Eastern High School - Punch and Judy Yearbook (Washington, DC)

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Joun EB. BowMAN, assroom, said “J pet I'll beat you to the el i as he hurried the Freshman to the Senior, down the corridor. The Senior, of course, W doing so undignified a thing as to run to the room; so he sauntered through the doorway or so after the Freshman. ow,” declared ould not think of a moment “I’m going to open a wind the Rookie. ‘‘It’s too warm in here.” contradicted the wiser one. because you were running to ow that the tempera- Eastern High School t is ab- “ Nonsense,”’ “You’re warm get here. Don’t you kn ture of all the rooms in ig automatically regulated and that i solutely impossible for a room to get too warm or too cold?”’ ‘Well, you may be right about t ature, but how are you going to get fresh air in the rooms if all the windows are closed?” “Presh air? You get all the fresh air you need, and some to spare through that register over there in the wall. Fresh air is constantly being foreed into the room through the regis- ter at the bottom of the wall; and the impure air’ which rises toward the ceiling, js being drawn out through the register at the top of the wall.” ““Then you mean to say,” gasped the little fellow, ‘‘that it would really be best if every window in the building were kept shut?” “Tt certainly would. And I'll give you another chance to show your ignorance. You say, ‘every window in the pbuilding.’ All right; how many windows do you suppose there are in the building?” “Oh, I don’t know—perhaps a hundred.” ‘Wrong, my child. There are exactly one thousand windows.” “‘Gee!’’ exclaimed the green one. “ Would- n’t it be fun to wash all of them!”’ “Tf you stop to figure it out, you will find that, by allowing fifteen minutes for each window, it would take you more than thirty days of eight hours each to get all the win- he temper- dows washed. And by that time the five ones would be ready to be washed again,” 5; «J never realized that there was so mean work to it,”” murmured the Freshman, «And you probably never considered hoy many persons are required to do all this wor, There are Mr. Kirby, who is ehief paniteee Mr. Sheahan and Mr. Kneas, assistant aia. tors, as well as Mr. McQueeney, chief engi. neer; James King, electrician; two assist engineers, 4 gardener, two firemen, two cog] ight laborers, three women laborers, passers, © a nd a night wate man. hat a matron, makes twenty-five altogether.’” “J shouldn’t have thought that there were more than five or six,’’ said his awed listener “Why, my boy,’” continued the intelligent one, ‘‘there js always one person in the build ing at night. If the school is open at night there are eight. And, by the way, it costs from ten to fifteen dollars a night to keep the pbuilding open.”’ “ Zounds, as Shakespeare would say,”’ eom- mented the youngster. “But to get back to the subject of heating,” pursued the other, ““permit me to inform you that from the first of October to the beginning of May, nine or ten tons of coal are Tea daily. That means that as much coal is burned in one day as some families use in an entire winter.” “Yeah, and that would make about 2,000 tons a year,’’ added the Freshie, to show that he knew a thing or two about arithmetic. “« And figuring four pounds to a shovelful,”’ elaborated the Senior, not to be outdone by the other’s knowledge, ‘‘that would mean 1,000,000 shovelfuls!”’ The Freshman absently toyed with the ink- well as he allowed the ‘‘1,000,000 shovelfuls’’ to sink into his brain. ““Ah, yes, the ink!’’ said the Senior. (Continued on page 28)

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Frsruary, 1925 Ghosts properly belong to faded, colonial mansions whose crumbling portals seem to welcome the shades of those who, like them- selves, have only happy days to remember. A haunted bungalow would seem an impossi- bility, an anomaly; but I know of one, the more to be feared because its cheerful appear- ance conceals no hint of the menace that lurks within. It was ill fated from the beginning, for the workmen found the site where it was to be built hidden beneath a dense growth of the sinister beauty of the blue vervain. They still whisper over the evening fire, those few workmen who are yet alive, of how Black Mitchel, the strongest of them all, boasting of his indifference to ‘‘those old wives’ tales of the blue vervain’’ had first uprooted a clump of it. The doctors had said when he was found dead two days later, ‘‘heart failure’’; but his friends knew. Not for nothing had they seen, grasped in his dead hand, that tiny sprig of the fatal flower. They whispered, too, when the house had long been completed and yet still stood va- cant, of how Jim, the night watchman, was killed by a tiny, falling bit of plaster. When the ‘‘Old Un” had picked it up next day, it had crumbled and crumbled in his hand as he examined it; and suddenly he had stared at it in horror and thrown it far away. He would never tell them the reason for his sudden ter- ror; but Steve, who was standing nearest, im- The KASTERNER Blue Vervain Wan Cite) det ON, DS sisted that it was a leaf he had seen in the center of the plaster—a leaf of the blue vervain. But even these whispers could not keep the little house empty forever, and one day Ed- mund Cross, a very young groom, brought home to it his even younger bride. That night as they talked together after all their guests had left, he laughingly told her of the weird tales rumor had woven around their home. “But that’s the good of college, Edna,’’ he said. ‘‘It teaches us the triviality of all that “bunk.” ’” Edna’s laughter was a little uncertain. He went on. “You see blue vervain doesn’t mean evil to me, but home—and you.”’ “Blue vervain,’’ she murmured. “Why, we ought to call our home really, the House of the Blue Vervain,’’ he contin- ued. “Yes, the House of the Blue Vervain,”’ she assented; but as Edmund bade her good night, he heard her repeat that name again with a little catch in her breath—'‘The House of the Blue Vervain.”” (Write your own conclusion to this story, sign it, and drop it into the EAsTERNER Box in the office. Endings must not exceed 500 words, must be written on one side of page, and must be submitted not later than March 2. The best ending will be published in the April issue of THe EasterNer.—Eprror. ) YESTERDAY, TODAY, AND ALWAYS Dororuy E. WALKER, 725. The ashes were falling thick and fast; The soldier at his post heeded them not. He was a Roman; his duty Was to remain at his post. It grew intensely black; only jets of flame Lit up the deep void. The hot ashes filled the streets ; People fell in them, were smothered in them. Others, rushing by, fell over them, ‘All intent only on fleeing from the burning mountain. ‘A woman stops and cries to the soldier, “You fool! run for your life! the mountain’s aflame !”’ He stayed where he was. Almost two thousand years after They found him Dead, at his post.

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EBRUARY, 1925 Whistling Pete was not, as you may think, a person. He was a whale. (Behold the title.) You may ask, and pertinently, why a whale should be named Whistling Pete. However, I must sustain interest in the plot, and you will be answered later in my narra- tive. There is a sandbar across the mouth of the St. Johns River which keeps all large sea creatures from entering this sheltered Florida waterway. However, at certain times of the year the tide rises to a great height, and on these occasions any large animal or fish may cross the bar and enter the channel. During one particularly high tide a large whale came blundering up the river. His presence was soon known to everybody along the water from Jacksonville to Palatka, the limit of his range. The St. Johns is not very deep, and the animal was confined to the boat channel. Now this channel was made with the determination to spend as little money as possible on it, and as a consequence it is not particularly wide. Many a night a river steamer felt heavy shocks, as the mighty ani- mal vented its rage against the boat’s side. Many a day found the intelligent whale fol- lowing the wake of some up-river boat, patiently waiting for the refuse from dinner. About this time the river steamers were troubled with a strange danger. While sail- ing along some dark night the pilot would hear two whistle blasts, a signal for the boat to go to starboard and let another craft pass. The pilot would steer to the right, then look for the other boat. Yet no light would be seen, and repeated swinging of the searchlight would reveal nothing. This happened many times, until the river people were convinced that the river was haunted by a second “Flying Dutchman.” Finally one pilot, after hearing the two blasts, swung his boat to port instead, and to everybody’s conster- nation, encountered a huge bulk under the The KASTERNER Whistling Pete—A Whale of a Stof George A. Main, 26 [ot | iL i . water. Needless to say, all other signals were implicitly obeyed; and still no one had a satis- factory answer to the riddle. These eerie signals continued for several years, until finally the problem was solved by the captain of a freight craft carrying wood to St. Augustine. The boat was rounding Buffalo Bluff one dark night, when four whistles were heard. Now four whistles are the equivalent of ‘‘I am in great distress ; help me.’’ Immediately an attempt was made to locate the erippled vessel with a spotlight, but nothing was found. Then the captain decided that it was some launch stranded on Buffalo Bar, and a small boat was sent out to answer the distress signal which was re- peated at regular intervals. The boat made its way toward the shore, guided by a hand searchlight, which lighted the shore in the search for the wrecked eratt. Imagine their surprise on finding their old friend, Pete the whale, stranded on the sand- bar. He wagged his tail in friendly ac- knowledgment of their coming, and again uttered the four whistles. The men gazed at each other in blank amazement, then burst into a roar of laughter. Here was their mysterious vessel, their ‘‘Flying Dutchman,”’ their pet ‘‘hant.’? At last the ghost was laid. They hurried back to their boat, but. it seemed a shame to leave Whistling Pete to die there on the sandbank, so after much labor he was set afloat. As soon as the mon- strous animal was comfortably settled, he gave three whistles, which means, ‘‘I’m all right now, thank you,’’ and disappeared up the river. The Cadet Notes do not appear in this issue as the Cadet Editor failed to turn them in on time.