Harcum College - Purple Patches Yearbook (Bryn Mawr, PA)

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Turple Tatches Taily Themes Because I am one of the most conventional people, and because I come from one of the most conventional of families, because I have grandmothers who think Sunday automobile-riding a form of sinful amusement, because family tradition is absolutely against it, I have a Wild desire to be unconventional. How I should love to have coal- black hair! How I should love to wear vivid lipstick and queer but stun- ing clothes! How I should love to live in New York by myself and frequent queer places! How I should love to be unconventional! Well, who is forcing you to be conventional anyway? a persistent little voice keeps saying: I ignore the voice but it continues. If you must know,', I retort, nobody isf' And considering the matter seriously, I am convinced that nobody is. Then why am I not unconventional since nobody is preventing me and since that is my dreadful desire? I fear that it is a question of courage solely. I havenit the courage to be uncon- ventional. Unconventionality needs a great deal of courage. It has advantages and disadvantages like anything else. It is a splendid thing not to be bound by conventionalities, custom or criticism, but the reaction from this release from bondage tends to be too strong. One man in himself cannot act voluntarily. If he rejects all conventions he allies himself with other unconventionalists Who have their own conventions and the man is little freer than he Was before. He becomes more and more unconventional just to prove to himself as Well as to anyone else that he is free. But, oh poor disillusioned man! He is tied hand and foot to conventional unconventionality! I should still like to be unconventional and I have just thought of a splendid Way. I shall not bring this theme to a pointed concluding paragraph, gentle reader, but leave it as it is now-unconventionally up in the air. INIARY LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN. Lacy dreams I Weave and weave While others are progressingg Silent songs I sing and sing While others are expressing. BECKY TARWATER. 5 1

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Turple Tatches Janet May Seed, ,26, was unanimously elected Secretary of the Alumnae Association, succeeding Lucille Johnson. Finally, several members gave various suggestions for the ways in which the Alumnae can prove to be an active force in benefiting Harcum, but the point especially stressed was that of making Alumnae Week-end a greater success in the years to come, and making the Alumnae a more vital help to the school. After the luncheon we went to the new Seville Theatre in Bryn Mawr, and then a most charming afternoon was concluded by a Tea given in honor of the Alumnae by the members of the College Club. CATHERINE ITARTMAN. Travel G1-331 Ulfzlght The road unwinds, a curving strip Of darkened silver thru grotesque Shadows and strange, fantastic forms Of overarching branches, trees Loom suddenly on either side, Tall Sentinels of highway life g The moon makes meadows bands of pale Gray-green and blobs of inky black, Farmhouses sunk in deep content Nestle beside their awkward barns, The cattle, queer, distorted shapes, Like great white canvas bags of stones, Lie huddled under squatty trees, And huge work horses slowly swish Thick tails and stamp broad, ponderous hoofs, Dreaming beside the water trough 3 A rooster, risen all too soon, Crows raspingly into the night, And from the sedge-grass of a marsh Comes the chug-chug-chugv of drowsy frogsg The cool breath of a wandering wind Carries the scent of new-mown hay Filed in gigantic stacks, the fruit Of one dayis labor in the fields, And still the road unwinds, as we Skim purringly its silver track. s PATTY Woon, '26. 4

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Turple Tatches IG-HT in California has a fragrance all its own, a tantalizing, ' tranquil scent that makes one breathe in deep, greedy drafts, but with half-closed eyes. I know that in the magic formula for California night, are piquant orange blossoms, strange eucalyptus and a tang of the salt from the sea, but what the elusive ingredient is that binds the formula together and makes it different from any other, no one will ever know. It is an undiscovered element. W Years ago two little girls, with whom I played, and I, walked away one hour of a California night. VVe were strangely old that evening and instead of running and laughing shrilly as was our custom, we walked down the dusty roads with a new-found dignity. Our arms were wound around each otherss waists and the silence of the night was broken only by the crunch of pebbles that scurried from beneath our feet and the whisper of the breeze nestling in the tops of the lombardies whose tall, misty shadows swayed beside us. We did not talk but sometimes we softly hummed bits of melodies that we thought we had forgotten. The road was bordered with peach orchards and it was fun to walk under the low, fragrant trees and try to find sweet, ripe peaches to suck. At the top of a hill we found a reservoir. It was low and covered, but by lying on our stomachs on the moist, mossy earth we could press our faces against a screen and peer into the blackness where we heard the weary waters slowly heaving against the stone sides. That gaunt reservoir was mystic and terrifying to us, with its impenetrable darkness and its unseen waters , but we stayed there for many minutes and listened to the soft lapping. At last we arose and went away and the reservoir melted into the night around us. I never saw it in the daytime-and I am glad. A BETTY DAVIS. The Toppy Do not touch the scarlet petals Lest your finger-tips be singed. G-lance only on its dusky soul Of purple midnight, fringed. 'Tis out of place in this trim garden, Better suited, so it seems In Oriental gardens, Enticing stealthy Eastern dreams. REBEKAH SH OPE. 6