Central High School - Almanac Yearbook (Toledo, OH)

Page 141 text:

When Daphne Bets. HEY say that gambling, betting, too, And fortune's wheels, and kindred things Are dangerous, and gaming brings At last bankruptcy unto you. That this is true I'll take my oath Though pokerts quite unknown to me, And craps, and all my friends agree I'm ignorance itself in both. Now Daphne oft' for Lowney's yearns And When I say, unconscious quite, I'll bet the rink will freeze tonight, She, laughing at her smartness, turns, And quick replies, I'll take the betf' Now Lowney's are the stakes you know For she would always have it so: Then straight I go and Lowney's get. Perchance, despite the recent thaw Which floods the rink's smooth surface some That night it freezes like a drum And I have won my bet-Hurrah ! But though I am victorious I know her clever, well laid snare, And well she knows that I'm aware- Now, isntt it rediculous? Then I for consolation's sake, In sympathy for her, you know, For having lost her wager so, To her my box of Lowney's take. I-Iowever strange it may appear, Although I often bet with her, And always pay without demur, I haven7t got a thing this year ! -W

Page 140 text:

Discouragcment from Trumbull County. BY R. M. BRINKERHOFF. N days when it's rainy and too wet to plow, The hired hand and me get a concocting how We could kick Nature out and have our own way With hot or cold weather-just as we say. When we git to talkin' it just sort o' seems l I . 5 ' mu l Like the Lord don't have time ff keep -S N tixin' up schemes um T' git the most work out th, sun and the QQ-' l And raise bigger squashes, more fruit and I more grain. it If -M I Now, here it's been rainin' fur four days this y ga f u weekg If I guess th' old rain tank has sprung a new 1 Xxx QU leak, ' Mp An' all of our crops is jest nigh drownded g 1 ' out, f But that ainlt no trouble to keep kickin' about, l If it hadn't o' come, without warninl er sign, 3 Right squat' in the middle of our thrashin, time. But look! Over yonder it's clearin' up some, And ,pears like the sunbeams is tryin' t' come Streaking straight down through them clouds overhead, J est as if Nature had heard what we said.

Page 142 text:

McLeod. BY NORMAN L. HANSON. HERE were days when their ears refused to communi- cate aught but the ceaseless hum of the wires overhead to their throbbing brains, when the interminable glint ot the steel rails was multiplied and duplicated by their seared and aching eyesg when the clank of bar and shovel seemed the riveting of torturing manacles about their wearied limbs, when the resin of the cracked and splintered poles, -silent, suffering sentinels over that infernal waste of livid, undulating brown,-started in sticky, boiling streams from yawning seams, tie by tie, laid by bending, toiling bodies Whose minds and souls Were in a sodden stupor, rail by rail, the great iron road crept at a taunting, maddening pace toward completion, toward Singhpa,-one hundred and twenty miles more of incarnate drouth and desolation, still, it moved on, leaving here and there along the way a dusty, unmarked grave,-the men courted this last relief from that nightmare. They finished their evening lunch under the shed of loosely-nailed, gleaming, yellow-pine boards,-wan, emaci- ated faces, eyes whose lustre had long ago iied away as the sun rolled back mile after mile of waving heat from blis- tered, warping rails, eyes in which there was no hope or future,-only the blind devotion of Irish gangmen upon whom depended the honor of Fraser, G. E., and the fulfill- ment of the hopes of the company, which held him to his bond. Silently they passed that meal,--a meal of biscuits so dried by the sun of those three weeks since last the supply