Great Falls High School - Roundup Yearbook (Great Falls, MT)

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ROUNDUP 13 A BOTTLE OF INK. A man once l ought a hottle of ink- To write the thoughts tliat he might think. A marlile table tiien he 1)ought Whereon to write the thoughts he thought. He bought a farm, fringed round with wood, l-lncnmpassed round with solitude. That he, where none molest, might sink And write the thoughts he thought he ' d think. And then around his bottle of ink He built a house wherein to think; And in the house he built a room. Retired in dim scholastic gloom, A room made up of alcoved nooks. And furnished with ten thousand books! For from such lakes of lore to drink He thought would aid his brain to think. His hair was thick and richly brown When at his desk he sat him down. And long he gazed within the brink ()f that potential bottle of ink; Ah. long before it did he stay Until his hair was thin and gray! And dreamed before that bottle of ink Of thoughts he thought he ought to think. Ah. long he tried to i)e a l)ard — P ut found his rooster crowed too hard, And with loud cock-a-doodle-doos. It frightened ofif the bashful Muse. He meditated sounding lines — But the lound winds among the pines Disturbed him, blowing from the west. And kept his line lines unexpressed. And so he died, — (dd, lame, and blind. And left his bottle of ink behind; And some one wrote with it a very Pathetic, sweet obituary. . man who suffers from the strain of unwrit epics on the brain Can ease the pressure of his grief W ith a stub pencil and a leaf. ( )ld Homer owned no inch of ground, i ' )Ut sang, and passed his hat around; o farm, no house, no books, no ink, ilut still had divers thoughts to think. If nothing in the skull abide. Then nothing helps a man outside; And what avails a sea of ink To him who has no thoughts to think? — Selected. THE RAIN. i)rii)i)ing down in the summer night. Touching the leaves with lingers light. Making them wdiisper soft and low. Drii)i)ing. dripping, gentle and slow — 1 am the rain. Tipping with diamond drops the grass. Caressing sweet flowers as I pass. Murnuiring secrets to them all. Hear me whispering as I fall. Summer night ' s rain. W ashing the dust from the uuirky air Leaving it clean, and pure, and fair. Dripping softly the long night through, Uecreating a world anew. Life-giving rain. FRANCES BURLINCAMK. A CHAPTER ON EYES. I ha e no eyes. Do not misunderstand me when I say 1 have no eyes. It is true tluy are not very large, but tliey are there. two of them; narrow slits, and. when 1 laugh they can scarcely be seen. just two lines that show where eyes ought to be. hen I say then, that I haw no eyes. 1 wish to impress up-

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12 R Ol ' N D i; I ' swift remorse, and her winnint; smile. Also in the public school-room re- spect for other nations than his own is forced upon him when he learns that Christopher Columbus was a Dago, George Washington an offi- cer in the English army, and Christ, our Lord, a ]g v. At first the foreign parent is apt to look upon the public school as Init another of the many enemies which he finds all around him in this strange and inexplicable land whose laws he learns as Parnell advised a follower to learn tlie rules of the house of commons — l)y breaking them. Es- pecially is this the case if the for- eigner is a Russian Jew. Hating and fearing the name of Christian he nat- urally looks with suspicion and aver- sion upon an institution fostered by that loathed and dreaded race. This distrust he at first tries to hand down to his child, but little Isadore is placed perhaps under the care of some sweet-faced American girl who takes the warmest interest in all her little aliens. It is again the repetition of the historic love and its cause be- tween Mary and her lamb. Helen M. Todd, Inspector of Factories, said, when speaking of the relationship be- tween teachers and pupils, that when she spoke to one little girl, Marie Mamschalsco, about her school life, the child replied, Once I had a so- beautiful teacher mit a from-silk waist and mit feaders in her hat, and when she went to talk it was like when l)rudden he plays on de concertina. Und I feel for dat teacher — and here her passion stained her pale cheeks red — like — like I was dat teacher ' s mudder. 1 will to get my teacher ' s rubbers. 1 will to get my teacher ' s hat. I will to stand l)y de str eet-car till she come. I will to ha e my seat in dat school changed. For whj-? I or so I can touch dat teacher ' s dress when she writes on de black- l)oard. But she would not stay on dat school, she say to me, Ah, Maria, I must to go. This teaching school, ' she say, ' it kill my heart. ' But I make a good-bye party for her by my house, und she give her hand to my fader, und my mudder. und everybody in my house und she say good-l)ye, und she smile, but when she kiss me good-bye, I can to feel how my teacher ' s face it is all wet by tears for that she leaves me. Is that the soil in which the evil seeds of class and race hatred can take root? Commencement brings strangely contrasted parents together in a common pride. The pupils have be- come much like each other b ut the parents may be so widely dissimilar as to make the similarity of their children an amazing fact for contem- plation. Mothers with shawls on their heads and work-distorted hands may sit beside mothers in Parisian costumes and the silk-clad mother is usually clever enough to appreci- ate and to admire the spirit which strengthened her weary neighbor through all the years of self-denial, of labor, of poverty, and often hun- ger, which were necessary to pay for the leisure and education of son or daughter. The feeling of uselessness. of inferiority, which this spirit entails, may humiliate the idle woman, but it is bound to do her good. It will ut- terly do away with many of her pre- judices against the foreigners. It will make the Let them eat cake attitude impossible, as she realzes in her heart that the foreign lowly mothers are like herself, Just Folks, M.AHI ' .L T.WLOR. ' 1, .

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14 R C) l N D U P on you that I mean, I have no eyes that see anything. In spite of this. I know that I have a faculty of siglit, for, when I am told to find cake or pie in the pantry, or when asked to pick out a new dress for myself, I am always able to find them, l)ut not so when I am looking for words in a dictionary of for waists that need buttons. It is hard, in an age like this when almost everyone knows at least a lit- tle something of some foreign lan- guage, not to be able to even see to read and spell the English language correctly. I am constitutionally impressible or sensitive to seeing good things. I have sat through two whole periods in school, till, when dismissed, I have rushed down the street toward home, only to come to a bakery with a win- dow full of candy and cakes. I can see them all right. I have sat trying to study English but I have imagined myself in some French institution in France instead of reading an English dissertation on a roast pig, or an essay on old China. Above all, those dresses, and silks, do plague my apprehension when told that I cannot have them until I learn to sew a straight hem, to gaze at a piece of pie, and l)e told that I can have all the pie I can eat when I learn how to make it myself. But when those things, such as the words receive and believe, appear in almost every spelling lesson, and 1 have not yet been able to see in whicli word the e or i comes first, I am afraid the stores may keep their dresses, and the baker his pies, until 1 have eyes that see something. MARIE HOULE. THE FALL OF ALEXANDER. It was the last month of the year 1913 and the thirteenth day at that, when our modern Alexander seeking new worlds to conquer, hied himself to Gibson Lake, where the youth and beauty of the town were circling by on skates. Now our M. A. had left his skates at home, but that did not seem to matter, for grabbing a club he ran into the crowd and raced with anyone that would run, hitting right and left till he had a clear path all to himself. Then having vanquished all his friends and foes, he made one grand run for the upper end of the lake. But alas, the ice was thin and ])egan to crack, and down went our . lexander to the bottom of the lake. For a moment not a sound was heard, then all at once we saw him crawling out towards the bank. Was this our modern Alexander, this dripping, watery youth? Was this our new chinchilla coat, so shrunken that it would not lielt? But where were his friends, to let him go home alone and unattended? Look at those prostrate forms along the shore, doubled up with laughter, they could not move, could not even take a last look as our modern Alexander sadly wended iiis way home, — a wiser and sadder man. HARPER lONES.