Hathaway Brown School - Specularia Yearbook (Cleveland, OH)

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Virginia Woodward in a riding habit, was skillfully painted on a snort- ing charger at her camrp Hoca where a complimentary course in how to fall off a horse is the novel feature of the management. This class is under the direction of Virginia who became expert in 1923 and has had a brilliant record since. With wrinkled brow and her head on her hand, in deep meditation, Frances Fenstermaker looked out of her frame at the stranger. A list of Sharon hopefulls had Huttered from her lingers to the floor. She still couldn't make up her mind and the list grew longer each day. There could be no mistake that Doris Runge was the well-know-n figure in the seventeenth picture, for she was represented beside a large blackboard erected near an aeroplane filling station. Thousands of these boards held her clever poems each week and their success had made the White Rose advertis- ing manager retire with embarrassment, where her fame began. The pic- ture showed her leaning against the sign board with an enormous stick of chalk in her hand. None other than Katherine Phillips met the stranger's eyes when she looked into picture number eighteen. Forty special delivery Fords were painted, parked in front of her house. Katherine had lined the delivery boys up in a row and was signing for the letters. An explanation at the base of the picture explained that the envelopes all contained urgent invitations to a Belgrade reunion, which would all be gently refused. A sad and alarming canvas hung on the left wall of the museum roomi. The stranger crossed to look at it , and saw Virginia Pettee in a striped dress, gazing realistically at her between bars. At her side stood Stella Kroenke trying to break the door down with a gold club. Two tears, the stranger shed for the one-tim.e President of the Student Council and the Dormitory Pres- ident, before she passed on to the next picture but they were no tears of -sur- prise, she had secretly guessed long ago that theirs would be a career of crime. The rustic scene which followed was refreshing. It put before her gaze, Ruth Towson with a 1934 plow, turning up the sod of her Gates Mills onion farm at the rate of nineteen rows per half second. Isabelle McPheeters, holding a letter in her hand and standing in a Napolionic attitude of serious perplexity, had the next place. This letter, a note next to the picture, explained, was an offer from Oxford. It anxiously bequested her service as Spelling Teacher in that noble institution, but I-sabelle had almost reached the decision to refuse in order to continue as Mathematical Instructor at Hathaway Brown. The animated picture of Florence Schroeder receiving a patent from Washington burst upon the stranger's eye. Her novel device which was in- sured to succeed, was a painless machine for ushering late callers out of the front door and was recommended by the inventor as decidedly effective. Mary Taft in a high collar, stiff black dress and with her hair severely twisted into a knot at the top of her head, frowned from her picture. She had become the head mistress of a Newi England Preparatory School and was an 22

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of the art in which she had started the then unknown genius, but gazing far away, Dorothy thought of bottles cast into the lake, other mystical methods of fate, and could not bear the tearful in-structor's pleas. Following this, the stranger beheld Mary Sollmann in oriental robes, receiving a Medal from a representative of the japanese school children for her noble work in establishing 'college board examinations, among them. Glad smiles wreathed the faces of themultitude of students watching the decoration. This had been seen several months before in every newspaper and views and reel-s throughout the world. ' . Frances Crandell, who, as the stranger knew, had gone to Africa to live, was shown boarding her sensational aeroplane named Chicago , The extra- ordinary feature of this machine was the extensive race track attached, which enabled her to ride horseback while making the trip to Illinois each night. The scene from Congress next observed, revealed President Berrybush adjourning with the final words, Senator Dorothy Barker has received nine hundred and ninety-nine messages. Please call for them atthe office. Sena- tor Barker's face was pained with' mortiiication at the one message lacking and the artist showed excellently, the successful effort to suppress a blush. Keys Free ! ' was the title of the nextpainting and although the stranger immediately recognized her dear class mate, Marion McKee, walking down a lane with a young man, she was mystiiied at the name under the picture and wondered why the artist had not shown them distributing keys gratis. An adjacent work of art arrested her immediately. The canvas was black except for a light streaming to the central figures, seated at the piano and who Were, as the stranger knew at once, Rachmaninof and Joan Houck play- ing their immortal duet. She pas-sed on with a quieterair and the longing in her heart to hear them some day. Q . s The editor of a famous book of etiquette had next been posed, autograph- ing a copy from the -seventy-fifth edition. Mary Kroehle, the distinguished writer, w-on fame e-specially from three chapters, the first, Don't Blame it on a Puncture, second, Why Time Clocks are Bad Taste, and third, How to Receive Honors Gracefullyf' ' A Marjorie I-Iulburd, internationally known for her patent medicine, had been painted at her desk swamped in testimonial letters from grateful men, women and children. After taking one half teaspoonful of 'Cadaverous Sy- rum' the neighbors call me 'Skinny,'p and my deepest gratitude is yours. . A scene of the frozen north, from which there was always a suspicion she had come, served as the setting for Katherine Lucille Roehl. She was seated in' a red'Buick roadster made into a sled and was broadcasting 'Arctic News to the Radio World. E ' A A s p A bride wasthe .next portrait., 'The' Stranger could .not help whispering, 'f'I knewl she would be the first! 1 It was the prophecy of every girl in our class. Elizabeth Dunlap, iyourv interest in making cakes and pies, those weekly corsages and your dimples raised 'many knowing 'eyebrows long' ago. 21'

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authority on strict discipline and an upholder of all Blue Laws on record. What had Frances Waffle done with the years? The fifth picture from the door left no doubt. She was seen being asked by Miss Raymond in her oflice at the Shaker Heights Hathaway-Brown School, to teach singing to students, faculty and assistants on Friday mornings. Frances was being promised a triple length period if she would only accept. V The stranger had frequently heard of Marion Shupe and had seen her picture before in the Leader-News. Martha Lee no longer solved the prob- lems of the city and Marion Shupefs name had become synonymous with advice to the love-lorn. Thirza Hunkin with a red ribbon pinned across her chest had been depict- ed in stately robes. Her decoration was for successfully filling the position of matron of The Boys' Reformatory Home . It was a triumph when even Bull Montana graduated cum laude. I Standing at the lecture table consuming quarts of water, while she paused for consideration of her topic which was How to plan programs for May Day, April Fool's Day, Washington's Birthday, Groundhog Day, etc. on five minutes notice, Shirley Harrison confronted the on-looker. She had become tall and stately, wearing yellow ground gripper shoes and attire of the vintage of 1920. The last picture was startling for it contained Georgia Gary with down- cast eyes, seated by an oil lamp, mending enormous holes in a sock. The thread she -used wfas brilliant red, the sock brown. An open door in the back- ground showed the recesses of a kitchen and on the stove, a stew sent up clouds of -smoke. Georgia Gary! The stranger fainted. When consciousness returned, the woman found herself by the exit door and struggled to her feet. She picked up her umbrella and parcels, straight- ened her hat and wialked rapidly out of the museum as if in a dream, carry- ing the confused memory of twenty-nine familiar but altered faces in her mind. When she had gone, the pictures wondered. who she had been, that had -stayed so long. But you, reader, know and so do I. Shall we let that remain our mystery? Isabelle McPheeters, '24 23