Cloverdale Union High School - Spectator Yearbook (Cloverdale, CA)

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Gwendolen was quite a horsewoman. In the morning bright and early she would be seen off for a ride before school. She was the envy of all the girls, for her horse was the finest that money could buy. Her favorite ride was across the river to her father’s orange grove. When school was out that summer she went to visit her cousin, Gladys Clark. Now, Gladys lived in a much larger place than Gwendolen, and there were no places to go for horseback rides, but she had a roadster, and they took many lovely rides in it. Of course Gwendolen made up her mind to have one, too. After she returned home she kept putting off asking her father for a machine. One morning she was seated at the piano when he came into the room. As her birthday was only two weeks off, he said: “Well Gwendolen, what are you going to want for your birthday? “Oh, Daddy,” she cried, “can I have what I most want? “Yes,” he replied “Oh, a machine. You know, Gladys has one, and so have all my other friends.” “Well Gwendolen, he said, I will not promise for sure. On the morning of her birthday, she awoke bright and early. She decided to go for her morning ride, as usual. She dressed very quickly and hastened down stairs. There on the driveway stood her machine. It was the joy of her heart, as was grandmother s little machine fifty years ago. And she can run it with great skill, too. Will this make her despise the daily round of work that falls to the lot of the homekeeper? Let us hope, rather, that it will only add another accomplishment without lessening her devotion to the homely duties that made such capable and lovable v omen of the daughters of our pioneers. A ROMANCE OF THE FUTURE. Joseph Richardson was a lad of seventeen, exceptionally bright and of a mechanical turn of mind. When he was only a Junior in the college of Science and Mechanics he astonished every one in his skill and genius as an inventor. He was far ahead of his time and even before he had graduated from High School he had turned topsy-turvy some of the estab¬ lished theories of physics and formulated better ones. Now he knew more than any book or professor in the college. On top of all of this he was in love and desperately so. She was very fair, and also seventeen years of age. When he had graduated from college he went to request her hand. She referred him to “Father.” Father was a rich, retired banker of the shrewd, precise type, taking nothing for granted. This potentate stared at him for a few minutes, and then asked: “What do you wish to become?” “My ambition is to be an inventor. The old man laughed at the idea. Inventors are the scum of the earth,” he said. Yet you are of very reputed genius for that kind of thing and if you had an equipped laboratory you might solve many prob- lems.” Finally the old man proposed that he would build Joe a modern labora¬ tory to his own taste, on condition that he would find the principle of an antigravity machine; that he would find the means and have executed the watering of the Sahara, and stop the war. Then he might have his daughter. Joe said he would try, for he needed the laboratory. Two years passed and the war was waging as fiercely as ever, only the warring nations were using machinery instead of men for doing the fighting. 29

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GRANDMOTHER’S MACHINE AND GWENDOLEN’S. “Anon from the belfry Softly the Angelus sounded, and over the roofs of the village Columns of pale blue smoke, like clouds of incense ascending, Rose from a hundred hearths, the homes of peace and contentment ” One of these homes was a large red brick house surrounded by firs and hemiocKS which shaded its spacious verandas. To the west were large fields of flax and to the south were orchards and cornfields. Here lived Dr. McFar¬ land, a wealthy country physician, with his wife and seven children. Alice, the eldest, was just sixteen when she returned from the boarding school, which in these days was called an academy. The following year she re¬ ceived her certificate, and taught school in a nearby village. One winter her friend Susie came to visit at the McFarland home. She was very fond of Edward Templeton, the son of a Methodist minister. His father was an old friend of the McFarlands, and often brought his family there to spend an evening. Alice was always a shy little creature, and would often go up to her own room when they had company. Susie had a delightful visit. She spent her time in visiting school with Alice, and going sleigh riding and ice skating. Every Friday night, in a vil¬ lage about ten miles away, they had singing school. This was the chief amusement of the time and every one attended. One night Alice and Susie went to singing school in the McFarland sleigh. Susie had dressed very carefully that evening, as she knew Edward would be there; but Alice never let such things enter her head. What was Susies chagrin when she had to go home in the family sleigh with Alice’s brother, while Alice went home with Edward. After this they were often together making it a point to see each other at church and at the singing school In the spring of 1863 they were married and lived at her old home for a few years. One day when Alice was sitting by the open window sewing on a pair of white linen trousers for her husband (for in those days men always wore white), she sighed: Oh, if I only had a machine, how much work it would save me. bhe worked on. A few days later when her husband came in from town he carried a large box. “What is this?” she asked. “I did not order any large package from the store. But he only smiled and commenced taking the nails out of the box for her. Then he said, Now lift up the cover and see.” She did so, and to her surprise found a sewing machine. The kind that we have now with electric motors? Oh, no! , L B a very S , ma11 machine - whic h she set on the table and worked by hand. Of course this was a great deal of work, and her arm became very tired, but how much more quickly she made the clothes. She was generous and very often the neighbors came in to use it. Gwendolen Brookwell lived in a handsome home on West Street In fact, it was the most beautiful home in the little town. It was surrounded by large oak trees, and in the front there were spacious green lawns. At the east side of the house was a tennis court, where many of the young folks gathered every afternoon after school. The interior of the house was very luxuriously furnished On the upper floor was a large hall with polished Hoors. Often Gwendolen s friends would dr op in for a dance. 28

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All this time Joe had been sweating over the antigravity machine. The chief energy was what he called the Helium ray, also the Lavender ray, which would eat into the heart of a mountain a hundred miles distant. One evening Joe finished the two rays, placed them in two separate cylinders in a huge steel safe. The next morning he hurried to his laboratory and entered. He was appalled. The steel door of the safe had been cut through by the acetylene flame and the cylinders were missing. All Joe s hope vanished and he sat down and wept. A few hours later found him staring helplessly and with a vacant look at the rows of chemicals. Just then his wireless telephone rang, and he mechanically answered. The clear, sonorous voice of a person who called himself “Pax” filled the room. “You have undoubtedly missed your two rays. It is I who have taken them. Am sending you $100,000 for the two minerals. If I can do anything for you let me know.” Hope once more filled Joe s heart and in a few minutes he was con¬ versing with Pax. “When you have perfected a machine for using the Helium ray get me a sample of the moon, flood the Sahara by means of the Lavender ray, and end the war and I renounce all claims to the rays.” ‘With pleasure,” answered the calm, composed voice. Six months later the Arabs were astonished at a huge ring-shaped machine which shot over their heads and came to astop at the southern edge of the desert. A few days later the Sahara was a vast lake, some hun¬ dreds of feet deep in places. The machine had disappeared, leaving cara¬ vans floating on the artificial lake, which was fed by the tropical rains of the southern jungles. Joe’s name was in all the papers and he was loudly lauded. One event followed another. Pax threatened through Joe’s Lavender ray to shift the axis of the earth if the warring nations did not make peace. They complied, realizing that Pax meant business. Again Joe was borne upon the shoulder of fame. And at last the mystery of space was pried open. Pax equipped his antigravity machine and sailed for the moon. He returned safely, having made the trip in less than ten hours. We need not mention the hubbub of public excitement which followed. Joe was the King Bee of the public eye, and was married two hours after the specimen of the moon had been locked in “Father’s” museum. Pax disappeared as mysteriously and quietly as he had entered, and nothing was heard of him or his machine or laboratory until Professor Ben¬ jamin Hacker and two daring aviators found his machine in Virginia, and brought it to Washington. Pax and his laboratory had been wiped off the face of the earth by an explosion, but the machine had been left unharmed. The wonderful things done with this machine are revealed by Arthur Train in his “Moon Maker.” E. D. THE SALUTATION OF THE DAWN. ‘For yesterday is but a dream And tomorrow is only a vision. But today well lived, Makes every yesterday a dream of happiness, And every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well, therefore, to this day!” 30