Germantown Academy - Ye Primer Yearbook (Fort Washington, PA)

Page 38 text:

Last, but by no means least, I must give my attention to you, Mr. Billy Gassoway Keefer. You are the chief offender. You have given free rein to-night to that eccentric mind and buzz-saw voice of yours, and your taunts and sarcastic remarks have no doubt seemed to you to be the scintillations of a brilliant intellect. But do not get puffed up, VV'illiam. Any phonograph could have reeled off brighter sayings and made more telling hits without half so much bluster. In bestow- ing upon your classmates the odds and ends which you have acquired in your visits to pawnshops and other questionable places, you have shown, perhaps, as much judgment as could have been expected from you, but your gifts betray rather the erratic nature of your own mind than any special peculiarities of your fellows. And now, Billy, I take pleasure in present- ing you with this ball. It is not covered, as you might suppose, with a map of the earth and populated with thousands of politicians, fakirs, and prize fighters ready to bow to the wonderful King of Gasers, Wfillie Keefer, but still it is a gift remarkably appropriate for you, for it is chuckful, like yourself, of Hot Air, Hot Air, Hot Air! '

Page 37 text:

CENSORHS' SPEECH You have been having the time of your lives to-night. You have displayed remark- able sagaeity in discovering our foibles and eccentricities, and you have racked your diminutive cerebral tissue in devising what you thought to be fitting terms of opprobrium and insult to my classmates. But you yourselves are not to escape un- scathed. lt is my cheerful duty to defend the honorable members of this class from the as- saults of your mighty intellects, and to reveal to you in some slight degree the spirit with which we have received your feeble remarks. First, you, Edwin Campbell, so aptly de- scribed by a real poet in the words- Hlong, lanlc, lean and thin, as one of Satan's cherubimf, How you must have exerted that great mind of yours to recall so many of our peculiarities, and then put them into the silly twaddle which you call verse. VVhat contor- tions of the brain and what straining of the imagination you must have undergone in try- ing to convince yourself that you could com- pose a poem. No, Edwin, it won't do. You are as little fitted to write poetry as a cow is to catch mice. Do not try to be great in any other way than that in which Nature designed you to be great-the greatness which you have already attained. Now Mr. Raymond Quarter of a bushel. You too have had fun at the expense of your classmates. You have seen visions and dreamed dreams, and in your nightmare at- tacks you have babbled forth fiction as though it were fact. But your words have no terrors for us. We are used to your vagaries and mental aberations, and estimate them at their true worth. Though your prophecies contain no word of truth, still they may prove valua- ble in fitting you for your legal career, so that you wil be able, like the man in bed,ito lie lirst on one side and then on the other.

Page 39 text:

VALEDICTOR Y Look up and not down, Loolc forward and not back, Look out and not in,- And lend a hand. Ladies and GC1zfIc'mcn.' VVe have finished -the first stage of our journey of life, and before we set out on the new road, we halt for a moment to bid you, who have accompanied us thus far, farewell. VVith the mention of the word farewell comes a feeling of sadness. Having been to- gether all these years, must we not think of them ever with tender longing? Now we are to leave behind the warm friends and the careful guiding, and each, a moral Columbus, steer our bark alone in vastly different channels, and it behooves us to aim high, and consider ourselves capable of ffreat things. As new occasions teach new b Cs duties,'J it is for us to go forth, each with the firm resolve that I at least will do my duty. As ambitious young men, we will do all in our power to enlarge our experience, and the more we learn, and the deeper we penetrate, the more cause shall we find for being con- tinually thoughtful. VVe do not pretend to be able to assume the responsibilities of wise and learned seniorsg neither is there triumph in the thought of fearlessly entering a larger life and assuming its duties. But it lends ballast to the undertaking and gives steadi- ness to every venture to have 'the complete assurance that well begun is half won, and that in the bright lexicon of youth there is no such word as fail, and that golden oppor- tunity may be ours for the striving. Our private lives offer vast opportunity for high and lofty speculations. The world naturally looks with suspicion on the opinions of young men. This is merely a prejudice. VVe must be such men as will soften prejudice,