matter?” I asked, “Trouble at the office? Come on, get if off your chest.” “No, nothing wrong at the office. It began last Monday. I came home from work and found a trunk in the hall. That looked suspicious, so I found Aunt Mae upstairs tearing a bed-room inside out, and asked her where the company was.” “The company,” she said, “will arrive about five-thirty. I just got word that my niece out west is sending her daughter here for a few days. It seems that the young lady has spent a year in some college out there, but they have decided to send her to one of the big eastern schools, and she is stopping here on her way east. You will have to entertain her, Bob, for I’m entirely out of my element with the young things.” “Man, have you ever run up against a flapper?” asked Bob. “Only when a crowded elevator stopped too suddenly, or on similar occasions,” I replied. “Well, the young lady arrived,” continued Bob, then paused as if slightly dazed. “And she was a flapper?” I asked, just to get him started again. “She was—as I said, she arrived, more or less like a cyclone, and it wasn’t long before I saw that Aunt Mae hadn’t the slightest idea as to what to do with her. We had dinner, during which Marion informed Aunt Mae and me of the various states of health and happiness of our mutual relatives. When we had exhausted that subject, Aunt Mae was distinctly

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THE SENIOR MAGNET 7 was an impossibility to step on her toes. I managed however to disregard entirely the time of the music with this result.” “Oh! How originally you dance, Bob. I just love that syncopated step.” “Nothing marks the amateur dancer more than to slip on a turn. The next turn I made I threw one foot out so that by all rules I should have skidded beautifully. Did I slip? I did not. Some flapper like Marion probably felt lost without the wad of wrigglemint on which my toe had caught.” “After the ball we dropped into a restaurant where I pulled my coup d’etat by ordering chicken salad. “I just adore chicken salad and I haven’t had any for ages,” said Marion. “I reached for a glass of water.” Here Bob paused in his recital of woe. After due time I gently asked, “And how did you finally lose the dear little thing?” “Keep it under your hat, old man, but I want you to be best man. Sometime next June. You will, wont you?” “Of course I will and consider it an honor. Congratulations and all that.”