Columbus School for Girls - Topknot Yearbook (Columbus, OH)

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COLUMBUS SCHOOL FOR GIRLS IN A CHOIR LOFT HE music of the great organ rolled upon me, overwhelmed me, shook my timid heart, I held back, frightened, then started for- ward in a panic-I was being left behind, 1 could not make an entry alone. It seemed ages till I caught up with them and gained my place in the procession. We swung down the aisle with slow-measured step-left foot, teeter totterg right foot, teeter totterg left swing, right swingg keep time, keep time: look up, look upg don't shake my vestments, heart, calm yourselfg calm yourself 3-all the way to the choir loft. It was our first Sunday. None of us had ever before made a public appear- ance. What agonies we suffered! The first ordeal had passed without catastrophe, seated, I had just breathed a sigh of relief when I noticed that everyone else was standing -I alone sat. I weighed a thousand pounds. I was glued fast to the chair. I had a stroke of paralysis. I could not stir. Screwing up all my strength, I gave a mighty heave and there I stood with my fellow choristers. The organ began its fearful rumbling, while at just the proper moment our directress gave a reassuring smile, inclined her head fthe signal for us to get readyj, gave the dreaded up stroke of the baton four cuel, then displayed an expression of the most profound surprise. My fellow sufferers QI had thought them so calm, so collectedj, stood with gaping mouths issuing not a sound. The organist, ingenious, God-sent man, was repeating a chord over and over. After this harmonious but monotonous combination of sounds had been played several times in each of its variations, we found our voices and a remnant of that invincible courage peculiar to youth. With an impetus marvelous to hear we sent out the first note of the song. Full and strong it soared to the high vaulted roof, bellowed, resounded, and finally died away into an almost inaudible whine, just as our newly acquired bravado welled and grew, then oozed into nothingness. There was a bass and soprano duet in the song. I was the soprano: the bass was a huge fellow to my right. At one part of the duet he was to take a very low note while I at the same time took a very high tone. A most horrible fear gnawed at my entrails at the precise moment that I was to take my high note. Up my quavering voice went, up, up, up. I could not stop itg it would not go down, it would not stay still, but imbued with the spirit of the edifice in which I 16

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TOP-KNOT, 1928 me, and then was gone. Let these unknowing school girls laugh! For me, henceforth, life would hold a depth undreamed of. Life without tragedy was only a taunting and deceptive promise. I felt, with just cause, that I, who had lived fully, should know. Truly, I was in an exalted mood. Suddenly I heard two ladies speaking behind me, exchanging delicate confidences in cautious but perceptible tones. I pricked up my ears. There's little-I never could think of her name, Janet's daughter, you know-gazing into that window. I don't wonder her mother is wor- ried about her. She certainly looks peaked. If she were my daughter, I'd give her a good dose of cod-liver oil. Oh, yes! I heard she's enamoured of that clerk at the corner drug store, the one with the greasy hair. Such a coarse-looking fellow! Oh, well, she's young. I was young! I could stand the revolting word peaked , the dis- tasteful allusion to cod-liver oil, even the slur on my hero's romantic curls: but, after all that I had been through, I was not prepared to hear that I was young. That was too much. Yet, as I thought of what they had said, I began to wonder. All the glamor of the imagined episode in which I had been reveling departed. Taking oneself seriously is such a thankless task! PATRICIA STEWART, '28 WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF Hermine were Winter instead of Summer? Lucia were Big instead of Little? Betty were Loaf instead of Krumm? Alice were Did instead of Dunn? Virginia were Rock instead of Stone? Betty were Yards instead of Miles? Alice were June instead of May? Martha were Faun instead of Sater? Harriet were Tan instead of Brown? Mary Frances were Buick instead of Jordan? 15

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TOP-KNOT, 1928 found myself, and it itself, that note was hastening ever upward and on- ward. The bass seemed possessed of the same pangs, for his note kept sliding down, down, down--I up-he down-till I ended in a wail and he in a grunt. Shortly afterward the song was finished with a hearty, thankful Amen, As we sat down the whole choir loft trembled as if struck by a fit of Saint-Vitus's disease. There were a few moments of silent prayer after our selection had been rendered. The minister sat, bent nearly double, his head in his hands, quivering in the very earnestness of his plea. The congregation sat with bowed heads in a convulsion of prayer, but the little boys on the front row impiously nudged each other while their elders plead for their souls. With the sermon well upon its way and the horrors safely behind us a species of hysteria enveloped the chorus. Away in the back of the church the janitor sat, tilted back against the wall, his jaws hanging open, sound asleep. A sight such as this would have been comical any time- but now! Something was disturbing his slumber, he stirred uneasily and gave a blind bat at the insect that apparently settled on one of his dangling legs. He lost his balance and the chair came crashing,-but no, his feet hit the floor first, saved the day and awakened the man. A titter swept over our corner of the church. Some one punched me, pointing to a small boy sitting upon his mother's lap. He was pinching both of her cheeks. He whispered some deep secret into her inatten-tive ear. She sat immovable as the sphinx. He pulled the corners of her mouth into a clown-like grin. Still she sat, a true stoic. He pulled the corners of her mouth down, producing a very pleasing effect. He giggled delightedly. The imp yanked one corner down and one corner up, liked the result and tried the same thing with the corners of her eyes. His experiment was a huge success. He burst into peals of joyous baby laughter. Gasps, forced coughs, muffled laughs issued from the loft above the wearied pastor's head. In desperation the poor man pronounced the benediction and, with the end of that, once more began our awful march, truly a pilgrims' progress. Oh, the agony of that fear! Or was it self-consciousness? Just looking back upon that day I feel that my fear was ridiculous, but when I put myself into the part again I am overcome and I wish that the earth might open up to swallow me. I wanted to be there, to be in the thing, 17