Fairhaven High School - Huttlestonian Yearbook (Fairhaven, MA)

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THE HUTTLESTONI AN 9 A Drama From Life Paul Fisher L ife is a very strange, a very unpredictable affair. As this sentence is being fashioned, it is not with the view of reveal¬ ing a startling philosophical theory. From the first days, this general thought has fought itself into clarification though the interpretations varied as did the mode of that time. Today, it is the vogue to call Life — with a capital ' L” — strange and unpredictable. This vogue has been nurtured by pedants who would have people regard them as thinkers, and by the com¬ parative few who honestly do expend much contemplation on the subject. I lay pretension to neither category, but rather bear out my opening remark by a story, utterly truthful and barren in exaggeration of personal coloring. Once in a great while comes a story which, by its surpris¬ ing twists, by the unprecedented trails it follows, by the un¬ common characters who people it, by the bizzare action it in¬ volves, and the unique setting which serves as its reflector, bids fair to be the delight of the writer. Personally, I believe I have such a one in the history of Jean Giraudon. Jean Giraudon was a typical French youth. His parents were of bourgeois stock. He was of average intellect, had average desires, and average dislikes. It becomes evident that he might very appropriately be termed average”, as indeed he might have, had it not been for the fact that he brimmed with vitality and enthusiasm. Occasionally he directed these traits into useful channels; more often, he did not. He started down the wrong channel after he had read Marx. Engels gave him steam, a few radicals at college fired him further, and Jean did the rest. That Monsieur J. Firon Flambert, Minister of Education, was corrupting thousands of young minds according to Jean’s sincere belief. It took but a few drinks to present Monsieur Flambert as a dragon, stuffing worn-out, impractical dogmas down the very throats of rosy- faced children.

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8 THE HUTTLESTONIAN Jim laughed loud at this and then, quite suddenly, dropped at the feet of Uh-la. The liquor had done its work. Sf- ». ' • !■ Jim awoke and looked about him. He was lying at the foot of the wooden image of Uh-la. He faintly remembered hitting the nose of the god with the bottle, and this recollection brought a chuckle. II The mosquitoes, Jim thought, must have been having a merry time with him las t night, for his body itched in a way that almost brought tears to his eyes. But no, this was not a mosquito bite. He looked at his leg. It was swollen in many places an inch high, and one swelling had, in a certain way, cracked the skin, and he could see a black fleshy substance through the crack. He must be dreaming. The black seemed to come farther out. He looked with incredulity and fear. Lord, he was stark mad. There was Nah-ta’s head. There were his eyes, his mouth, his neck, his body. — God what is this? — Then the miniature Nah-ta-spoke — You have insulted Uh-la the Terrible, Uh-la the Avenger, the God of Gods. We did not touch you for you were accursed and now you have been dealt with as he decreed.” Jim was raving; he tried to grasp the little body, but it eluded his fingers. With screeching horror, he saw another tiny Nah-ta arise from his broken flesh. As the third little black man came in view, he screamed and clutched at the tiny fiend. And then a shudder ran through his body, and he was cast into oblivion.

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10 THE HUTTLESTONIAN But Monsieur Flambert was not a dragon. A milder man is hard to picture. He feared everyone from his dictatorial wife to his spoilt son of seven. As Minister of Education he plodded along the course of his predecessor, never once questioning the ability of the latter. Jean undertook to set the bed of this man afire while he slept, and thus rid France of this menace. Whether it was be¬ cause the young man was a novice at this sort of procedure, or whether there was an unfavorable draft is unknown; but the fire was unsuccessful. Jean, who broke his leg as he jumped from the bedroom window, was caught. Though the worthy Minister of Education was not even scorched, his nervous system had suffered a severe shock. Like all timid people who have been frightened, he shrieked that something be done about it. Was such a base attempt on the life of a public servant to go unpunished? Were young fanatics to be allowed to cavort about, setting fire to such sanctuaries as one’s own bed? No! Let the law be upheld! Upheld it was — emphatically so. Jean Giraudon was sentenced to seven years in French Guiana on the He Royale. For being twenty-two, impression¬ able, and flighty, he was condemned to die. Seven years on the He Royale is a synonym for death; French finesse, it is likely, is the reason for the usage of the longer phrase. Be as it may, Jean awoke in a stifling hold of a prison ship one day and heard the anchor rattle into the water. Despair had never entered his mind, even during the two days when breathing had seemed impossible, and two of his comrades had died from a cruel mingling of hunger, fear and inhuman abuse. Men that were sent into French Guiana need never be accounted for. That they were not dead within a short time was the fault of some perverse spark in their bodies which refused to be extinguished, and such stubbornness merited much punishment. The prisoners were jerked up the hatchway; and one un¬ fortunate fellow who stumbled was hauled up bodily by the