Hamilton High School - Hamiltonian Yearbook (South Hamilton, MA)

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HIGH SCHOOL DLCOLLLI Courtesy--v hat a lovely word. ' It suggests gentle iDreeding, efinement, culture, ariilabillty, and all the desirable attributes hat constitute a lady or a gentloman. On the other hand, the lack of it immediately brings to mind .n improper background, rudeness, incivility, disrespect, tactless- less, impudence, and vulgarity. Whonever a pupil is guilty of any )f these offences, how sorely it reflects on his envlronraont I am sure none of us v ish to be thought of as having had an Improper training, and yet wo so often leave ourselves open to this judg- ment . Being discourteous to our suneriecs, unkind or vulgar in our speech, rushing our way thi ough crovreh. , and imany other thoughtless acts, cannot fail to detract from good opinion, and place the stamp of bad breeding upon us. Let us think it over, fellow pupils, and ask ourselves into which category v e wish to be classed. For example, it is rude, rather than humorous, to push another ' s head into the fountain vdille drinking. Then hand from a another who courteous it a second or in his face. corrmion practice is to thoughtlessly take our door, thus permitting it to swing back, often against is directly behind us. How much more thoughtful and would bo to look behind and; if a person is there, take two to hold tho door open, and thus keep it from slamming Very often, one ' s behavior in the lunchroom creates a poor Impros- sion. If we leave tho remains of our lunch, for instance, or throve this at the receptacle rather than placing it in it v e not only give a bad impression of our manners, but make our school look untidy and dis- orderly.

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: yoti-odwi- ' t; that money. I earned it, and I’m going to keep it. The inventor gave a nervous snicker and revealed a hidden gas :gun. Hammerstien immediately reached for his revolver and had it in his hand ready to check the invader’s moves, hut he was too late. Ho felt a sickening, smothering gas in his lungs; it v as all over for Herman Hammerstien. His hand fell with a thud on the desk with the gun clutched lightly. The killer rose and went noiselessly to the wall tapping its panels with the hutt of his gun. He fo and one small place with an unusually hollow sound. The thoughts of a wall safe ran through his mind. The craze to get that money v as showing in his alert, sparkling eyes. Without much exertion, he slid the panel open and sav; a safe, small and unique in appearance, but very complicated to the stranger’s eyes. Owing to his profession, the ends of his fin- gers were very sensitive, thus he could feel the tumblers in the dial drop into place. After securing the contents of the vault, he went to his car not suspecting anything of the deadly and horrible fate which avv ' aited him. As I described earlier in the story, the estate partly over- looked the swamps of Chile. The swamps are inhabited by the deadly venomous swamp cobra. One of these horrible creatures had entered the inventor’s car through an open window and had coiiif ortably wound himself around the steering post. The inventor started the car and sped out on to the avenue. Before ho had gone far, ho felt a warm slimy oil on the back of his hand. Looking down, he found the crea- ture had climbed half v ay up his coat sleeve and was preparing for a strike at his neck. It struckJ With a horrible cry of agony, the terrified inventor slumped over the steering wheel, the car careened to the side of the road, hit a tree, and lay there a smouldering wreck. The two watchmen, whom we left running after tha car as it sped up the avenue toward the house, heard the crash and stopped to in- vestigate. Both looked at each other in consternation and then rushed to the house, to 1 summon help;’ The police luere notified and upon arrival at the house, found not only Hammerstien dead, but his butler also. It was very evident that the butler was killed by a bullet from his master’s gun. Hammerstien had been dead well over three hours; neither his body nor his gun had been moved, and yet the butler lay there on the floor killed by a bullet from that gun which had been shot no. more than ten minutes ago. This completely baffled the police. The medical examiner had been called and he too was uncertain as to how the mysterious death could have happened but he did give the following possible explanation. A fev; hours after death, rigor mortis or rigidity sets in the human body, when this takes place, the muscles of the body contract. The butler entered the room, at the same moment this occurred, thus v hen the muscles of the hand and fingers contracted, the trigger of the gun, v hich v as still in Hammerstien ’ s hand, might have been pulled, releasing the bullet that killed the butler. Several people who heard this explanation thought it possible, but as many others thought it impossible; and to this day there has never been a satisfactory solution to the Mystery of the Third Death. Ernest Day ’41