Emmerich Manual High School - Ivian Yearbook (Indianapolis, IN)

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can hide his grotesque conception of nature. A clear brush need not resort to purple paragraphs. Madam, exclaimed Union Morale severely but with com- mendable politeness, a mood avec antipathie is not a principle of art. Man lives in the things that are, and to dwell on his short- comings and things negative is suicide because the effects (being subjective, of course) are bound to strike back. My Puvis de Chavannes sees nature through a nature and not through an ink- stand. May I ask you who wrote Faust? asked Isolde. And Union Morale answered, Gounod, of course. Not on your curves ! Curiously enough all color people say that. A German did it, my pretty thing. (Here the Fischer Aus- stellung poster looked superb; blushed and winked significantly.) He had no use for Sorboune greens or Pantheon purples, but not- withstanding his work is full of color because he understood and recognized the importance of values. Thereupon the two Steinlein Cats got into a purring argu- ment about their relative merits. Said the one: Yours is a queer point of view. Said the other: And therein lies its value — for in the inter- regnum between action and reaction there is always a period when a queer point of view forms the common meeting ground of all factions and schools. The vivacity of the whole thing was just a bit too oppressive for Gismonda. She looked her own lines over with pardonable pride and began: Before I came here I lived in a little cell by the sea. And as the days passed I saw the great ships with their sleek sides and well groomed decks steer clear of the long lines of red buoys in the channel and thus come safely to dock. Sometimes — once in a great, great while — I saw a smallish sail from some outland- ish port. Her bearded mariner heeded not the laid out channel, nor the splurges of red upon the water. He buoyed the rocks and thus his responsibility was greater — but his reward was grand. Life, discipline, art — everything is a matter of two pre- cepts. He who obeys the one follows tradition and convention, and is safe. He who follows the other has a dangerous way but it leads to individuality — and the solution of the personal equa- tion. We are all expressions of this negative tendency. Our masters have done away with the laws, the thousand little rules

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celebrated one of Rembrandt ' s many. It is an enormous canvas and the figures as I remember them are quite life size (a good copy of this painting hangs in the teachers ' assembly room at the school). It hung alone in a room entirely darkened except for a window at the side of the picture which threw exactly the light needed. It was a cloudy day, but such is the wonder and warmth of Rembrandt ' s coloring that one could not shake off the impres- sion that one was looking at the thing under a direct flood of brilliant sunlight. He has caught the sunshine with his brush, imprisoned it in paint and fixed it on canvas for so long as a shred of it shall last. EUNICE JAMESON. Amsterdam, Holland, September 26, ' 98. THE PRECEPT NEGATIVE To the Editor of the Annual : The Poet of Two Dimensions began the discussion, and all because the girl with a bit of purple at her throat had, over night (foolishly enough), tacked Isolde next to Le Exposition du Salon des Cent. Great Cazals ! Who made you ? Beardsley, sir. I dare say his mind was relieved when he put you on paper. A man of ideas need not always express himself in the lan- guage of the deaf and dumb. My master sketched me with his hands in his pockets. Which accounts for the utter absence of virtues. You lack drawing and color and — And delicacy, modestly ventured Boutet de Mouvel ' s La Petite Poucette. And notan, vaguely remarked the Hokusai looking into the dreamy distance of a Hiroshige for further inspiration. By Symous, began Isolde, virtue is a mere tradition and as unreasonable as the lav of precedence. Drawing was an art but once. It began with Raphael and ended with — Raphael. Since then it has been a means and not an end. As for color, why, it is simply a charitable medium by virtue of which man

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that bind us to tradition. To do a thing and show why it was done has been my maker ' s ultimate aim. Because taste, that most individual of things, has become a convention and is ana- lyzed by empirical canons, because of that I say, a few of us seem to lack that which is most looked for. We are expressions of impressions, and in that purpose lies the triumph of the precept negative. New York, April, 1899. ANTON SCHERRER, M. T. H. S., Feb., ' 96. Columbia University, ' 00. To the Editor of the Annual : It is three years since I have ceased being an active member of the Industrial Training School — the old name still clings to me and it is doubtful if I ever can become accustomed to the new one — but I still retain many fond recollections and recall with pleasure the many hours I have spent within its walls. I feel particularly indebted to it, for it opened the way to learning and awakened in me a desire to pursue studies, which it indicated to me. Many of you have doubtlessly been influenced by it in the same manner, and are anxiously looking forward to the time when you hope to be college students, and are wondering whether there is a marked distinction between high school and college work. As to the nature of work at Rose Polytechnic Institute, it is useless for me to attempt a description of it, since all of you are not interested in the same kinds of studies, and engineering would not appeal to you. But allow me to state that no matter what field of study you pursue, you will probably be surprised at its magnitude and its vastness, and you will soon realize that, if you become master of only a very small portion of it, you are