Central Intermediate School - Memories Yearbook (Ottawa, IL)

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ggggefi.-its PDLYSCQIFE 3 Iri-P19262 L2341 with, loaded with insurmountable tasks, and dictated to until he longs for the carefree days of childhood. I beseech you to heed this warning before your condition becomes hopeless. If you have yearnings to be grown-up, banish them. Preserve your youth. Strive rather for old age, for never until then are your great- est hopes realized. Not until then can you do anything you please and merely be called eccentric. The philosopher was right who said old age enjoys many privileges which are denied the youth. Long not to be grown up, but to attain old age, then you will come into your own. 1111- TO.TT..T THE GREAT MOTHER By DORAN THARP I am the Earth. Out of me you are born. Even though you are but a short time away, I miss you. But I am patient, I wait. You must soon come back to me For I am the Earth. I am the mother of all, all. No matter what you are, Or what you have done, I shall take you back, For I am the great mother I hold out my arms to you always, Ready to fold you back into the great cool breast of me.

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211365 5 PDLYSCDPE 3 2-..-119265 li233fI GROWING UP By ANNA CAMPBELL I have a deep, dark secret to divulge. One which you have never heard before, and one which will probably be a turning point in your life. It's this, never grow up. Let no one beguile you with words of the exquisite joys of grown-up-dom. There are none. Aim rather to preserve your youth until that time when you shall reach the state of eternal bliss,-old age. For years I have been disillusioned. Experience is the best teacher, but her prices are exorbitant, and as a parting gift I bequeath you this priceless information gratis. When I was a child, my greatest ambition was to grow up. Countless times have I clenched my hands hard, shut my eyes tightly and grit my teeth on this expression, just wait till I'm grown up, then I'll show them. Many indignities did I suffer during my early childhood which I thought no one would dare inflict upon me when I reached the age of maturity. Often at the end of my nightly Now I lay me down to sleep, I would fervently add and Jesus make me grow up in a big hurry. Mother would ask me what were the words which I usually repeated so devoutly, yet rather in- distinctly at the end of my prayers. Just praying to be a big girl, Mother, was always my reply. Of course Mother never knew the wealth of meaning behind those simple words. I used to think the indignities of childhood were insufferable for the memories of a certain little stiff brush with a hard, black wooden back were both painful and vivid. Furthermore, I was given little choice in the selec- tion of my food, my hour of retiring, my wardrobe or even my playmates. Many times did I rebel against these indignities. I would console myself, however, with the thought that when I grew up, I would wear a big hat with sweeping plumes and flowers, beautiful lace dresses of my own choos- ing, high heeled slippers, and all the other adornments of a young lady. I would choose my own associates and drink black coffee to my heart's content. I had a very vital reason for wanting to grow up. I shudder when I think of the many times I cringed under the distasteful task of dishwash- ing. At home and abroad this task fell to my lot. When I grew up, I planned to live in a hotel, or perhaps use paper dishes on all occasions, not just for picnics as Mother did. Another grown up privilege which always aroused my indignation was the use of the old age before beauty adage which was applied to me quite frequently. I suffered and longed for the time when I should be grown up, then I would exert my authority. Ah, little did I realize that these problems were mere premonitions of the great- er ones to come. To me, like to many other unfortunate individuals, this realization came too late. I know now that being grown up offers very few compensa- tions. The joys of childhood are innumerable in comparison. There is no absolute freedom for the grown-up. He has to adhere even more strictly to laws written and unwritten. He is admonished, restrained, interfered

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75,1362-5 so Pol.YscQPE 3 -:iaszsi I:235j DUNSANY'S MYTHOLOGY By J OSEPHINE ALLEN Someone has said that the dead and the living, men, beasts and gods, trees, stars and rivers and sun and moon dance through the region of myths .... where everything may be anything, where nature has no laws and imagination no limits. Instead of going back to the old Celtic legends, as we might suppose, or eve11 to Greece for myths, Dunsany follows the prompting of his imagination and creates his own mythology. Very few are able to create a new mythology in an age of materialsm-to see giant gods beyond towering heaps of masonry. The secret of his power lies in the fact that he believes in the world he creates. We are at first skeptical, mystified, and fascinated, then we begin to see his enthusiasm and believe. We find ourselves in a strange, far-off land in the midst of pagan gods who hold the threads of destiny in their hands and laugh at us as we try to defy them-we who are only a speck in an immeasurable sea. Dunsany carries the reader away to his countries on fascinating jaunts or in his own words to lands of wonder or the edge of the world. In eternities of time and space the gods watch the fall of cities and even the coming of man from under eyebrows white with years. Dunsany pos- sesses the gift of the sense of infinity and he takes us into star-girt places and shows us not the greatness but the infinite littleness of man. Man is puny compared to the terrible power of the gods which he blindly follows. He is a mere lump of clay in the hands of destiny. These demons seem to be playing a game that, for the mortal, is life or death, but men go groping back to them, searching for true gods and at the end a little squeaking one cries shrilly, I know not! I know not I The gods laugh at the efforts of men to disregard their century old laws. The horrible, rumbling laughter of the gods forbodes tragedy to man. A king once left the gay and glamorous city for the quiet, lonely jungle. He learned to love and admire the profusion of purple orchids before his castle door and refused to listen to the prophecy that his retreat would be destroyed, but lo, at the end of three days, houses and men crashed down in a thundering boom together. Woe be to those who attempt to im- personate the gods, for they are revengeful! Seven beggars pretended to be the green gods of the mountains and were turned to stone, and strange to say the people believed them to be the real gods. How easily humanity is deceived! This play shows 1nan's willingness to accept as gods strange towering things of stone which mock men. There is a sense of sorrow in Dunsany's myths. Life is melancholy because it is dominated by hidden gods that delight in shrieks of sacrifice upon the altar and in the doom of men. The stars are also to be reckoned with, for they are symbols. I In The Golden Doom the fate of an empire and a boy's desire for a new plaything are linked as facts of equal import- ance in the web of fate resting on the symbolism of the stars. The king