Girls Latin School - Liber Annalis Yearbook (Boston, MA)

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Girls' Latin School CHere he bowed eloquentlyj Magno cum gaudio I present Miss Clio, Musa Historiae I Mercury now speedily departed to his other Saturday morning duties CMorpheus againj. Clio, he knew, was a dependable divinity, very energetic because she did not Wish to lose her figure. Clio stepped forward gracefully and unrolled her gilded scroll. She com- menced to read: CLASS VI Six long years ago in September of the year '31, troops of girls of all sizes filed into the Girls' Latin School. Least noticeable among these were the hero- ines of my saga. In desperation, they clutched their cumbrous, but comforting. pencil boxes, and entered the portentous gates. A malignant, two-legged blackboard immediately faced them. Class Six report in Collins Hall. Oh, mourned the bewildered braidbearers, but what shall we do? We are Class One! Finally a daring child asked a senior in a blue knitted suit where Class One should go. The senior gazed in astonishment at her would-be contemporary. Oh, she cried suddenly, and condescendingly she explained the great puzzle. Thus it was that the pigtails found themselves in Collins Hall, found themselves scrutinized by swarms of teachers and regarded as just so many letters to be distributed in a place called the annex. The distributions brought fruitful discoveries. There were dressing rooms! A carefully compiled list shows the uses to which these dressing rooms were converted during the course of the year: hide-outs for secret societies: pun- ishment rooms for pupils over-sociable in class: sophisticated dancing-class ball rooms: gymnasiums fthe bars encouraged monkey stuntsj 3 gossip rooms Csub- jects: the Empress Eugenie hat and Miss So-and-so's new dressj : rehearsal and costuming rooms Cprevious to Christmas entertainments made possible by trag- ic histrionic attemptsj. The dressing-room was unanimously voted the in- dispensable foundation of annex social life. Sports included jump-rope, class-room ball playing, sans teacher, of course. climbing hundreds and hundreds of steps, and catching two o'clock trolley cars. CThe girls are now willing to wait until two-thirty.j There was an amazing amount of school spirit. Everyone invested in Jabs, Jab pins, A. C., and hymn and hand books, never opened since. And then-marks! The first report card-the first D-the maiden's first scholarly tears. Ah, the shock of it, the roseate color of it, the roseate color of father's face at sight of it! So this was life! But the pigtails soon recovered, for they were a happy-go-lucky little race. The really great events of the year were the gym meet, of which the fifth and sixth class stunts were the sole interesting features Caccording to their per- sonal opinionj, the class picnics to Nantasket, and the play, A'The Royal Fam- ily of Broadway. Promotion! fPage Forty-sixl

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T ga ..--n. Q 7 gm lunnn. W ,E .-aun. ya , ff , 'F A Q ,lib ' W lil HSTEQN RY an 'A .VA I' Mmm.. CLIO ON THE AIR All Mount Olympus lay beneath the grasp of the rosy-fingered Dawn, but not one of the Olympian divinities was stirring, for it was Saturday morn- ing, and mortals did the housework. But suddenly from the temple of the Muses on one side of the gold-paved Olympian avenue, a hideous, raucous screech issued forth, a sound as of great pain and torture and the unremitting yells of wild animals. Clio, how many times have I told you to put the soft pedal on that alarm clock! complained one of the Ten Sisters as she turned over. I've got a job, groaned Clio, stopping the alarm, and pushing out one toe to test the temperature of the atmosphere. I can't be late, and it takes the loud one to wake me up! I remember. It's that Latin School business, supplied Mnemosyne. Don't forget to heat my ambrosia, Clio. Clio, having found the temperature suitably Elysian, had arisen and dressed in a White sheet with beautiful royal purple crepe paper trimmings. Eheu, sighed Clio, and ordered a mortal from Hades to heat the am- brosial oatmeal for breakfast. A half hour later Dawn's whole glowing hand had become visible, and from her temple home, Clio was emerging, a black and gold scroll tucked under her arm. She sped with Olympian airiness to the mansion of President Zeus, who had had a radio broadcasting station installed in his living room CPresi- dent Zeus' hobby was running divine amateur hoursj. Mercury, the radio announcer, had by this time temporarily recovered from the prolonged hypnotic powers of his friend, Morpheus. He was a bit broader amidships than his portrait statue of over a thousand years ago, because he was a little older, and since the invention of the radio, he sat down to send his mes- sages wireless. His only activity was leading a chorus of Naiades, with his caduceus for a baton. Now Mercury called over the microphone in perfect Shakesperian English, I-Xttentionl O ye avid mortals! This is station IQIT speaking. We have with us this morning a goddess whom the whole world has continually ac- claimed in the past, and Who, at the request of a far-off city-state Bostonia, has agreed to read to us the History of the Class of 1937 of the Girls' Latin School. A CPage Forty-fivej

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Class of 193 7 CLASS V Experience is a wonderful teacher. We know all about life. Thus ran the motto of the new Class Five. And they proceeded to assert themselves. They looked down their brief noses at Class Six, but would not admit that they had to stand tiptoe to do it. They scorned Class Six, the ignorant babes of the school. They demanded the respect of all the upper classes, and were, perhaps, humored. They were immediately dubbed the noisiest class the school had ever known, and to this very day they retain that championship title. It shows we have spirit and originality, they boasted, and continued to defy law naively. Teachers shook their heads. What was the world coming to? That unsquelchable Class Five had very successful Christmas parties, very successful Valentine parties, and, to show their originality, a very, very suc- cessful class picnic at Provincetown. Everyone acquired a Wind-burnt red face, and no one was seasick. Then came the operetta, Lantern Hand, for which certain privileged Fifth Classmen lent their coolie-coat cotton kimonos. Candy girls appeared in these clothes on the night of the Operetta. Uppermost in the minds of the Fifth Class were the Emperor and Empress of Japan, Nogotta and Iwanta Kimono. Clwanta was the woman, of course.j To this day, the girls remember I am so kind, so very, very kind, I cannot hurt a fly-a fly! But time marches on. They were growing old, these ladies who had once worn pigtails. They were solicitous of the future. Next year they would be freshmen in high school, and so they cut off their pigtails, and curled what was left on their stylish heads. CLASS IV Now that the baby sixth-classers had grown into actual high school fresh- men, they discovered that they were not to be the only graduates of the class of '37: their ranks were swelled by a group of girls known as 4B. The 4A girls were apt to look at their new sisters scornfully down the long noses of their ex- perience, because they felt that two years in Girls' Latin School had made them veterans. This condescension, however, soon passed, and both sections shared alike in the woes and joys of freshmen. In evidence that these young students had passed from the ranks of mere children was the compulsory attendance at all assemblies. No longer were there early afternoon hours to play in! No longer were there early morning study periods in which to finish that half-prepared home lesson! But in rec- ompense there were the many really amusing entertainments which they used to miss. Many were the oh's and ah's as the Caney Creek boys Cwho will ever forget their good looks?j sang their mountain music, or as their classmates pre- sented a beautiful pageant. Yet school was not all assemblies. Oh unfortunate freshmen! For not long had they been freshmen when an epidemic broke out and spread through the class, like wildfire--an epidemic of crushes 'There were a few cool, calm, and collected young misses who were in themselves sullicient and who regarded disdainfully their weaker sisters. Still, in all fairness, they were not wholly weak. Recall what great people had a hero or heroine whose judgment they trusted and whose manners they tried to copy. Here a word must be said for the class of '34, who must have had quite magnetic personalities to have inspired such a wave of herofinej Worship. January, that month of the two-headed god, was for these school girls cer- tainly two-headed. CPage Forty-sevenj